| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Color of a Great City
Author: Dreiser, Theodore
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Color of a Great City" ***
THE COLOR OF A GREAT CITY
BOOKS BY
THEODORE DREISER
SISTER CARRIE
JENNIE GERHARDT
THE FINANCIER
THE TITAN
THE GENIUS
A TRAVELER AT FORTY
A HOOSIER HOLIDAY
PLAYS OF THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL
THE HAND OF THE POTTER
FREE AND OTHER STORIES
TWELVE MEN
HEY RUB-A-DUB-DUB
A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF
THE COLOR OF A GREAT CITY
[Illustration: The City of My Dreams]
THE COLOR OF
A GREAT CITY
THEODORE DREISER
_Illustrations by_
C. B. FALLS
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1923, by_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
First Printing, December, 1923
Second Printing, May, 1924
FOREWORD
My only excuse for offering these very brief pictures of the City of
New York as it was between 1900 and 1914 or ’15, or thereabout, is
that they are of the very substance of the city I knew in my early
adventurings in it. Also, and more particularly, they represent in
part, at least, certain phases which at that time most arrested and
appealed to me, and which now are fast vanishing or are no more. I
refer more particularly to such studies as _The Bread-line_, _The
Push-cart Man_, _The Toilers of the Tenements_, _Christmas in the
Tenements_, _Whence the Song_, and _The Love Affairs of Little Italy_.
For, to begin with, the city, as I see it, was more varied and
arresting and, after its fashion, poetic and even idealistic then than
it is now. It offered, if I may venture the opinion, greater social
and financial contrasts than it does now: the splendor of the purely
social Fifth Avenue of the last decade of the last century and the
first decade of this, for instance, as opposed to the purely commercial
area that now bears that name; the sparklingly personality-dotted Wall
Street of 1890–1910 as contrasted with the commonplace and almost bread
and butter world that it is to-day. (There were argonauts then.) The
astounding areas of poverty and of beggary even,--I refer to the east
side and the Bowery of that period--unrelieved as they were by civic
betterment and social service ventures of all kinds, as contrasted with
the beschooled and beserviced east side of to-day. Who recalls Steve
Brodies, McGurks, Doyers Street and “Chuck” Connors?
The city is larger. It has, if you will, more amazing architectural
features. But has it as vivid and moving social contrasts,--as hectic
and poignant and disturbing mental and social aspirations as it had
then? I cannot see that it has. Rather, as it seems to me, it is duller
because less differentiated. There are millions and millions but what
do they do? Tramp aimlessly, for the most part, here and there in
shoals, to see a ball game, a football game, a parade, a prize-fight,
a civic betterment or automobile exhibition or to dance or dine in a
hall that holds a thousand. But of that old zest that seemed to find
something secret and thrilling in a thousand nooks and corners of the
old city, its Bowery, its waterfront, its rialto, its outlying resorts,
not a trace. One cannot even persuade the younger generation, that
never even knew the old city, to admit that they feel a tang of living
equivalent to what they imagined once was. The truth is that it is not
here. It has vanished--along with the generation that felt it.
The pictures that I offer here, however, are not, I am compelled
to admit, of that more distinguished and vibrant crust, which my
introduction so far would imply. Indeed they are the very antithesis,
I think, of all that glitter and glister that made the social life
of that day so superior. Its shadow, if you will, its reverse face.
For being very much alone at the time, and having of necessity, as
the situation stood, ample hours in which to wander here and there,
without, however, sufficient financial means to divert myself in any
other way, I was given for the most part to rambling in what to me
were the strangest and most peculiar and most interesting areas I
could find as contrasted with those of great wealth and to speculating
at length upon the phases and the forces of life I then found so
lavishly spread before me. The splendor of the, to me, new dynamic,
new-world metropolis! Its romance, its enthusiasm, its illusions, its
difficulties! The immense crowds everywhere--upon Manhattan Island,
at least. The beautiful rivers and the bay with its world of shipping
that washed its shores. Indeed, I was never weary of walking and
contemplating the great streets, not only Fifth Avenue and Broadway,
but the meaner ones also, such as the Bowery, Third Avenue, Second
Avenue, Elizabeth Street in the lower Italian section and East
Broadway. And at that time even (1894) that very different and most
radically foreign plexus, known as the East Side, already stretched
from Chatham Square and even farther south--Brooklyn Bridge--north to
Fourteenth Street. For want of bridges and subways the city was not, as
yet, so far-flung but for that reason more concentrated and almost as
congested.
Yet before I was fifteen years in the city, all of the additional
bridges, other than Brooklyn Bridge which was here when I came and
which so completely served to change New York from the thing it was
then to what it is now, were already in place--Manhattan, Williamsburg,
Queens Borough Bridges. And the subways had been built, at least in
part. But before then, if anything, the great island, as I have said,
was even more compact of varied and foreign groups, and one had only
to wander casually and not at any great length to come upon the Irish
in the lower East and West Sides; the Syrians in Washington Street--a
great mass of them; the Greeks around 26th, 27th and 28th Streets on
the West Side; the Italians around Mulberry Bend; the Bohemians in East
67th Street, and the Sicilians in East 116th Street and thereabouts.
The Jews were still chiefly on the East Side.
Being fascinated by these varying nationalities, and their
neighborhoods, I was given for the first year or two of my stay here
to wandering among them, as well as along and through the various
parks, the waterfronts and the Bowery, and thinking, thinking, thinking
on this welter of life and the difficulties and the strangeness of
it. The veritable tides of people that were forever moving here--so
different to the Middle-West cities I had known. And the odd, or at
least different, devices and trades by which they made their way--the
small shops, trades, tricks even. For one thing, I was often given to
wondering how so many people could manage to subsist in New York by
grinding hand organs alone, or shining shoes or selling newspapers or
peanuts, or fruits or vegetables from a small stand or cart.
And the veritable shoals and worlds, even, of beggars and bums and
idlers and crooks in the Bowery and elsewhere. Indeed I was more or
less dumbfounded by the numerical force of these and the far cry it
was from them to the mansions in Fifth Avenue, the great shops in
Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, the world famous banking houses
and personalities in Wall Street, the comfortable cliff-dwellers who
occupied the hotels and apartment houses of the upper West Side and
along Broadway. For being young and inexperienced and penniless, these
economic differences had more significance for me then than they have
since been able to maintain. Yet always and primarily fascinated by
the problem of life itself, the riddle of its origin, the difficulties
seemingly attending its maintenance everywhere, such a polyglot city
as this was, was not only an economic problem, but a strange and
mysterious picture, and I was never weary of spying out how the other
fellow lived and how he made his way. And yet how many years it was,
really, after I arrived here, quite all of ten, before it ever occurred
to me that apart from the novel or short story, these particular scenes
and my own cogitations in connection might possess merit as pictures.
And so it was that not before 1904--ten years later, really--that I
was so much as troubled to sketch a single impression of all that I
had seen and then only at the request of a Sunday editor of a New York
newspaper who was short of “small local stuff” to fill in between
his more lurid features. And even at that, not more than seven or
eight of all that are here assembled were at that time even roughly
sketched,--_The Bowery Mission_, _The Waterfront_, _The Cradle of
Tears_, _The Track Walker_, _The Realization of an Ideal_, _The Log of
a Harbor Pilot_. Later, however, in 1908 and ’09, finding space in a
magazine of my own--_The Bohemian_--as well as one conducted by Senator
Watson of Georgia, and bethinking me of all I had seen and how truly
wonderful and colorful it really was, I began to try to do more of
them, and at that time wrote at least seven or eight more--_The Flight
of Pigeons_, _Six O’clock_, _The Wonder of Water_, _The Men in the
Storm_, and _The Men in the Dark_. The exact titles of all, apart from
these, I have forgotten.
