F

CHAMBERS.

CASTLE GARDEN.

ONE of the most memorable objects that arrest the attention of the European wanderer landing at New York, is the famous depot at Castle Garden. To this all emigrants must go, unless they are cabin passengers. Some do not like it, and complain that a republican government should imitate the bureaucratic inquisitiveness of the Old World. English people, whose pride is great though their fortunes are small, are often indignant at being placed in a semi-pauper category, upon reaching the land of freedom and equality. At first sight, it does look as though rich and poor were treated with painful distinctness; for cabin passengers are landed at the wharf of the Company's steamers, stewards and porters busily aiding the transport of their baggage; and officers bid them farewell with lifted caps and courteous phrases. Only when the last of these preferential persons has departed, does the steamer turn her head to the depôt where steerage passengers debark. There, like a herd, are they deposited upon the shore of the promised land, not free to go where they list, but detained to answer the queries of the Emigration Commissioners, and to be advised and directed by the officials of the bureau. No wonder many are impatient of the formalities of Castle Garden; but few complain when they come to know how much the institution is of advantage to the new-comer, and how indispensable it is to his welfare.

Castle Garden depôt was established in 1858, when government Commissioners were appointed to take surveillance of those landing at New York. The portentous influx of Irish people which followed the famine years of 1847-8 compelled attention. Thousands of poor ignorant creatures were shot like rubbish upon the quays of New York, to live, to die, to succeed, or to perish. The arrival of so much misery and helplessness was not reassuring to the Americans. Rude, semi-savage, hunger-bitten hordes did not promise increase of material and intellectual wealth for the United States; on the contrary, threatened

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to deteriorate its society. So, nothing was done to make the situation pleasurable, in order that the inflow of ignorant poverty might be checked. The consequence was that the degeneracy, which famine created in Ireland, was intensified by the sufferings endured in New York and its neighbourhood. Desperadoes of both sexes were engendered by the squalor, vice, and helplessness abounding. Thousands who might have risen in the scale of being in the Western wilds, sank into the condition of brute beasts in the slums of the city. They preyed upon those coming from Ireland and other European countries; and after despoiling them of their all, reduced some to desperadoes like themselves, and others to maddening poverty. In this way, a criminal class of a most alarming kind was created and fostered; a class which pillaged and demoralised at will.

At the same time, the conduct of those engaged in transporting emigrants from Europe to the United States was anything but humane, and often highly culpable. Ship-owners were eager to make the utmost out of the poor beings in the steerage; officers and sailors were often debased and heartless ruffians who victimised those at their mercy. Emigrant ships were at the pleasure of the winds; for steam was only applied to mailpackets. Often the voyage occupied a month. Sanitary and moral concerns were little considered; and the physical and ethical natures of those driven by stress of circumstances from their fatherland were not a little injured by their Atlantic experiences. Immorality and disease frequently consummated the ruin began by misfortune at home. Thus it followed that the new blood pouring into America was in constant process of pollution; and a race of evil-doers was being manufactured that boded ill for present and future generations.

The tone of the lower orders of New York was profoundly affected by the demoralisation that went on for years. Nowhere in the world are there more dangerous ruffians than those now haunting the 'shady' quarters of that city. They

are capable of any crime within the scope of trained wickedness; and their invention and audacity place them in the front rank of the malefactors of the age. Beside the ruffianly marauders, there are still more baleful enemies of society, who attack it through every avenue of trade and commerce. These people employ all the resources of civilisation to destroy civilisation. Sharpened by their age and surroundings to a point of acuteness that Europe knows noteducated, refined, and lustful of costly pleasures, they carry on a war with the law-abiding that knows no truce, that is softened by no consideration for sex or suffering. In short, the predatory spirit invades the domain of administration to an extent that has made New York a by-word

in the Old World and the New.

Of course it would be absurd to attribute all

the moral delinquencies of New York to the deceptions and plunderings inflicted upon emigrants thirty years ago. America had scoundrels high and low long before the period referred to; but the iniquities perpetrated during the decade of 1848-58 did infinite mischief. No doubt, too, many emigrants were prone to evil in their fatherland; and some were self-deported criminals; but, withal, evil can be developed, and was developed, until the Emigration Commissioners began their noble work at Castle Garden.

