husband, a man with braid and gilt buttons; preferably some one connected with an embassy.

Several of her friends, she said, had married into that class and were “perfectly happy.”

“Foreigners are so polite,” she said. “Americans, especially American husbands, are boors. Think of nothing but business, know nothing of music or art, and are absorbed in football, the Board of Trade and fast horses.”

I knew that this woman was not a typical American woman, nor typical of a large class; but she was interesting as a type of many of her class who have grown weary of Democracy and the attendant Puritanisms of America, have crossed the seas and recrossed them, have gambled at Monte Carlo and flirted at Budapest and Vienna, have seen the shady side of Paris by early morning light and have become alienated from the best there is in America.

This particular woman had broken up her home, had left a fourteen-year-old son with his grandparents, and was about to throw herself away on pretty nearly anything that presented itself, if it sported brass buttons and trimmings, and had at least a Von to its name. She belongs to a species which I have often seen in the American quarters of European cities; but one so frank as she, I had never met.

I thought I had known something of American homes and American husbands; but evidently I have lived in the social backwoods, for what she told me was indeed a revelation.

In the course of the conversation we were joined by other husbandless women who were to live abroad, although not divorced nor yet seeking gold braid and brass buttons; by the gentleman from Boston who had confessed to being a church-member, and by a merchant from the West who was eager to make up a pool on the ship’s run,—and before we knew it, we were back to my proposition about the steerage.

It was the merchant from the West who said that he noticed how much American clothing these immigrants carried back. That the men had celluloid collars, watches and brass-bound trunks. It was the man from Boston who said that they carried themselves so differently from those who came over, and it was he who began to calculate how much money they carried back, impoverishing our country and enriching theirs.

“One thing,” I ventured in reply, “you have not counted and cannot count. How much of that which is better than money they are carrying back. Ideals filtered into their minds, new aspirations dominating their lives, and all found in the humblest places in America.

“The steerage, as I have said before, and now say again with still more emphasis, carries into Europe more saving ideas than the cabin. What we bring we have borrowed from Europe and bring back in exaggerated forms. Neither Paris nor Berlin, nor Vienna nor Monte Carlo is being blessed by our coming or cares for us at all, but only for our dollars.”

No one contradicted me and I do not think I shall be contradicted.

“Neither Europe nor America is the better for our coming or our going,” I continued. “And you,” turning to the man from Boston, “you who say that the immigrants are to blame for our social and religious deterioration, ask yourself what you and your class bring back to America after a season spent on the frayed edges of the so-called social life of Europe, with which the average American comes in contact. As for the money the immigrants carry back, they have earned every cent of it, and I have no doubt that we in the cabin carry more money over to Europe than they do, and we will spend it there; and I am not so sure that we have earned it.

“Moreover,” waving aside the man from Boston who was about to interrupt me, but I was wound up and could not run down, “they have paid a terrible price for the money they carry home. Shall I tell you what that price is?” And I told the story of the Slavic widow and her orphaned brood. Then my good neighbour, the Puritan rebel, who had heartlessly talked of her deserted home, stretched out her hand and touching mine said: “Please don’t tell us any more. You have already made me think, and I don’t want to.”

Then came four bells from the bridge, and the lonely sailor watching from the crow’s nest called out: “All’s well on board!”

With a sigh my Puritan rebel rose, murmuring what I alone heard:

“Sailor, that isn’t so!” Then she said: “Good-night.”

After that there were more cigarettes and cocktails in the smoking-room; but one woman wasn’t there.

II

THE PRICE THEY PAY

THE ship’s doctor was very much like other men of his profession who choose to be knocked about from port to port, dealing out pills and powder, when pills and powders seem of so little consequence. He was young, inexperienced and had not yet learned half the secret of his calling; namely, to keep his mouth shut at the proper time. At breakfast he told us that he had eight cases of consumption in the steerage, and that three men were about the worst he had ever seen.

He told this with the cool air of the medical man who delights in “cases” as such. Then he told us about one of them, a Greek, who was at the point of death, but all the time kept calling for cheese.

“Don’t you give him cheese, all the cheese he wants?” cried one of the young ladies across the table.

“No,” replied the doctor; “what’s the use?”

Then I looked at the young lady and she looked at me; I whispered something to my steward, and she gave an order; and we both had cheese—real Greek cheese for breakfast.

In the morning the steerage looks its best. The deck has been scrubbed and so have some of the passengers. If the day promises to be fair, the travellers unconsciously draw upon the coming joy in large draughts. When I went down that day, I was no more among strangers. Tony greeted me with an unusually broad smile, John Sullivan shook hands with me so vigorously that I thought he must be the veritable John L. and the children gathered round me, confidently awaiting their sweets. This was truly inspiring; but it became touching when the Slavic widow said to her brood: “The Krist-kindel comes.”

In the depths of the steerage they had heard that a man from the cabin had come down and been good to them; that he had petted the children, luring them with sweets. And the steerage gave up its treasure of little ones, seemingly endless in number; so that the stock of good things had to be replenished many a time before each child had its fair and equal share.

Truly it is “More blessed to give than to receive,” yet the blessing brings its burdens, in the disclosure of real or pretended suffering; and the immigrants are no exception to the rule. I know now as I have never known before, the price they pay for the dollars so safely tucked away, which are their wealth, their power and, I trust, their happiness.

Here is a beggarly-looking group of Bulgarians. They left their home in the richest district of that new Balkan czardom about a year ago. I know their village, set in the midst of acres of roses, of poppies and of maize. Like their forefathers they lived there contentedly until restlessness, like a disease, crept upon them. Coming from the plains in the West, it spread its contagion over the Alps, the Carpathians and the Macedonian hills. The men mortgaged their homes, left their wives and children to gather the roses, the poppies and the maize, and took passage at Triest to gather dollars in America.

On landing, they were shipped West and farther West.