Still later, after the opening of the World War, and because I was
noting how swiftly and steadily the city was changing and old landmarks
and conditions were being done away with, I thought it worth while to
bring together, not only all the scenes I had previously published or
sketched, but to add some others which from time to time I had begun
but never finished. Among these at that time were _The Fire_, _Hell’s
Kitchen_, _A Wayplace of the Fallen_, _The Man on the Bench_. And
then, several years ago, having in the meanwhile once more laid aside
the material to the advantage of other matters, I decided that it was
still worth while. And getting them all out and casting aside those I
no longer cared for, and rewriting others of which I approved, together
with new pictures of old things I had seen, i.e., _Bums_, _The Michael
J. Powers Association_, _A Vanished Summer Resort_, _The Push-cart
Man_, _The Sandwich Man_, _Characters_, _The Men in the Snow_, _The
City Awakes_--I finally evolved the present volume. But throughout all
these latest additions I sought only to recapture the flavor and the
color of that older day--nothing more. If they are anything, they are
mere representations of the moods that governed me at the time that I
had observed this material at first hand--not as I know the city to be
now.
In certain of these pictures, as will be seen, reference is made to
wages, hours and working and living conditions not now holding, or
at least not to the same severe degree. This is especially true of
such presentations as _The Men in the Dark_, _The Men in the Storm_,
_The Men in the Snow_, _Six O’clock_, _The Bread-line_, (long since
abolished), _The Toilers of the Tenements_, and _Christmas in the
Tenements_. Yet since they were decidedly true of that particular
period, I prefer to leave them as originally written. They bear, I
believe, the stamp of their hour.
THEODORE DREISER.
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD ix
THE CITY OF MY DREAMS 1
THE CITY AWAKES 5
THE WATERFRONT 9
THE LOG OF A HARBOR PILOT 14
BUMS 34
THE MICHAEL J. POWERS ASSOCIATION 44
THE FIRE 56
THE CAR YARD 68
THE FLIGHT OF PIGEONS 74
ON BEING POOR 77
SIX O’CLOCK 81
THE TOILERS OF THE TENEMENTS 85
THE END OF A VACATION 100
THE TRACK WALKER 104
THE REALIZATION OF AN IDEAL 108
THE PUSHCART MAN 112
A VANISHED SEASIDE RESORT 119
THE BREAD-LINE 129
OUR RED SLAYER 133
WHENCE THE SONG 138
CHARACTERS 156
THE BEAUTY OF LIFE 170
A WAYPLACE OF THE FALLEN 173
HELL’S KITCHEN 184
A CERTAIN OIL REFINERY 200
THE BOWERY MISSION 207
THE WONDER OF THE WATER 216
THE MAN ON THE BENCH 219
THE MEN IN THE DARK 224
THE MEN IN THE STORM 230
THE MEN IN THE SNOW 233
THE FRESHNESS OF THE UNIVERSE 238
THE CRADLE OF TEARS 241
WHEN THE SAILS ARE FURLED 244
THE SANDWICH MAN 260
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITTLE ITALY 267
CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS 275
THE RIVERS OF THE NAMELESS DEAD 284
ILLUSTRATIONS
The City of My Dreams _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
The City Awakes 6
The Waterfront 12
The Michael J. Powers Association 48
The Fire 58
The Car Yard 70
The Flight of Pigeons 74
Being Poor 78
Six O’clock 82
Toilers of the Tenements 88
The Close of Summer 100
The Realization of an Ideal 108
The Pushcart Man 114
Whence the Song 142
A Character 160
The Beauty of Life 170
A Wayplace of the Fallen 174
Hell’s Kitchen 186
An Oil Refinery 204
The Bowery Mission 210
The Wonder of the Water 216
The Man on the Bench 220
The Men in the Dark 226
The Men in the Storm 230
The Men in the Snow 234
The Freshness of the Universe 238
The Cradle of Tears 241
Sailors’ Snug Harbor 250
The Sandwich Man 264
A Love Affair in Little Italy 270
Christmas in the Tenements 278
THE COLOR OF A GREAT CITY
THE CITY OF MY DREAMS
It was silent, the city of my dreams, marble and serene, due perhaps
to the fact that in reality I knew nothing of crowds, poverty, the
winds and storms of the inadequate that blow like dust along the paths
of life. It was an amazing city, so far-flung, so beautiful, so dead.
There were tracks of iron stalking through the air, and streets that
were as cañons, and stairways that mounted in vast flights to noble
plazas, and steps that led down into deep places where were, strangely
enough, underworld silences. And there were parks and flowers and
rivers. And then, after twenty years, here it stood, as amazing almost
as my dream, save that in the waking the flush of life was over it. It
possessed the tang of contests and dreams and enthusiasms and delights
and terrors and despairs. Through its ways and cañons and open spaces
and underground passages were running, seething, sparkling, darkling, a
mass of beings such as my dream-city never knew.
The thing that interested me then as now about New York--as indeed
about any great city, but more definitely New York because it was
and is so preponderantly large--was the sharp, and at the same time
immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the
strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant.
This, perhaps, was more by reason of numbers and opportunity than
anything else, for of course humanity is much the same everywhere. But
the number from which to choose was so great here that the strong, or
those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so
very, very weak--and so very, very many.
I once knew a poor, half-demented, and very much shriveled little
seamstress who occupied a tiny hall-bedroom in a side-street
rooming-house, cooked her meals on a small alcohol stove set on a
bureau, and who had about space enough outside of this to take three
good steps either way.
“I would rather live in my hall-bedroom in New York than in any
fifteen-room house in the country that I ever saw,” she commented
once, and her poor little colorless eyes held more of sparkle and snap
in them than I ever saw there, before or after. She was wont to add
to her sewing income by reading fortunes in cards and tea-leaves and
coffee-grounds, telling of love and prosperity to scores as lowly as
herself, who would never see either. The color and noise and splendor
of the city as a spectacle was sufficient to pay her for all her ills.
And have I not felt the glamour of it myself? And do I not still?
Broadway, at Forty-second Street, on those selfsame spring evenings
when the city is crowded with an idle, sightseeing cloud of Westerners;
when the doors of all shops are open, the windows of nearly all
restaurants wide to the gaze of the idlest passer-by. Here is the
great city, and it is lush and dreamy. A May or June moon will be
hanging like a burnished silver disc between the high walls aloft. A
hundred, a thousand electric signs will blink and wink. And the floods
of citizens and visitors in summer clothes and with gay hats; the
street cars jouncing their endless carloads on indifferent errands;
the taxis and private cars fluttering about like jeweled flies. The
very gasoline contributes a distinct perfume. Life bubbles, sparkles;
chatters gay, incoherent stuff. Such is Broadway.
And then Fifth Avenue, that singing, crystal street, on a shopping
afternoon, winter, summer, spring or fall. What tells you as sharply of
spring when, its windows crowded with delicate effronteries of silks
and gay nothings of all description, it greets you in January, February
and March? And how as early as November again, it sings of Palm Beach
and Newport and the lesser or greater joys of the tropics and the
warmer seas. And in September, how the haughty display of furs and
rugs, in this same avenue, and costumes de luxe for ball and dinner,
cry out of snows and blizzards, when you are scarcely ten days back
from mountain or seaside. One might think, from the picture presented
and the residences which line the upper section, that all the world was
inordinately prosperous and exclusive and happy. And yet, if you but
knew the tawdry underbrush of society, the tangle and mat of futile
growth between the tall trees of success, the shabby chambers crowded
with aspirants and climbers, the immense mansions barren of a single
social affair, perfect and silent!
I often think of the vast mass of underlings, boys and girls, who,
with nothing but their youth and their ambitions to commend them, are
daily and hourly setting their faces New Yorkward, reconnoitering the
city for what it may hold in the shape of wealth or fame, or, if not
that, position and comfort in the future; and what, if anything, they
will reap. Ah, their young eyes drinking in its promise! And then,
again, I think of all the powerful or semi-powerful men and women
throughout the world, toiling at one task or another--a store, a mine,
a bank, a profession--somewhere outside of New York, whose one ambition
is to reach the place where their wealth will permit them to enter and
remain in New York, dominant above the mass, luxuriating in what they
consider luxury.