In 1858, the American government recognised the important truth that it stood in loco parentis to the alien children swelling its family. Unless they were set to useful and reproductive employments, they would devour society parasitically. In these endless multitudes coming from the East, lay an incalculable potentiality of wealth, if energies were rightly directed. If not, the immigrants were practically an army of invaders, capable of untold ́misdoing. Westward lay unpeopled lands; on the quays and streets of New York, the people; join them together, and the United States would become a splendid phenomenon among the nations of the earth. And so it came about that the bureau termed Castle Garden was established to protect immigrants from sharpers in New York and along the route they proposed to travel after leaving that city. They were furnished with reliable information as to means of transport, and the probabilities of employment in every state of the Union. Officials speaking every language and dialect of Europe were upon the staff of the Commissioners, in order that all strangers might be definitely instructed in the matters it behoved them to know. Facilities were given to employers for communicating with the immigrants, by which large numbers found occupation a few hours after landing. Particular care was taken of young and unprotected females. In short, all that officialism could do for poor strangers seeking a home in a distant foreign land was done. By degrees, the great services of the bureau came to be amply recognised throughout the United

States; and much of the prosperity, thrift, and moral advance of later years is distinctly traceable to the good work done at Castle Garden.

Necessarily, a large and increasing revenue was required for this labour of economical philanthropy. It was raised by charging the Companies one dollar per head upon the emigrants landed by the various ships and steamers. Many Protests were made by the Companies against what they, deemed an unwarrantable tax; but for years the protests were unheeded. Nor was that the only grievance the ship-owners complained of. In England, the government had made immense demands on behalf of the emigrants quitting its shores. The ill-treatment, the frauds, the crimes inflicted upon steerage passengers, had roused parliament to come to their protection, and the Board of Trade took a rigorous oversight of the traffic. Although much remains to be done, the voyage of to-day is a pleasure-trip compared with the horrors of past days. The food supplied is abundant, and fairly well cooked; and though multitudes are confined in a small space, the steerage is infinitely more comfortable than it was fifty years ago." Nowa-days too, the voyage is reduced to a maximum of ten days, with swifter passages of eight days

and even fewer.

The action of the British and American

governments on behalf of emigrants has been to the advantage of ship-owners. By compelling them to treat their passengers well, and to save them from the harpies of New York, the trade has attained its present astounding proportions. An Atlantic voyage was formerly a frightful ordeal; it is now a pleasant holiday trip; and York to Europe, where only dozens came in thousands of steerage passengers come from New former times. The immense fleets employed in the trade, and the handsome incomes they earn, prove how remunerative the passenger traffic has become.

The capitation charge upon emigrants has been reduced by the authorities to fifty cents; for at length the supreme legislature of the United Castle Garden was illegal. After much disputaStates admitted that the charge imposed at tion as to how the expense of the bureau was to be maintained, it seemed probable that it would be closed. In fact, the Emigration Commissioners had announced that Castle Garden would receive no more emigrants, and that each steam Company must discharge their steerage The cablepassengers upon their own wharfs. gram reporting this produced something like consternation in England; and loud demands were made by the newspapers that some arrangements should be come to, to save a repetition of the scenes of the previous generation.

By an extension and amendment of the United States Immigration Act, which came into force on the 1st of November, the government has taken control of all its intending citizens from must have a cubical space of one hundred feet the port of embarkation. Each steerage passenger

allotted to him or her between decks on steamers; and one hundred and ten cubic feet on sailingvessels. The roof of the deck must be six feet from the floor. A fine of fifty dollars will be imposed for any breach of these regulations; and

besides, the captain may be imprisoned for six months.

Each berth must be two feet wide and six feet long, and also divided from other berths. Two relatives or friends may occupy berths without divisions; but strangers must be kept apart. This space is greater than that hitherto allowed by many European Companies, and will prevent the overcrowding which has been so loudly complained of.

There must be two ventilators for each fifty passengers, one introducing fresh, and the other removing the vitiated air from the berths. Three meals of good food must be supplied each day; and each passenger allowed four quarts of

water.

The ship's company are forbidden to enter the emigrants' quarters under the penalty of one hundred dollars. Copies of this regulation are to be hung up in the steerage in the principal languages of Europe.

No 'runners' are permitted to board the vessel on arrival.

The fifty cents duty levied upon immigrants is to defray the cost of regulating the traffic, for caring for the new-comers, for relieving the distressed among them, and for the general purposes of the Act.

The collectors of customs are charged with its administration; and these will doubtless do their

duty.

Many scenes has the quaintly-ugly building on the Castle Garden witnessed before it became an immigrants' depôt. In it Lafayette was welcomed on his return to America in 1824 by the notables of the city. It was afterwards converted into a concert-hall, where Jenny Lind enchanted New-Yorkers with her nightingale notes. Upon its stage, too, Grisi, Mario, and other operatic grandees, played and sang. Its rumbling recesses have quaked at the thunder of Jullien's monstre orchestra. But none of its bygone scenes were so thrilling as many of those daily occurring now. The realities of life are far more wonderful than the most finished imaginings of romancers; and the visitor to Castle Garden can in an hour have any amount of proof.

