From her we learned that her husband had been commissioned by a contractor in Pittsburg to go into the Italian provinces of Austria,—by which is meant the Austrian possession immediately around the head of the Adriatic, where the stock is Italian,—and engage two hundred good stonemasons, two hundred good carpenters, and an indefinite number of unskilled laborers. These people were to be put in touch with sub-agents of lines sailing from Hamburg, Fiume and Bremen, and these agents were to be accountable for these contract laborers being got safely into the United States. This woman informed us that many of her neighbors in Pittsburg had come into the United States as contract laborers, and held the law in great contempt, as it was merely a matter of being sufficiently instructed and prepared, and no official at Boston or Ellis Island could tell the difference. We had been seated there a little while when there came by a sailor whom I had known in Hamburg some years before, and when I stepped aside to talk with him he was greatly surprised but remembered me, and we talked of many things which do not pertain to this consideration, save that just before he left I told him that we were on the lookout for the best sleeping and eating accommodations we could get in the steerage, and he answered, laughingly, that it was easy enough to get a good place and good things to eat—if I had money. I signified that I had. He said he would send me a man who would be the person with whom to dicker. When he was gone, I sat down to wait. In about an hour I saw a tall, well-built man in ship’s working rig, neither a sailor nor a steward, though moving about the steerage apparently looking for some one; so I moved his way, and when he saw me he sidled up cautiously, glancing up at the bridge, the forward end of the boat and the hurricane deck to see who might be observing. I spoke to him in German; but he replied in English and said we had better talk English, as it was the language that was safe from eavesdroppers.