[16]
[Sidenote: Numbered and Lettered]
Your answers proving satisfactory to the transportation agents, a card
is furnished you, containing your name, the letter of the group of
thirty to which you are assigned, and your group number. Thus you
become, for the time being, No. 27 of group E. You are cautioned to keep
this card in sight, as a ready means of identification.
[Sidenote: The Voyage]
Partings over, you enter upon the strange and unforgetable experiences
of ten days or more in the necessarily cramped quarters of the
steerage--experiences of a kind that do not invite repetition.
Homesickness and seasickness form a trying combination, to say nothing
of the discomforts of a mixed company and enforced companionship.
[Sidenote: First Experiences in the New World]
Your first American experience befalls you when the steamship anchors at
quarantine inside Sandy Hook, and the United States inspection officers
come on board to hunt for infectious or contagious diseases--cholera,
smallpox, typhus fever, yellow fever, or plague. No outbreak of any of
these has marked the voyage, fortunately for you, and there is no long
delay. Slowly the great vessel pushes its way up the harbor and the
North River, passing the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, that
beacon which all incomers are enjoined to see as the symbol of the new
liberty they hope to enjoy.
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