ts, to achieve a position in which he could
hope to build up a home for the dear ones left behind at Lubeck; and
there would not be much chance of his accomplishing this by engaging
himself out as a day labourer--to assist some skilled carpenter or
bricklayer--which was the only work offered him.

"No, sir; nary an opening here!" was the constant reply he met with at
every merchant's office he entered from Wall Street upwards along
Broadway until he came to Canal Street; when, finding the shops, or
"stores" as the Americans call them, going more in the "dry goods" or
haberdashery line, he wended his way back again "down town,"
investigating the various establishments lying between the main
thoroughfare and the North and East rivers, hoping to find a situation
vacant in one of the shipping houses thereabouts.

But, "No, sir; all filled up, I guess," was still the stereotyped
response to his applications, with much emphasis on the "sir"--the
majority of the Manhattanese uttering this word, as Fritz thought, in a
highly indignant tone, although, as he discovered later on, this was the
general pronunciation adopted throughout the States.

"I suppose," he said to one gentleman he asked, and who was, it seemed
to Fritz, the master, or "boss," of the establishment, from the fact of
his lounging back in a rocking chair contiguous to his desk, and
balancing his feet instead of his hands on the latter,--"I suppose it's
because I can give no references to former employers here, that all the
men I speak to invariably decline my services?"

"No, sirree; I reckon not," was the reply. "Guess we don't care a cuss
where you come from. We take a man as we find him, for just what he is
worth, without minding what he might have been in the old country, or
bothering other folks for his ka-racter, you bet! I reckon, mister,
you'd better start right away out West if you want work. Book-keepers
and sich-like are played out haar; we're filled up to bustin' with 'em,
I guess!"

It was good advice probably; but, still, Fritz did not care to act upon
it. Having been accustomed all his life to the shipping trade, he
wished to find some opening in that special branch of business; and, if
he went inland to Chicago or elsewhere, he thought, he would be
abandoning his chances for securing the very sort of work he preferred
to have. Besides, going away from the neighbourhood of ships and quays
and the sea would be like cutting adrift every ol