Let us try to depict a few of the tableaux that now present themselves.

In a corner is seen a group that looks like the remnant of an operatic chorus, that has phantasmally returned to the abandoned theatre. Women with bright blue bodices and gleaming white linen, whose headgear blazes like a red fire, are speaking in hurried recitative to a knot of men, in long gray cloaks, slouched hats, and bandage-wrapped legs rising from sandalled feet. Their hair is long, moustaches carelessly curled, eyes glittering darkly, cheeks sallow and dirty. From time to time, one of the men bursts into the recitative with torrential speech, waving his cloak like a Roman senator, shrugging his pliant body with the most extravagant vermicular contortions. Then all join in a cadenced finale, gesticulate grandly, and at length subside into expectancy and silence. These people are lazzaroni from Naples, seeking in the New World something better than the hereditary beggardom of the Old. Soon a Castle Garden official comes up to them, and explains in their own patois what they must do and how they

must do. Railway tickets are given them; and they move off rejoicing, emitting a whirlwind of dulcet vowels.

As they pass from view, a strange little party of sandy-bearded, tangle-haired men, incredibly costumed and marvellously unclean, appear. With them are women, beautiful, draggled and unkempt though they be; and children looking like largeeyed cherubim, taken from an old Polish picturegallery. They are all profoundly subdued; their eyes meet one wistfully, deprecatingly. Their speech is brief and low-spoken, in what tongue few can tell. It sounds strange to an English ear. These poor souls seem like human fossils drawn from the deeps of Time, strangely incongruous in the bustling, alert, unheeding world of Castle Garden. While multitudes around them are waiting impatiently to get en route, they are meekly passive, contentedly ignored. Hundreds go, still they remain unperturbed. But their turn comes. A man approaches, speaks to the eldest of the group, who begins, in a humble, deprecating way, to tell his story. These people are Russian Jews, who have endured much, before persecution and despoilment forced them to fly for their lives. Hated, contemned, mocked, they have travelled the best part of half the world's diameter to this American land, seeking an abiding-place, and permission to labour and to live. They have not come with a company of their fellows, but are an isolated party, paying their own charges. By-and-by, they disappear with a guide.

His face is

Among a noisy crowd of poor Irish, is a family of six that arrest attention from their silence and appearance. Though of the same nationality as those about them, they keep apart. A patriarch of fourscore is seated upon a box. wan and weary, and it hurts one like a wound to note its expression. It tells of a man torn up from the foundations of a life grown rigid, and hurled, as by an earthquake, from the ancestral hearth into the mad clangour of intolerable scenes. He has evidently suffered much on board ship; but mental anguish and a yearning for repose afflict him more than physical pain. Beside him is a woman of middle age, evidently his daughter, for her features are his own. She is well dressed and even lady-like. Anxiety is in her restless eye, her quivering lip, and her unconscious stare. She hears not the chatter going on around; her thoughts are far away. A strong, stern-looking young man stands near her, taking notes of the scene with impatient disdain. He is the eldest son of the widowed mother, the prop and pioneer of his family, ruined by agrarian anarchy. Two young girls, his sisters, and a little boy of ten or eleven, are behind him, jaded with waiting, and too sorrowful to speak. The old man was a small Squire in the south of Ireland; he has been between the hammer and the anvil; for his sympathies have been with the poor, but as a landlord he has had to defend himself against the foes of property. His daughter's husband has been killed; and with a few score pounds, the family has fled to find a temporary home in America, until better times return.

In a quiet corner, a gentle, rosy matron is talking to a young Swedish peasant girl in her own language, and offering her good terms as a domestic servant. Not far away from them is

a bustling, loud-spoken, dogmatical lady, grandly attired. She is engaging a poorly clad Irish girl to serve in her mansion near Central Park. A few years ago, this fine lady herself sat in Castle Garden waiting to be hired. She was poorer than the girl beside her. She has lived a romance since then. In the ship which brought her from. Ireland was a groom, who made her acquaintance. He had a talent for betting, and New York furnished a field equal to his genius. He rose high and quickly; and after a time, gave up horses for stocks and shares, and became one of the great operators of the New York Exchange. His wife, this magnificently appointed lady, rose with him, and is now one of the powers' of the city. Who can say what the destiny of the girl she is hiring may be, when she is launched into the eventful life of the New World? She may marry a Silver King, a railway Colossus, a territorial Goliath, a dictator of the Corn or Cattle worlds; and as the wife of a powerful statesman, may mingle with the potentates of the Old World. She may become the mother of a President, whose fame shall thunder through history. Who can say what potentialities of intellectual and material command lie enwrapped in this poor girl, accepting service at fifteen dollars per month?

