We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE FISHERMAID OF BALLYDAVID
29
KATHLEEN PREPARES TO GO TO AMERICA
kept up her spirits until the boat steamed into New York harbor. Then she began to experience the feelings of a stranger in a strange land. The huge buildings impressed her with her own insignificance. She was afraid of this big city before she had set foot in it. When the immigrants swarmed off the boat at the Battery, she went as a unit in the crowd, too dazed and crushed by the immensity of things and by the roar of the traffic to know or care where she was drifting. Aimlessly she followed first one group, then another, until they divided up and dispersed. She was alone, wandering stupidly from street to street, not even thinking to ask the passers-by for Henry's address. The day waned and still she wandered on. Here and there, she had come upon little parks, where she had rested on the benches for a while. Then on she would go as if driven by a penancedevising demon. When darkness had settled down upon the streets and the traffic had almost ceased, she sank
upon a stoop in utter weariness of mind and body.
Down the street came Officer Donlin, casting a wary eye about as he nonchalantly twirled his night-stick. He espied the huddled figure on the step. He grasped a shoulder and shook the figure, expecting to arouse a drunken prowler. The face that Kathleen raised to his surprised him, and her first startled query tickled him, for the rich brogue of it was of his own erstwhile land.
"So ye 're jist from the Ould Sod, are ye?" he chuckled delightedly. "An' ye 're lost in the big town, an' ye have no money an' no friends ?"
"Yis, indade, Oi have a frind that Oi've come over to foind. But Oi wuz that put out of me head by the noise an' the rushin' about that Oi clane forgot to ask annybody about him. His name's Henry Rhodes."
"Well," said" the good-hearted officer, "the best thing ye can do now is to come along with me to my home. We'll go to the station-house first,