Читать книгу In an Unknown Prison Land. An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with jottings out and home онлайн

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From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Maine to Mexico, you simply can’t get away from it. In other countries people talk about money,—generally and incidentally about pounds, or francs, or marks, or pesetas,—but in America it is dollars first, last, and all the time.

Where an Englishman would say a man was keen on making money, an American would say “he’s out for dollars.” On this side we speak of making a fortune, over there it’s “making a pile,”—of dollars understood,—and so on.

But there is another sense in which the pungent phrase is true. I am not going to commit myself to the assertion that everything in the States is a dollar, because there are many things which cost more than a dollar. There are also some—a few—which cost less, such as newspapers and tramcar tickets, but, as a rule, when you put your hand into your pocket a dollar comes out—often several—and you don’t have much change.

Thus, when I had released my baggage from the lax grip of the United States Customs, I took a carriage ticket at the desk. Three dollars. In London the fare from the station to the hotel would have been about half a crown. The gentleman who put my luggage up received a quarter. If I had offered him less he would probably have declined it and asked me, with scathing irony, to come and have a drink at his expense.