There had been no one to meet Giuseppe Rota, and he would have been held in the Island until his relatives could be communicated with. He nearly wept at the prospect of being alone, and so I brought him with us. He was afraid to go five feet away from me on the ferry-boat. As we docked at the Barge Office we had a slight wait until the returning officials, visitors, and better-class passengers on the deck overhead could be let off, and then we were released. We passed through the huge piles of immigrants’ baggage, to which we must return on the morrow to get the heavy pieces of our own, and out to the street. There was the stretch of Battery Park, the looming buildings about Bowling Green and on State Street, a real Broadway car, and a fine L train roaring north on Sixth Avenue tracks, boys with ten-o’clock extras, and a thousand things that told us we were back home, once again in the best place of all. I was at the head of the party leading the way to a Broadway car, for it was useless to try to go up on the “L” with all our encumbrances, and looked back at my wife. She was looking up at the trees and the buildings, and she said gently, “Thank God! Thank God!” The car we took was entirely empty but for ourselves, and when we were inside with our luggage it looked like a baggage car. Weary as our people were, their eyes were wide with wonder at all they saw, and as we swung around into Broadway and started up town I saw in Concetta’s eyes that wild look of the “startled fawn” as she contemplated the great cañon, flanked by buildings, into which we were rushing. She shrank from each sudden accentuation of the noise of the street. People began to get on the car. They stared at us and made audible comments, little thinking that some of us understood. “Oh, what dirty, dirty wretches,” said a woman, with a worn seal-plush sacque, as she looked at our women. “I don’t see why they let these lousy dagoes ride on the same cars other people have to use,” observed a stout gentleman with gold-framed glasses as he shrank back from Gaetano Mullura, who had tried to change his seat and was plunging down the aisle owing to a sudden jerk of the car. Ere long we came to Bleecker Street, and, knowing there were several hotels in the vicinity below middle class, the only sort at which we stood a chance of being admitted, we alighted, and I went in to the desk to see if I could get a half-dozen rooms. Three times I was met with the excuse, “We are all full,” though I could plainly see that the room board was but half covered with slips. At each of the hotels we created a stir. As I turned away from the last desk the clerk observed to the cashier: “Well, what do you think of that for nerve?” “What’s that?” said the cashier, who had been busy. “Why, that dago coming in here with a push like that, trying to get rooms.”