The path of discovery, although narrowed through research, has not yet been entirely exhausted; for "fresh fields and pastures new," as hopeful as those about which Milton rhapsodised and as plenteously flowing with typical milk and honey as the promised land of the Israelites, are being continually opened up and offered to the oppressed and pauperised populations of Europe.

Thus, the tide of emigration, swelled from the tiny ocean-drop which marked its first inception more than three hundred years ago to its present torrentine proportions and bearing away frequently entire nationalities on its bosom, still flows from the east to the west, tracing the progress of civilisation from its Alpha to its Omega, as steadily as when it originally began--aye, and as it will continue to flow on, until the entire habitable globe shall be peopled as with one family by the intermixture and association of alien races! It is curious how this migratory spirit has permeated through the odd corners of the old world, leading the natives of different countries to flock like sheep to every freshly spoken of colony; and how, by such means, Englishmen, Celts, Germans, French, Hollanders, Italians, Norsemen, Africans, as well as the "Heathen Chinee," are scattered in a mixed mass over the whole face of the earth now-a-days, as widely as the descendants of Noah were dispersed from the plain of Shinar after their unsuccessful attempt at building the tower of Babel--the result being, that some of the highest types of advancement are at present to be found where, but a few years back, uncultivated savages, as rude but perhaps not quite so inquisitive as the late Bishop Colenso's apocryphal Zulu, were the sole existing evidences of latent humanity! Fritz, however, was not proceeding to any of these newly colonised countries.

Like the majority of other Germans who had emigrated before him, he was aiming for "the States," where, according to the popular idea in Europe, money can be had for nothing in the shape of any expenditure of labour, time, or trouble.

Really, the ne'er-do-well and shiftless seem to regard America as a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground for the idle, the lazy, and the dissolute--although, mind you, Fritz was none of these, having made up his mind to work as hard in the New World as he would have been forced to do in the Old for the fortune he could not win there, and which he had been forced to turn his back on.
Bremerhaven to Southampton; Southampton to Sandy Hook, as he had told his mother; and, in ten days altogether, the ocean steamer he travelled in, one of the North German line, had landed him safely in New York.
Seven years before, when he would have reached the "Empire City" during the height of the Secession War, he might have sold himself to a "bounty jumper," as the enlisting agents of the northern army were termed, for a nice little sum in "greenback" dollars; now, he found sharpers, or "confidence men," ready to "sell" him in a similar way--only, that the former rogues would have been satisfied with nothing less than his body and life, as an emigrant recruit for Grant or Sherman's force; while the present set cared but for his cash, seeking the same with ravenous maw almost as soon as he had landed at Castle Garden! Fritz had taken a steerage passage, so as to save money; and, being dressed in shabby clothes, in keeping with his third-class ticket, the loafers about the Battery, at the end of Manhattan Island, on which the town of New York is built, thought he was merely an ignorant German peasant whom they might easily impose on.

They, however, soon found that he had not been campaigning six months for nothing, and so their efforts at getting him to part with the little capital he had were pretty well thrown away--especially as Fritz, in his anxiety to find some work to do at once, did not "let the grass grow under his feet," but proceeded up Broadway instead of wasting his time by lounging in the vicinity of the emigrant depot, as the majority of his countrymen generally do, apparently in the expectation that employment will come in search of them.
Still, he soon discovered that New York was overstocked with just the species of labour he was able to supply.
Of course, if he had been at the pitch of desperation, he might have found a job of some sort to his hand; but, writing and speaking English and French fluently in addition to his native tongue, besides being a good correspondent and book-keeper, he did not feel disposed to throw away his talents on mere manual labour.