Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI EARLY AMERICAN DAYS "Never will the first sight of New York, and the harbor, fade from my memory. The thrill of it still lingers. Our ship moved up the bay, very slowly as if impressed as I was by the view which lay before and which caught and held my gaze till I blinked. It was like nothing I had seen or imagined before: a sweep of broad waters ahead, with the shorelines of Staten Island and Long Island to left and right, and dead forward of our bows the Statue of Liberty. All this I saw first. Then my gaze, elevated, fell upon lower Manhattan, upon the peaks of its towers that were made peaks by mortal hands, not by Nature. And as I leaned there against the ship's rail, my feet hard upon the deck, I wondered what that land held in store for me--if anything. "I have been called psychic; perhaps I am. But whether or not, I experienced a strange sensation as of good and ill meeting and refusing to merge. I remained there, my arms leveled on the rail, for as long as it took to move past the Battery and on up the North River to the ship's berth. I roused, then, went below and at ten o'clock on the morning of Friday, June 7, 1904, I set foot for the first time on the soil of the country which is now my home; the country I love and of which I shall be a full-fledged citizen in January, Nineteen Nineteen." "The first sight ashore that caused my jaw to drop was the breadth of West Street and the jam of its traffic. I dimly remember getting into a cab with friends and a careening ride, punctuated with numerous abrupt stops at street-crossings, which terminated at some hotel, I know not where. I was in New York for two days, which I spent in strolling about in wonderment at the unusual sights. Then I was taken to the old Grand Central...