Your United States | Page 5

then to the turbines themselves--insignificant little things,
with no swagger of huge crank and piston, disappointing little things
that developed as much as one-third of the horse-power required for all
the electricity of New York.
And then, lastly, when I had supposed myself to be at the rock-bottom
of the steamer, I had been instructed to descend in earnest, and I went
down and down steel ladders, and emerged into an enormous, an
incredible cavern, where a hundred and ninety gigantic furnaces were
being fed every ten minutes by hundreds of tiny black dolls called
firemen. I, too, was a doll as I looked up at the high white-hot mouth of
a furnace and along the endless vista of mouths.... Imagine hell with the
addition of electric light, and you have it!... And up-stairs, far above on
the surface of the water, confectioners were making fancy cakes, and
the elevator-boy was doing his work!... Yes, the inferno was the most
thrilling part of the ship; and no other part of the ship could hold a
candle to it. And I remained of this conviction even when I sat in the
captain's own room, smoking his august cigars and turning over his
books. I no longer thought, "Every revolution of the propellers brings
me nearer to that shore." I thought, "Every shovelful flung into those

white-hot mouths brings me nearer."
* * * * *
It is an absolute fact that, four hours before we could hope to disembark,
ladies in mantles and shore hats (seeming fantastic and enormous after
the sobriety of ship attire), and gentlemen in shore hats and dark
overcoats, were standing in attitudes of expectancy in the saloon-hall,
holding wraps and small bags: some of their faces had never been seen
till then in the public resorts of the ship. Excitement will indeed take
strange forms. For myself, although I was on the threshold of the
greatest adventure of my life, I was unaware of being excited--I had not
even "smelled" land, to say nothing of having seen it--until, when it
was quite dark, I descried a queerly arranged group of different-colored
lights in the distance--yellow, red, green, and what not. My thoughts
ran instantly to Coney Island. I knew that Coney was an island, and that
it was a place where people had to be attracted and distracted somehow,
and I decided that these illuminations were a device of the
pleasure-mongers of Coney. And when the ship began to salute these
illuminations with answering flares I thought the captain was a rather
good-natured man to consent thus to amuse the populace. But when we
slowed, our propellers covering the calm sea with acres of foam, and
the whole entire illuminations began to approach us in a body, I
perceived that my Coney Island was merely another craft, but a very
important and official craft. An extremely small boat soon detached
itself from this pyrotechnical craft and came with a most extraordinary
leisureness toward a white square of light that had somehow broken
forth in the blackness of our side. And looking down from the topmost
deck, I saw, far below, the tiny boat maneuver on the glinting wave into
the reflection of our electricity and three mysterious men climb up from
her and disappear into us. Then it was that I grew really excited,
uncomfortably excited. The United States had stretched out a tentacle.
In no time at all, as it seemed, another and more formidable tentacle
had folded round me--in the shape of two interviewers. (How these
men had got on board--and how my own particular friend had got on
board--I knew not, for we were yet far from quay-side.) I had been

hearing all my life about the sublime American institution of the
interview. I had been warned by Americans of its piquant dangers. And
here I was suddenly up against it! Beneath a casual and jaunty exterior,
I trembled. I wanted to sit, but dared not. They stood; I stood. These
two men, however, were adepts. They had the better qualities of
American dentists. Obviously they spent their lives in meeting
notorieties on inbound steamers, and made naught of it. They were
middle-aged, disillusioned, tepidly polite, conscientious, and rapid.
They knew precisely what they wanted and how to get it. Having got it,
they raised their hats and went. Their printed stories were brief, quite
unpretentious, and inoffensive--though one of them did let out that the
most salient part of me was my teeth, and the other did assert that I
behaved like a school-boy. (Doubtless the result of timidity trying to be
dignified--this alleged school-boyishness!)
I liked these men. But they gave me an incomplete idea of the race of
interviewers in the United States. There is a variety of interviewers
very different from