The illusion of it, the hypnosis deep and moving that it is! How the
strong and the weak, the wise and the fools, the greedy of heart and of
eye, seek the nepenthe, the Lethe, of its something hugeness. I always
marvel at those who are willing, seemingly, to pay any price--_the_
price, whatever it may be--for one sip of this poison cup. What a
stinging, quivering zest they display. How beauty is willing to sell
its bloom, virtue its last rag, strength an almost usurious portion of
that which it controls, youth its very best years, its hope or dream
of fame, fame and power their dignity and presence, age its weary
hours, to secure but a minor part of all this, a taste of its vibrating
presence and the picture that it makes. Can you not hear them almost,
singing its praises?
THE CITY AWAKES
Have you ever arisen at dawn or earlier in New York and watched the
outpouring in the meaner side-streets or avenues? It is a wondrous
thing. It seems to have so little to do with the later, showier,
brisker life of the day, and yet it has so very much. It is in the
main so drab or shabby-smart at best, poor copies of what you see done
more efficiently later in the day. Typewriter girls in almost stage or
society costumes entering shabby offices; boys and men made up to look
like actors and millionaires turning into the humblest institutions,
where they are clerks or managers. These might be called the machinery
of the city, after the elevators and street cars and wagons are
excluded, the implements by which things are made to go.
Take your place on Williamsburg Bridge some morning, for instance, at
say three or four o’clock, and watch the long, the quite unbroken line
of Jews trundling pushcarts eastward to the great Wallabout Market over
the bridge. A procession out of Assyria or Egypt or Chaldea, you might
suppose, Biblical in quality; or, better yet, a huge chorus in some
operatic dawn scene laid in Paris or Petrograd or here. A vast, silent
mass it is, marching to the music of necessity. They are so grimy, so
mechanistic, so elemental in their movements and needs. And later on
you will find them seated or standing, with their little charcoal
buckets or braziers to warm their hands and feet, in those gusty, icy
streets of the East Side in winter, or coatless and almost shirtless
in hot weather, open-mouthed for want of air. And they are New York,
too--Bucharest and Lemberg and Odessa come to the Bowery, and adding
rich, dark, colorful threads to the rug or tapestry which is New York.
Since these are but a portion, think of those other masses that come
from the surrounding territory, north, south, east and west. The
ferries--have you ever observed them in the morning? Or the bridges,
railway terminals, and every elevated and subway exit?
Already at six and six-thirty in the morning they have begun to
trickle small streams of human beings Manhattan or cityward, and by
seven and seven-fifteen these streams have become sizable affairs.
By seven-thirty and eight they have changed into heavy, turbulent
rivers, and by eight-fifteen and eight-thirty and nine they are raging
torrents, no less. They overflow all the streets and avenues and every
available means of conveyance. They are pouring into all available
doorways, shops, factories, office-buildings--those huge affairs
towering so significantly above them. Here they stay all day long,
causing those great hives and their adjacent streets to flush with a
softness of color not indigenous to them, and then at night, between
five and six, they are going again, pouring forth over the bridges
and through the subways and across the ferries and out on the trains,
until the last drop of them appears to have been exuded, and they
are pocketed in some outlying side-street or village or metropolitan
hall-room--and the great, turbulent night of the city is on once more.
[Illustration: The City Awakes]
And yet they continue to stream cityward,--this cityward. From all
parts of the world they are pouring into New York: Greeks from Athens
and the realms of Sparta and Macedonia, living six, seven, eight, nine,
ten, eleven, twelve, in one room, sleeping on the floors and dressing
and eating and entertaining themselves God knows how; Jews from Russia,
Poland, Hungary, the Balkans, crowding the East Side and the inlying
sections of Brooklyn, and huddling together in thick, gummy streets,
singing in street crowds around ballad-mongers of the woes of their
native land, seeking with a kind of divine, poetic flare a modicum of
that material comfort which their natures so greatly crave, which their
previous condition for at least fifteen hundred years has scarcely
warranted; Italians from Sicily and the warmer vales of the South,
crowding into great sections of their own, all hungry for a taste of
New York; Germans, Hungarians, French, Polish, Swedish, Armenians, all
with sections of their own and all alive to the joys of the city, and
how eager to live--great gold and scarlet streets throbbing with the
thoughts of them!
And last but not least, the illusioned American from the Middle West
and the South and the Northwest and the Far West, crowding in and
eyeing it all so eagerly, so yearningly, like the others. Ah, the
little, shabby, blue-light restaurants! The boarding houses in silent
streets! The moral, hungry “homes”--how full they are of them and how
hopeless! How the city sings and sings for them, and in spite of them,
flaunting ever afresh its lures and beauties--a city as wonderful and
fateful and ironic as life itself.
THE WATERFRONT
Were I asked to choose a subject which would most gratify my own fancy
I believe I would choose the docks and piers of New York. Nowhere may
you find a more pleasingly encouraging picture-life going on at a
leisurely gait, but going, nor one withal set in a lovelier framework.
And, personally, I have always foolishly imagined that the laborers
and men of affairs connected with them must be the happier for that
connection. It is more than probable that that is not true, but what
can be more interesting than long, heavily-laden piers jutting out into
the ever-flowing waters of a river? And those tall masts adjoining, how
they rock and swing! Whistler had a fancy for scenes like these; they
appealed to his sense of line and background and romance. You can look
at his etchings of collections of boats along the Thames at London and
see how keenly he must have felt the beauty of what he saw. Networks
of ropes and spars; stout, stodgy figures of half-idle laborers;
delicious, comforting, homey suggestions of houses and spires behind;
and then the water.
How the water sips and gurgles about these stanchions and spiles and
hulls! You stand on the shore or on the hard-cobbled streets of the
waterfront, crowded with trucks and cars, and you realize that the
too, too solid substance of which they are composed is to be here for
years. But this water at your feet, this dark, silent current sipping
about the boats and rocking them, the big boats and the little boats,
is running away. Here comes a chip, there goes a wisp of straw. A
tomato box comes leisurely bobbing upon the surface of the stream,
and now a tug heaves into view, puffing and blowing, and then a great
“liner” being towed to her dock. And then these nearer boats fastened
here--how they rest and swing in the summer sunshine! No rush, no
hurry. Only slow movement. Yet all are surely and gradually slipping
away. In an hour your ship will be a mile or two farther down stream.
In a day or two or three your liner will be once more upon the bosom of
the broad Atlantic or, later even, the Pacific. The tug you saw towing
it will be pulling at something else, or you will find it shoving its
queer stubby nose into some quaint angle of the waterside, hardly
earning its skipper’s salt. Is it not a delicious, lovely, romantic
picture? And yet with the tang of change and decay in it too, the
gradual passing of all things--yourself--myself--all.
As for the vast piers on the shores of the Hudson, the East River, the
Jersey side and Brooklyn and Staten Island, where the liners house
themselves, I cannot fancy anything more colorful. They come from all
ports of the world, these big ships. They bring tremendous cargoes,
not only of people but of goods, and they carry large forces of men,
to say nothing of those who assist them to load and unload. If you
watch any of the waterfronts to and from which they make their entry
and departure you will find that you can easily tell when they are
loading and unloading. The broad, expansive street-fronts before these
piers are crowded with idling men waiting for the opportunity to work,
the call of duty or of necessity. And it is an interesting crowd of men
always, this, imposingly large on occasion. Individually these men are
crude but appealing, the kind of man that is usually and truly dubbed
a workingman. They have in the main, rough, quaint, ambling figures,
and rougher, ruder hands and faces. Some of them are black from having
shoveled in the holds of vessels or passed coal (coal-passers is their
official title), and some are dusky and strawy from having juggled
boxes and bales, but they are men who with a small capacity for mental
analysis are taking things exactly as they find them. They are not even
possessed of a trade, unless you would call the art of piling boxes
and bales under the direction of a foreman a trade. Apparently they
have no sense of the sociologic or economic arrangement of life, no
comprehension of the position which they occupy in the affairs of the
world. They know they are laborers and as such subject to every whim
and fancy of their masters. They stand or sit like sheep in droves
awaiting the call of opportunity. You see them in sun or rain, on
hot days and cold ones, waiting here. Sometimes they jest, sometimes
they talk, sometimes they sit and wait. But the water with which they
are so intimately connected, from which they draw their subsistence,
flows on. I have seen a vain, self-conscious foreman come out from one
of these great pier buildings and with a Cæsar-like wave of his hand
beckon to this man and that. At his sign a dozen, a score of men would
rise and look inquiringly in his direction, dumb and patient like
cattle. And then he would pick this one and that, wavering subtly over
his choice, pushing aside this one, who was not quite strong enough,
perhaps, or agile enough, laying a hand favoringly on that, and then
turning eventually and leaving the remaining members of the group dumb
but a little disappointed. Invariably they seemed to me to be a bit
bereaved and neglected, sorry that they could not help themselves, but
still willing to wait. I have sometimes thought that cattle are better
provided for, or at least as well.
