Making an American Citizen

A husband and wife, belonging to the most ignorant and lowest class of peasantry, emigrate to the United States. On landing in New York, the husband loads a huge bundle on back of his wife, and carrying nothing but a rough walking-stick himself, starts to pass through the Battery, walking behind his wife. Soon a crowd gathers around them, some laughing, jeering, others indignant and threatening, until suddenly a huge American pushes his way through the crowd, stops the wife, takes the bundle off her back, lays his hand on the shoulder of the husband, bending him nearly double, picks up the bundle, places it on his back, and orders him to march on. This is the husband's first lesson in Americanism. Other lessons follow, in which the husband is taught, with an emphasis he cannot doubt, American ways and manners, until after he has been arrested and sent to jail for beating his wife, he becomes thoroughly convinced that old world methods will not do in this strange new world and decides to become an American in spirit and in manners.