With the morning came the bustle and confusion of landing. Much of
Uncle Bob's time was taken up with the inspection of trunks, and with
helping Giusippe sign papers and answer the questions necessary for his
admission to the United States. Then came the parting. They bade a
hurried good-bye to Miss Cartright, whom Uncle Bob was to put aboard
the New York train, and into a cab bundled Hannah, Giusippe, and Jean,
in which equipage, almost smothered in luggage, they were rolled off to
Beacon Hill.
Nothing could exceed Giusippe's interest in these first glimpses of the
new country to which he had come. For the next few weeks he went about
as if in a trance, struggling to adjust himself to life in an American
city. How different it was from his beloved Venice! How sharp the
September days with their early frost! How he missed the golden warmth
of the sunny Adriatic and the familiar sights of home! During his
journey through France and England the constant change of travel had
carried with it sufficient excitement to keep him from being homesick;
but now that he was settled for a time in Boston he got his first taste
of what life in the United States was to be like. Not that he was
disappointed; it was only that he felt such a stranger to all about
him. The automobiles, subways, elevated roads, all confused his brain,
and the dusty streets made his throat smart with dryness.
Daily, however, he became more and more accustomed to his surroundings,
and when at last he ventured out alone and discovered that he could
find his way back again his courage rose. Then he began going on
errands for Hannah, and was proud and glad to be of use. He accompanied
Uncle Bob to his office and arrived home alone in safety. Gradually the
strangeness of his new home wore away. Every novel sight he beheld,
every custom which was surprising to him, everything that he did not
understand he asked a score of questions about. It was _why_, _why_,
_why_, from morning until night. His questions, fortunately, were
intelligent ones, and as he remembered with accuracy the answers given
him and applied the knowledge thus gained to future conditions he made
amazing headway in becoming Americanized. He got books and read them;
he visited the churches, Library, and Art Museum. And when he saw how
much of its beauty the New World had borrowed from the Old he no longer
felt cut off from his Italian home.
Uncle Bob, in the meantime, had been forced to plunge so deeply into
business that he had had little opportunity to aid his protege in these
explorations. But one Saturday noon he came home and announced that he
was to treat himself to a half holiday.
"I am not going back to the office to-day," he declared. "Instead I
intend to carry off you two young persons and show you something very
beautiful, the like of which you will see nowhere else in all the
world."
"What is it?" cried Jean and Giusippe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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