But from an artistic and natural point of view the scene has always
fascinated me. Is it morning? The sun sparkles on the waters, the wind
blows free, gulls wheel and turn and squeal, white flecks above the
water, swarms of vehicles gather with their loads, life seems to move
at a smart clip. Is it noon? A large group of men is to be seen idling
in the sun, blue-jacketed, swarthy-faced, colorful against the dark
background of the piers. Is it night? The lanterns swing and rock.
There is darkness overhead and the stars.
[Illustration: The Waterfront]
I sometimes think no human being ever lived who caught more
significantly, more sweetly, the beauty of the waterfront than the
great Englishman, Turner. When one looks at his canvases, rich in their
gold of sunshine, their blue of sky, their haze of moisture, one feels
all that the sea really presents. This man understood, as did Whistler,
only he translated his mood in regard to it all into richer colors,
those gorgeous golds, reds, pinks, greens, blues. And he had a greater
tenderness for atmosphere than did Whistler. In Whistler one misses
more than the bare facts, albeit deliciously, artistically, perfectly
presented. In Turner one finds the facts presented as by nature in her
balmiest mood, and idealized by the love and affection of the artist.
You have seen “The Fighting Téméraire,” of course. It is here in New
York harbor any sunny afternoon. The wind dies down, the sun pours in a
golden flood upon the east bank from the west, the tall elevator stacks
and towering chimneys of factories on the west shore give a beauty
of line which no artist could resist. Up the splashing bosom of the
river, trembling silver and gold in the evening light, comes a great
vessel. Her sides stand out blackly. Her masts and funnels, tinged
with an evening glow of gold, burn and shimmer. Against a magnificent,
a radiant sky, where red and gold clouds hang in broken patches, she
floats, exquisitely penciled and colored--“The Fighting Téméraire.” You
would know her. Only it is now the Hudson and not the Thames.
The skyline, the ship masts, the sun, the water, all these are alike.
The very ship is the same, apparently, and the sun drops down as it
did that other day when his picture was painted. The stars come out,
the masts rock, swinging their little lamps, the water runs sipping
and sucking at the docks and piers. The winds blow cool, and there is
silence until the morning. Then the waterfront assumes its quaint,
delicious, easy atmosphere once more. It is once more fresh and free.
So runs its tide, so runs its life, so runs our very world away.
THE LOG OF A HARBOR PILOT
An ocean pilot-boat lay off Tompkinsville of an early spring afternoon,
in the stillest water. The sun was bright, and only the lightest wind
was stirring. When we reached the end of the old cotton dock, an
illustrator and myself, commissioned by a then but now no more popular
magazine, there she was, a small, two-masted schooner of about fifty
tons burden, rocking gently upon the water. We accepted the services
of a hawking urchin, who had a canoe to rent, and who had followed us
down the main street in the hope of earning a half-dollar. He led the
way through a hole in a fence that enclosed the street at the water end
and down a long, stilted plank walk to a mess of craft and rigging,
where we found his little tub, and pushed out. In a few minutes we had
crossed the quiet stretch of water and were alongside.
[Illustration]
Like all pilot-boats, the _Hermann Oelrichs_ was built low in the
water, so that it was easy to jump aboard. Her sails were furled
and, from the quiet prevailing, one might have supposed that the
crew had gone into the village. No sound issued until we reached the
companionway. Then below we could see the cook scraping cold ashes
out of a fireless stove. He was cleaning the cabin and putting things
to rights before the pilots arrived. He accepted our intrusion with a
friendly glance.
“Captain Rierson told us to come aboard,” we said.
“All right, sir. Stow your things in any one of them bunks.”
We went about this while the ashes were taken out and tossed overboard.
When the cook returned it was with a bucket and brush, and he attacked
the oilcloth on the floor industriously.
“Cozy little cabin, this, eh?”
“Yes, she’s a comfortable little boat,” replied the cook. “These pilots
take things purty comfortable. She’s not as fast as some of the boats,
but she’s all right in rough weather.”
“Do you encounter much rough weather?”
“Well, now and again,” answered the cook, with the vaguest suggestion
of a twinkle in his eye. “It’s purty rough sometimes in winter.”
“How long do you stay out?”
“Sometimes three, sometimes five days, sometimes we get rid of all
seven pilots the first day--there’s no telling. It’s all ’cording to
how the steamers come in.”
“So we may be out a week?”
“About that. Maybe ten days.”
We went on deck. It was warm and bright. Some sailors from the
fore-hatch were scrubbing down the deck, which dried white and warm as
fast as they swabbed off the water. Wide-winged gulls were circling
high and low among the ships of the harbor. On Staten Island many a
little curl of smoke rose from the chimneys of white cottages.
That evening the crew of five men kept quietly to their quarters and
slept. The moon shone clear until ten, when the barometer suddenly fell
and clouds came out of the east. By cock-crow it was raining, and by
morning it was drizzling and cold.
The pilots appeared one after another. They came out to the edge of
the cotton wharf through the mist and rain, and waved a handkerchief
as a signal that a boat should be sent ashore for them. One or two,
failing to attract the immediate attention of the crew, resorted to the
expedient of calling out: “Schooner, Ahoy!” in voices which partook of
some of the stoutness of the sea.
“Come ashore, will you?” they shouted, when a head appeared above deck.
No sooner were they recognized than the yawl was launched and sent
ashore. They came aboard and descended quickly out of the rain into
the only room (or cabin) at the foot of the companionway. This was at
once their sitting-room, dining-room, bedroom, and every other chamber
for the voyage. Here they stowed their satchels and papers in lockers
beneath their individual sleeping berths. Each one sought out a stout
canvas clothes bag, which all pilots use in lieu of a trunk, and began
to unpack his ship’s clothes. All took off their land apparel and
dressed themselves in ancient seat-patched and knee-worn garments,
which were far more comfortable than graceful, and every one produced
the sailor’s essential, a pipe and tobacco.
Dreary as was the day overhead, the atmosphere of the cabin changed
with their arrival. Not only was it soon thick with the fumes of many
pipes, but it was bright with genial temper. Not one of the company of
seven pilots seemed moody.
“Whose watch is it?” asked one.
“Rierson’s, I think,” was the answer.
“He ain’t here yet.”
“Here he comes now.”
At this a hale Norwegian, clean and hard as a pine knot, came down the
companionway.
“My turn to-day, eh? Are we all here?”
“Ay!” cried one.
“Then we might as well go, hey?”
“Ay! Ay!” came the chorus.
“Steward!” he called. “Tell the men to hoist sail!”
“Ay! Ay! sir!” answered the steward.
Then were rattlings and clatterings overhead. While the little company
in the cabin were chatting, the work on deck was resulting in a gradual
change, and when, after a half-hour, Rierson put his head out into
the wind and rain above the companionway, the cotton docks were far
in the rear, all but lost in the mist and drizzle. All sails were up
and a stiff breeze was driving the little craft through the Narrows.
McLaughlin, the boatman and master of the crew, under Rierson, was at
the wheel. Already we were being rocked and tossed like a child in a
cradle.
“Who controls the vessel,” I asked of him, “while the pilots are on
board?”
“The pilots themselves.”
“Not all of them?”
“No, not all at one time. The pilot who has the watch has full control
for his hours, then the next pilot after him, and so on. No pilot is
interfered with during his service.”
“And where do we head now?”
“For Sandy Hook and the sea east of that. We are going to meet inbound
European steamers.”
The man at the wheel, McLaughlin, was a clean athletic young chap, with
a straight, full nose and a clear, steady eye. In his yellow raincoat,
rubber boots and “sou’wester” he looked to be your true sea-faring man.