Castle Garden has been an enchanted vestibule to myriads, who have reached it in poverty, sorrow, and doubt, but who have thence started upon a path that led to wealth and power infinitely beyond their dreams. Indeed, it is chiefly those starting from the immigrants' depôt that attain the grandest successes the country affords. Those who reach America in a luxurious cabin berth, and who step ashore in a gentlemanly way at the private wharf of the steam-ship owner, do not often make a permanently brilliant figure in society. The voyage to them has been a floating picnic; exquisite food, exhilarating drinks, jovial companionship, have made the whimsical, testy Atlantic not only endurable, but enjoyable, Pampered and self-satisfied, the fortune-seeker greets his adopted land, assured that such a thoroughly deserving fellow has only to ask in order to have. Luck may be his, but also bad luck. In a few months, our deserving sybarite may be working in a composite gang of negroes, Dutchmen, Irish peasants, and whisky-made madmen, upon the track of a far-West rail

way.

The stern discipline of the steerage, the entrée furnished by Castle Garden, the iron compulsions of poverty, are real preparatives for fortune in a country where work is all in all. Alas! for the man who is superfine and disdainful of small beginnings; Castle Garden promises little delight to him. To the willing and the cheerful, and particularly to the adaptive, it opens out a prospect more promising, perhaps, than any other point of debarkation in the world. As systematic settlement progresses in America, the advantages of the bureau are enlarged; and a time may come when all who are received at Castle Garden will find situations through its instrumentality. As it is, the hazards and anxieties of emigration have been immensely reduced since the Commissioners began their humane work; and the extraordinary exodus from Europe which has marked the past two years, is in no small degree, owing to the

part that Castle Garden has played in the protection and economical distribution of the millions that have been cared for during the past twentyfive years of its existence.

VALENTINE STRANGE

A STORY OF THE PRIMROSE WAY.

CHAPTER XLIX.-VAL STRANGE MEETS HIS OLD FRIEND AND ENEMY AT TIMES, AND AFTER ALL THERE IS ON EACH SIDE A SOFTENED AND TENDER ESTEEM.

You remember in the famous wooing of Duncan Gray, the sly Scottish brevity of humour with which the narrator sets forth the final causes which brought the young people together. Gerard, like Duncan, was 'a lad of grace;' but Milly's case was by no means piteous to look at. She seemed, on the contrary, to be very fairly happy; she was always good-tempered and cheerful; she made the old house bright with a sweet equable brightness. Gerard began to bethink himself What would it look like if she left it? His mother's revelation hung in his mind a good deal; he admitted that Milly would make an ideal wife for any man happy enough to win her. Yet there was no room in his heart for any new love. He watched her as she tended his father, and warmed the old man's last dim years with a gentle and untiring love, like that of a good daughter. He watched her as she cheered his mother, and saw in her the only sunshine the sombre house held within it in these dull gray days. He thought highly of her, and regarded her with what he felt as a deep brotherly affection, but no more. J

Whilst things were at this pass, the new owner of the Grange, a handsome young bachelor, well provided with the good things of life, began to make advances, and was remarkably well received by Mrs Lumby. Gerard's mother was one of those curiously unselfish women who find delight in others' happiness, and make no schemes for their own, and who are generally very happy in despite of fortune, perhaps because of their own unselfishness. Gerard had liked the new neighbour well enough, to begin with; and though he was slower to make friendships now than he had ever been, he manifested an unusual liking for Mr Graham's society. But somehow-construe me this who will-he began suddenly to discern some wretched affectations in the man's manner; his whiskers offended him for one thing, and he hated to see a man part his hair in the middle. and wear an eyeglass. Curiously enough, the birth of these small mislikings was contempora neous with a seeming of desire on Mr Graham's part to be a good deal at Lumby Hall and to inveigle Milly into private talk, and to waylay her in a chance manner in her drives, walks, and visits. A little coolness sprang up between Gerard and the new acquaintance, and once or twice Gerard greeted the casual mention of his name with chill ridicule of his smile, which was perhaps a little too frequent, or of his eyeglass, which was somewhat too transparently in the young gentleman's way. Mrs Lumby having favoured his visits, and clearly discerned their object, was a little piqued,