With the little craft plunging ahead in a storm of wind and rain and
over ever-increasing billows, he gazed out steadily and whistled an
airy tune.
“You seem to like it,” I remarked.
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s not a bad life. Rather cold in winter, but
summer makes up for it. Then we’re in port every fifth or sixth day on
an average. Sometimes we get a night off.”
“The pilots have it better than that?”
“Oh, yes; they get back quicker. The man who has the first watch may
get back to-day, if we meet a steamer. They might all get back if we
meet enough steamers.”
“You put a man aboard each one?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know when a steamer wants a pilot?”
“Well, we are in the track of incoming steamers. There is no other
pilot-boat sailing back and forth on this particular track at this
time. If a steamer comes along she may show a signal for a pilot or she
may turn a little in our direction. Either way, we know she wants one.
Then we lay to and wait until she comes up. You’ll see, though. One is
likely to come along at any time now.”
The interior of the little craft presented a peculiar contrast to
storm and sea without. In the fore compartment stood the cook at his
stove preparing the midday meal. Sailors, when no orders were called
from above, lay in their bunks, which curved toward the prow. The pots
and pans of the stove moved restlessly about with the swell. The cook
whistled, timbers creaked, the salt spray swished above the hatch, and
mingled odors of meats and vegetables combined and thickened the air.
In the after half of the boat were the pilots, making the best of idle
time. No steamer was sighted, and so they lounged and smoked. Two
or three told of difficulties on past voyages. Two of the stoutest
and jolliest were met in permanent conflict over a game of pinochle.
One read, the others took down pillows from the bunks, and spreading
them out on the wide seat that lined two sides of the room, snored
profoundly. Nearly all took turns, before or after games, or naps, at
smoking. Sometimes all smoked. It was observable that no “listener”
was necessary for conversation. Some talked loudly, without a single
person heeding. At times all talked at once in those large imperious
voices which seem common to the sea. The two old pilots at cards never
halted. Storms might come and storms might go; they paused only to
renew their pipes.
At the wheel, in tarpaulin and sou’wester, McLaughlin kept watch. Sea
spray kept his cheeks dripping. His coat was glassy with water. Another
pilot put his head above deck.
“How are we heading?”
“East by no’.”
“See anything?”
“A steamer, outbound.”
“Which one?”
“The _Tauric_.”
“Wish she was coming in!” concluded the inquirer, as he went below.
We kept before the wind in this driving way. All the morning and all
the afternoon the rain fell. The cook served a wholesome meal of
meats and vegetables, and afterwards all pipes were set smoking more
industriously than ever. The two old pilots renewed their cards. Every
one turned to trifling diversions, with the feeling that he must get
comfort out of them. It was a little drowsy, a little uncomfortable,
a little apt to make one long for shore. In the midst of the lull the
voice of the man at the wheel sounded at the companionway.
“Steamer on the port bow! Pilot-boat Number Nine! She’s hailing us.”
“Well, what does she want?”
“Can’t make out yet.”
One and all hastened on deck. On our left, in the fog and rain, tossed
a little steamer which was recognized as the steam pilot-boat stationed
at Sandy Hook. She was starboarding to come nearer and several of her
pilots and crew were at her rail hailing us. As she approached, keener
ears made out that she wanted to put two men aboard us.
“We don’t want any more men aboard here,” said one. “We’ve got seven
now.”
“No!” said several in chorus. “Tell ’em we can’t take ’em.”
“We can’t take any more,” shouted the helmsman, in long-drawn sounds.
“We’ve got seven aboard now.”
“Orders to put two men aboard ye,” came back over the tumbling waters.
“We’ve a sick man.”
“Don’t let ’em put any more men aboard here. Where they goin’ to
sleep?” argued another. “One man’s got to bunk it as it is, unless we
lose one pretty soon.”
“How you goin’ to help it? They’re puttin’ their men out.”
“Head away! Head away! They can’t come aboard if you head away!”
“Oh, well; it’s too late now.”
It was really too late, for the steamer had already cast a yawl and
the two men, together with the crew, were in it and heading over the
churning water. All watched them as they came alongside and clambered
on.
They were Jersey pilots who had been displaced on the other boat
because one of their number had been taken sick and more room was
needed to make him comfortable. He was thought to be dying, and must be
taken back to New York at once, and his condition formed the topic of
conversation for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile our schooner headed outward, with nothing to reward her
search. At five o’clock there was some talk of not finding anything
before morning. Several advised running toward Princess Bay on Staten
Island and into stiller water, and as the minutes passed the feeling
crystallized. In a few minutes all were urging a tack toward port, and
soon it was done. Sails were shifted, the prow headed shoreward, and
gradually, as the track of the great vessels was abandoned, the waters
became less and less rough, then more and more quiet, until finally,
when we came within distant sight of Princess Bay and the Staten Island
shore, the little vessel only rocked from side to side; the pitching
and churning were over.
It was windy and cold on deck, however, and after the crew had dropped
anchor they remained below. There was nothing to do save idle the time.
The few oil lamps, the stove-fire and the clearing away of dishes after
supper, gave the cabin of the fore-and-aft a very home-like appearance.
Forward, most of the sailors stretched in their bunks to digest their
meal. There were a few magazines and papers on the table, a few decks
of cards and a set of checkers. It was interesting to note the genial
mood of the men. One might fancy oneself anywhere but at sea, save for
the rocking of the boat. It was more like a farmhouse kitchen. One
little old sailor, grizzled and lean, had only recently escaped from
a Hongkong trader, where he had been sadly abused. Another was a mere
boy, who belonged to Staten Island. He had been working in a canning
factory all winter, he said, but had decided to go to sea for a change.
It was not his first experience; this alternating was a regular thing
with him. The summer previous he had worked as cook’s scullion on one
of the other pilot-boats; this summer he was a sailor.
The Staten Islander had the watch on deck from ten to twelve that
night. By that time the rain had ceased and the lights on the distant
shore were visible, glimmering faintly, it seemed good to be on deck.
The wind blew slightly chill and the waters sipped and sucked at the
prow and sides. Coming above I chatted with the young sailor.
“Do you like sea life?” I asked him.
“There ain’t much to it.”
“Would you rather be on shore?”
“Well, if I didn’t have to work so hard.”
“You like one, then, as well as the other?”
“Well, on shore the hours are longer, but you get your evenings and
Sundays. Out here there ain’t any hour your own, but there’s plenty
days when there’s nothin’ doin’. Some days there ain’t no wind.
Sometimes we cruise right ahead without touchin’ the sails. Still, it’s
hard, ’cause you can’t see nobody.”
“What would you do if you were on shore?”
“Oh, go to the show.”
It developed that his heart yearned for “nights off.” The little,
bright-windowed main street in New Brighton was to his vision a kind of
earthly heaven. To be there of an evening when people were passing, to
loaf on the corner and see the bright-eyed girls go by, to be in the
village hubbub, was to him the epitome of living. The great, silent,
suggestive sea meant nothing to him.
After a while he went below and tumbled in and McLaughlin, the boatman,
took the turn. In the cabin most of the pilots had gone to bed. Yet the
two old salts were still at pinochle, browbeating each other, but in a
subdued tone. All pipes were out. Snores were numerous and long.
At dawn the pilot whose turn it was to guide the next steamer into
New York took the wheel. We sailed out into the east and the morning,
looking for prey. It came soon, in the shape of a steamer.
“Steamer!” called the pilot, and all the other pilots turned out and
came on deck. The sea to the eastward, whither they were looking, was
utterly bare of craft. Not a sail, not a wisp of smoke! Yet they saw
something and tacked ship so as to swing round and sail toward it. Not
even the telescope revealed it to my untrained eyes until five minutes
had gone by, when afar off a speck appeared above the waters. It came
on larger and larger, until it assumed the proportions of a toy.
With the first announcement of a steamer the pilot who was to take this
one in gave the wheel to the pilot who was to have the next one. He
seemed pleased at getting back to New York so soon. While the ship was
coming forward he went below and changed his clothes. In a few minutes
he was on deck, dressed in a neat business suit and white linen. His
old clothes had all been packed in a grain sack. He had a bundle of New
York papers and a light overcoat over his arm.
“How did you know that steamer wanted a pilot?” I asked him.
“I could tell by the way she was heading.”
“Do you think she saw you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you always tell when a steamer so far off wants a pilot?”
“Nearly always. If we can’t judge by her course we can see through the
telescope whether she has a signal for a pilot flying.”
“And when you go aboard her what will you do?”
“Go to the bridge and direct her course.”
“Do you take the wheel or do any work?”
“Not at all.”
“What about your breakfast?”
“I’ll take that with the officers of the deck.”
“Do you always carry a bundle of papers?”
“Sure. The officers and passengers like to get early news of New York.
Sometimes the papers are pretty old before we hand them out, but
they’re better than nothing.”
He studied the approaching steamer closely through the glass.
“The _Ems_,” he said laconically. “Get the yawl ready, boys.”
Four sailors went to the lee side and righted the boat there. The great
vessel was plowing toward us at a fine rate. Every minute she grew
larger, until at half a mile she seemed quite natural.
“Heave the yawl,” called the man at the wheel.
Over went the boat with a splash, and two men after and into it. They
held it close to the side of the schooner until the departing pilot
could jump in.
“Cast loose!” said the man at the wheel to the men holding the rope.
“Ay! Ay! sir!” they replied.
“Good-by, Billie,” called the pilots.
“So long, boys,” he cried back.
Our schooner was moving swiftly away before the wind. The man in the
yawl pulled out toward where the steamer must pass. Already her engines
had stopped, and the foam at her prow was dying away. One could see
that a pilot was expected. Quite a crowd of people, even at that early
hour, was gathered at the rail. A ladder of rope was hanging over the
side, almost at the water’s edge.
The little yawl bearing the pilot pulled square across the steamer’s
course. When the vessel drifted slowly up, the yawl nosed the great
black side and drifted back by the ladder. One of the steamer’s crew
threw down a rope, which the oarsman of the yawl caught. This held the
yawl still, close to the ladder, and the pilot, jumping for a good
hold, began slowly to climb upward. No sooner had he seized the rope
ladder than the engines started and the steamer moved off. The little
yawl, left alone like a cork on a thrashing sea, headed toward us. The
schooner tacked and came round in a half circle to pick it up, which
was done with safety.
This was a busy morning. Before breakfast another ship had appeared,
a tramp steamer, and a pilot was dressing to board her. Down the fore
hatch could be seen the cook, frying potatoes and meat, and boiling
coffee. The change in weather was pleasing to him, too, for he was
singing as he clattered the dishes and set the table. In the cabin the
pipes of the pilots were on, and the two old salts were at pinochle
harder than ever.
Another pilot left before breakfast, and after he was gone another
steamer appeared, this time the _Paris_. It looked as though we would
soon lose all our pilots and have to return to New York. After the
pilot had gone aboard the _Paris_, however, the wind died down and we
sailed no more. Gradually the sea grew smoother, and we experienced a
day of perfect idleness. Hour after hour the boat rocked like a cradle.
Seagulls gathered around and dipped their wings in charming circles.
Flocks of ducks passed northward in orderly flight, honking as they
went. A little land-bird, a poor, bedraggled sparrow, evidently blown
to sea by adverse winds, found rest and salvation in our rigging.
Now it was perched upon the main boom, and now upon the guy of the
gaff-topsail, but ever and anon, on this and the following day it could
be seen, sometimes attempting to fly shoreward, but always returning
after a fruitless quest for land. No vessel appeared, however. We
merely rocked and waited.
The sailors in the forecastle told stories. The pilots in the rear
talked New York politics and criminal mysteries. The cook brewed and
baked. Night fell upon one of the fairest skies that it is given us
earthlings to behold. Stars came out and blinked. The lightship at
Sandy Hook cast a far beacon, but no steamer took another pilot that
day.
Once during the watch that night it seemed that a steamer far off to
the southeastward was burning a blue light, the signal for a pilot.
The man at the wheel scanned the point closely, then took a lighted
torch made of cotton and alcohol and circled it slowly three times in
the air. No answering blue light rewarded him. Another time there grew
upon the stillness the far-off muffled sound of a steamer’s engine. You
could hear it distinctly, a faint “Pump, pump, pump, pump, pump.” But
no light could be seen. The signal torch was again waved, but without
result. The distinct throb grew less and less, and finally died away.
Some of the pilots commented as to this but could not explain it. They
could not say why a vessel should travel without lights at night.
At midnight a little breeze sprang up and the schooner cruised about.
In one direction appeared a faint glimmer, which when approached,
proved to be the riding light of a freight steamer at anchor. All was
still and dark aboard her, save for two or three red and yellow lights,
which gleamed like sleepless eyes out of the black hulk. The man at the
wheel called a sailor.
“Go forward, Johnnie,” he said, “and hail her. See if she wants a
pilot.”
The man went to the prow and stood until the schooner drew quite near.
“Steamer, ahoy!” he bellowed.
No answer.
“Steamer, ahoy!” he called again. A light moved in the cabin of the
other vessel. Finally a voice answered.
“Want a pilot?” asked our sailor.
“We have one,” said the dim figure, and disappeared.
“Is it one of the pilots of your association that they have?” I asked.
“Yes; they couldn’t have any other. They probably picked him up from
one of our far-out boats. Every incoming steamer must take a pilot, you
know. That’s the law. All pilots belong to this one association. It’s
merely a question of our being around to supply them.”
It turned out from his explanation that the desire of the pilots to get
a steamer was merely to obtain their days off. When a pilot brings in a
steamer it is not likely that he will be sent out again for three days.
Each one puts in about the same number of days a month, and all get the
same amount of pay. There is no rivalry for boats, and no loss of money
by missing a steamer. If one boat misses her, another is sure to catch
her farther in. If she refuses to take a pilot the Government compels
her owners to pay a fine of fifty dollars, the price of a pilot to take
her in.
On the third day now breaking we were destined to lose another pilot.
It was one of the two inveterate pinochlers.
That night we anchored off Babylon, Long Island, in the stillest of
waters. The crew spent the evening lounging in their bunks and reading,
while the remaining pilots amused themselves as usual. Two of them
engaged for a time in a half-hearted game of cards. One told stories,
but with the departure of so many the spirits of the company drooped.
There was no breeze. The flap-flap of the sails went on monotonously.
Breakfast came, and then nine o’clock, and still we rocked in one
spot. Then a steamer appeared. As usual, it was announced long before
my untrained eyes could discern it. But, with the first word, the
remaining valiant pinochler went below to pack. He was back in a few
minutes, very much improved in spirits and appearance.
“Does she starboard any?” he asked the man at the wheel.
The latter used the telescope and then said:
“Don’t seem to, sir.”
“Think she sees us?”
“Can’t tell, sir,” said the boatman gravely.
“Spec’ we’d better fire the gun, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You strip the gun. I’ll take the wheel.”
So a little gun--a tiny cannon, no less--was made ready and while it
was being put in place at the lee rail, Germond, the oldest of the
pilots, came on deck and took the wheel.
“Going to fire the gun, eh?” he observed, in deep bass tones.
“Yes,” said the pinochler.
“Well, that’s right. Blaze away.”
The boatman, who had superintended the charging of the gun, now pulled
a wire attached to a cap and the little cannon spat out a flame with a
roar that shook the boat.
“Do they do this often?” I asked the footman.
“Not very. When fogs are on and boats can’t find us it comes in handy.
There’s hardly any use in this case. I guess she sees us.”
Germond, at the wheel, seemed to enjoy playing warship, for he called
out: “Fire again, Johnnie!”
“Won’t she turn?” asked the restless pinochler.
“Don’t seem to.”
“Then,” said he, and cast a droll look of derision upon the midget
cannon and the immense steamer, “sink her!”
With the third shot, however, we could see the steamer begin to turn,
and in a little while she was headed toward us. We could not move
and so we waited, while the anxious pinochler walked the deck. Long
before she was near he ordered the yawl ready, and when she was yet
three-quarters of a mile off, cast over and jumped aboard. He seemed
somewhat afraid the yawl would not be seen, and so took along with
him a pilot flag, which was a square of blue cloth fastened to a long
bamboo pole. This he held aloft as the men rowed, and away they went
far over the green sea.
The cook served coffee at three, and was preparing supper when another
steamer was sighted. She came up rapidly, a great liner from Gibraltar,
with a large company of Italians looking over the rail.
“No supper for you,” said Germond. “You’ll have to eat with the Dagos.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” returned the other, smiling. “I want to get back to
New York.”
Just before supper, and when the sun was crimsoning the water in the
west, a “catspaw” came up and filled our sails. The boat moved slowly
off. At supper Germond announced:
“Well, I go now.”
“Is there a steamer?”
“No, but I go on the other pilot-boat. I see her over there. The last
man always leaves his boat and goes on one with more men. That allows
this boat to go back for another crew.”
“Do you get the first steamer in, on the other boat?”
“Yes, I have the first turn.” I understood now why our crew, at the
outset, objected to any pilots being taken on our boat. It delayed
the return of those on board to New York. “Steward!” called Germond,
finally, “tell one of the men back there to run up a signal for the
other boat.”
“Ay! Ay! sir!” called back the steward.
At half after six the other pilot-boat drew near and Germond packed his
sea clothes and came up on deck.
“Well, here she is, boys,” he said. “Now I leave you.”
They put out the yawl and he jumped in. When he had gone we watched him
climbing aboard the other schooner.
“Now for New York!” exclaimed McLaughlin, the boatswain, and master of
the crew in the absence of any pilot.
“Do we sail all night?”
“To get there by morning we’ll have to.”
All sails were then hoisted, and we bore away slowly. Darkness fell.
The stars came out. Far away the revolving light of the Highlands
of Navesink was our guide. Far behind, the little pilot-boat which
had received Germond was burning a beacon for some steamer which had
signaled a blue light. Gradually this grew more and more dim, and the
gloom enveloped all.
We sat with subdued spirits at the prow, discussing the dangers of
the sea. McLaughlin, who had been five years in the service, told of
accidents and disappearances in the past. Once, out of the night had
rushed a steamer, cutting a boat such as ours in two. One pilot-boat
that had gone out two years ago had never returned. Not a stick or
scrap was found to indicate what had become of her fifteen men. He
told how the sounding of the fog-horns had chilled his heart the first
year of his service, and how the mournful lapping of the waters had
filled him with dread. And as we looked and saw nothing but blackness,
and listened and heard nothing but the sipping of the still waters, it
did seem as though the relentless sea merely waited its time. Some day
it might have them all, sailor and cook, and where now were rooms and
lockers would be green water and strange fishes.
That night we slept soundly. A fine wind sprang up, and when morning
came we were scurrying home over a thrashing sea. We raced past Sandy
Hook and put up the bay. By eight o’clock we were at the Narrows, with
the Battery in sight. The harbor looked like a city of masts. After the
lonely sea it seemed alive with a multitude of craft. Tugs went puffing
by. Scows and steamers mingled. Amid so much life the sea seemed safe.
BUMS
Whenever I think of them I think of the spectacle that genius of
the burlesque world of my day, Nat Wills, used to present when, in
fluttering rags and tatters, his vestless shirt open at the breast,
revealing no underwear, his shoes three times too big, and torn and
cracked, a small battered straw hat, from a hole in which his hair
protruded, his trousers upheld by a string, and that indefinable smirk
of satisfaction of which he was capable flickering over his dirty and
unshaven face he was wont to strike an attitude worthy of a flight
of oratory, and exclaim: “Fifteen years ago to-day I was a poor,
dispirited, broken-down tramp sitting on a bench in a park, not a shirt
to my back. Not a decent pair of shoes on my feet. A hat with a hole in
it. No money to get a shave or a bath or a place to sleep. No place to
eat. Not a friend in the world to turn to. My torn and frayed trousers
held up by a string. Yet” (striking his chest dramatically) “look at me
now!” And then he would lift one hand dramatically, as much as to say,
“Could any change be greater?”
The humor was not only in the contrast which his words implied and
his appearance belied, but in a certain definite and not unkindly
characterization of the bum as such, that smug and even defiant
disregard of the conventions and amenities which characterizes so many
of them and sets them apart as a species quite distinct from the body
social--for that they truly are. And for that very reason they have
always had a peculiar interest for me, even a kind of fascination,
such as an arrestingly different animal might have for others. And
here in the great city, from time to time I have encountered so many
of them, suggesting not poverty or want but a kind of devil-may-care
indifference and even contempt for all that society as we know it
prizes so highly--order, cleanliness, a job, a good suit of clothes,
marriage, children, respected membership in various orders, religion,
politics--anything and everything that you will. And yet, by reason of
their antithesis and seeming antipathy to all this, interesting.
For, say what you will, it does take something that is not social,
and most certainly independent, either in the form of thought or
temperament, to permit one to thus brazenly brave the notions and
the moods, to say nothing of the intellectual convictions, of those
who look upon the things above described as essential and permanent.
These astonishingly strange men, with their matted hair over their
eyes, their dirty skins, their dirty clothes, their large feet encased
in torn shoes, their hats with holes in them and their hair actually
protruding--just as though there were rules or conventions governing
them in the matter of dress. Along railroad tracks and roads outside
the large cities of the country I have seen them (curiously enough, I
have never seen a woman tramp), singly or in groups, before a fire,
the accredited tin can at hand for water, a degenerate pail brought
from somewhere in which something is being cooked over a fire. And
on occasion, as a boy, I have found them asleep in the woods, under
a tree, or in some improvised hole in a hay or straw stack, snoring
loudly or resting as only the just and the pure in heart should rest.
But here in the great city I have always thought them a little strange
and out of place. They consort so poorly with the pushing, eager,
seeking throngs. And arrayed as they are, and as unkempt and unwashed,
not even the low-priced lodging houses of the Bowery would receive
them, and most certainly they would not pay the price of fifteen or
twenty cents which would be required to house them, even if they had
it. They are not of that kidney. And as for applying to a police
station at any time, it were better that they did not. In bitter
weather an ordinary citizen might do so with safety and be taken care
of, but these, never. They would be driven out or sent to the Island,
as the work-house here is called. Their principal lodging resource in
times of wintry stress appears to be some grating covering a shaft
leading to an engine room of some plant operative the night through,
from which warm air pours; or some hallway in a public building, or the
ultra-liberal and charitable lodging house of some religious mission.
Quite often on an icy night I have seen not a few of them lying over
the gratings of the subway at Fourteenth Street and at other less
conspicuous points, where, along with better men than themselves,
they were trusting to the semi-dry warm air that poured up through to
prevent death from freezing. But the freeze being over, they would go
their ways, I am sure, and never mend them from any fear of a like
experience.
And it is exactly that about them which has always interested me. For,
by and large, I have never been able to feel that they either craved or
deserved the need of that sympathy that we so freely extend to others
of a less sturdy and different character. In truth, they are never as
poor physically and nervously as many of those who, though socially
fallen, yet appear to be better placed in the matter of clothes, food
and mood. They are, in the main, neither lean nor dispirited, and they
take life with too jaunty an air to permit one to be distressed about
them. They remind me more of gulls or moles, or some different and
unsocial animal that still finds in man his rightful prey or source
of supply. And I am positive that theirs is a disposition, either
inherited or made so by circumstances, which has not too much chemic
opposition to their lackadaisical state, that prefers it even to some
other forms of existence. Summer or winter I have seen them here and
there, in the great city, but never in those poorer neighborhoods,
frequented by those who are really in need, and always with the air
of physical if not material comfort hovering about them, and that in
the face of garments that would better become an ashcan than a man.
The rags. The dirt. And yet how often of a summer’s evening have I not
seen them on the stones of doorways and the planks of docks and lumber
yards, warm and therefore comfortable, resting most lazily and snoring
loudly, as though their troubles or irritations, whatever they were,
were far from them.
And in these same easier seasons have I not seen them making their
way defiantly or speculatively among the enormous crowds on the
principal streets of the city, gazing interestedly and alertly into
the splendid shopwindows, and thinking what thoughts and contemplating
what prospects! It is not from these that the burglars are recruited or
the pickpockets, as the police will tell you. And the great cities do
not ordinarily attract them; though they come, occasionally, drawn, I
suppose, by the hope of novelty, and interested, quite as is Dives in
Egypt or India, by what they see. Now and then you will behold one, as
have I, being “ragged” by one of those idle mischievous gangs of the
city into whose heartless clutches he has chanced to fall. His hat will
be seized and pulled or crushed down over his eyes, his matted hair
or beard pulled, straws or rags or paper shoved between his back and
his coat and himself made into a veritable push-ball or punching-bag
to be shoved here and there, before he is allowed to depart. And
for no offense other than that he is as he is. Yet whether they are
spiritually outraged or depressed by this I would not be able to say.
To me they have ever appeared to be immune to what would spiritually
degrade and hence torture and depress another.
Their approach to life, if anything, appears to be one of hoyden
contempt for conventional processes of all kinds, a kind of parasitic
indifference to anything save their own comfort, joined with a not
unadmirable love for the out-of-doors and for change. So often, as
I have said, I have seen them about the great city, asleep in the
cool recesses of not-much-frequented doors and passageways, and in
lumberyards and odd corners, anywhere where they were not likely to be
observed. And my observation of them has led me to conclude that they
do not feel and hence do not suffer as do other and more sensitive men.
They are not interested in material prosperity as such, and they will
not work. If any one has ever seen one with that haunted look which
at times characterizes the eye of those who take life and society so
desperately and seriously, and that betokens one whom life is able to
torture, I have yet to hear of it.
But what an interesting and amazing spectacle they present, and what
amusing things are to be related of them! I personally have seen a
group of such rowdies, such as characterize some New York street
corners even to this day pouring wood-alcohol on one of these fellows
whom they chanced to find asleep, and then setting fire to it in order
to observe what would be the effect of the discovery by the victim of
himself in flames. And subsequently pursuing him down the street with
shouts and ribald laughter. On another occasion, in Hudson Street, the
quondam home of the Hudson Dusters, I have seen six or eight of such
youths pushing another one such about, carrying him here and there by
the legs and arms and tossing him into the air above an old discarded
mattress, until an irate citizen, not to be overawed himself, and of
most respectable and God-fearing mien, chose to interfere and bring
about a release. And in another part of this same good city, that part
of the waterfront which lies east of South Ferry and south of Fulton
Street, I have seen one such most persistently and thoroughly doused by
as many as ten playful wags, all in line, yet at different doors, and
each discharging a can or a bucket of water upon the fleeing victim,
who sought to elude them by running. But, following this individual
to see what his mood might be, I could not see that he had taken the
matter so very much to heart. Once free of his pursuers, he made his
way to a dock, where, seated behind some boxes in the sun, he made
shift to dry himself and rest without appearing to fret over what had
occurred.
On one occasion I remember standing on the forward end of a ferry boat
that once plied between New York and Jersey City, the terminal of one
of the great railways entering the city, when one of these peculiar
creatures took occasion to make his very individual point of view
clear. It was late afternoon, and the forerunners of the homeward
evening rush of commuters were already beginning to appear. He was
dirty and unkempt and materially degraded as may be, but not at all
cast down or distrait. On the contrary. Having been ushered to the
dock by a stalwart New York policeman and put on board and told never
to return on pain of arrest, he was still in an excellent mood in
regard to it all. Heigh-ho! The world was not nearly so bad as many
made out. His toes sticking out, the ragged ends of his coat flapping
about him, a wretched excuse for a hat on his head, he still trotted
here and there, a genial and knowing gleam in his eye, to say nothing
of a Mona Liza-like leer about his mouth. He surveyed us all, kempt
and worthy exemplars of the proprieties, with the air of one who says:
“Well, well! Such decent and such silly people. All sheep who know only
the conventional ways and limitations of the city and nothing else,
creatures who look on me as a wastrel, a failure and a ne’er-do-well.
Nevertheless, I am not as hopeless or as hapless as they think, the
sillies.” And to make this clear he strode defiantly to and fro,
smirking now on one and now on another, and coming near to one and
again to another, thereby causing each and every one to retreat for
the very simple reason that the odor of him was as unconventional as
himself.
Finding himself thus evaded and rather scorned for this procedure, he
retired to the forward part of the deck for a time and communed with
himself; but not for long. For, deciding after all, I presume, that
this was a form of defeat and that he was allowing himself to be unduly
put upon or outplaced, at least, by conventionalists, for whom he had
absolutely no respect, he whirled, and surveying the assembled company
of commuters who had by now gathered in a circle about him, like sheep
surveying some unwonted spectacle, he waved one hand dramatically and
announced: “I’m a dirty, drunken, blue-nosed bum, and I don’t give a
damn! See? See? I don’t give a damn!” and with that he caroled a little
tune, whistled, twiddled his fingers at all of us, did a light gay
step here and there, and then, lifting his torn coat-tails, shook them
defiantly and contemptuously in the face of all of us.
There were of course a few terrified squeaks from a few horrified and
sanctified maidens, old and young, who retreated to the protection of
the saloon behind. There were also dark and reproving frowns from a
number of solid and substantial citizens, very well-dressed indeed, who
pretended not to notice or who even frowned on others for noticing.
Incidentally, there were a few delighted and yet repressed squeals from
various youths and commonplace nobodies, like myself, and eke a number
of heavy guffaws from more substantial citizens of uncertain origin and
who should have, presumably, known better.
Yet, after all, as I told myself, afterward, there was considerable to
be said for the point of view of this man, or object. It was at least
individual, characterful and forceful. He was, decidedly, out of step
with all those about him, but still in step, plainly, with certain
fancies, moods, conditions more suited to his temperament. Decidedly,
his point of view was that of the box-car, the railroad track, the
hay-pile and the roadside. But what of it? Must one quarrel with a crow
for being a crow, or with a sheep for being a sheep? Not I.
And in addition, to prove that he really did not care a damn, and that
his world was his own, once the gates were lifted he went dancing
off the boat and up the dock, a jaunty, devil-may-care air and step
characterizing him, and was soon lost in the world farther on. But
about it all, as it seemed to me, there was something that said to
those of us who were left in the way, that he and his kind were
neither to be pitied nor blamed. They were as they were, unsocial,
unconventional, indifferent to the saving, grasping, scheming plans
of men, and in accord with moods if not plans of their own. They will
not, and I suspect cannot, run with the herd, even if they would. And
no doubt they taste a form of pleasure and satisfaction that is as
grateful to them as are all the moods and emotions which characterize
those who are so unlike them and who see them as beings so utterly to
be pitied or foresworn. At least I imagine so.
[Illustration]
THE MICHAEL J. POWERS ASSOCIATION
In an area of territory including something like forty thousand
residents of the crowded East Side of New York there dwells and rules
an individual whose political significance might well be a lesson to
the world.
Stout, heavy-headed and comfortably constituted, except in the matter
of agility, he walks; and where he is not a personal arbiter he is at
least a familiar figure. Not a saloon-keeper (and there is one to every
half-block) but knows him perfectly and would be glad to take off his
hat to him if it were expected, and would bring him into higher favor.
Not a street cleaner or street division superintendent, policeman
or fireman but recognizes him and goes out of his way to greet him
respectfully. Store-keepers and school children, the basement barber
and the Italian coal-dealer all know who is meant when one incidentally
mentions “the boss.” His progress, if one might so term his daily
meanderings, is one of continual triumph. It is not coupled with
huzzahs, it is true, but there is a far deeper and more vital sentiment
aroused, a feeling of reverence due a master.
I have in mind a common tenement residence in a crowded and sometimes
stifling street in this vicinity, where at evening the hand-organs play
and the children run the thoroughfare by thousands. Poor, compact; rich
only in those quickly withering flowers of flesh and blood, the boys
and girls of the city. It is a section from which most men would flee
when in search of rest and quiet. The carts and wagons are numerous,
the people are hard-working and poor. Stale odors emanate from many
hallways and open windows.
Yet here, winter and summer, when evening falls and the cares of his
contracting business are over for the day, this individual may be seen
perched upon the front stoop of his particular tenement building or
making a slow, conversational progress to the clubhouse, a half-dozen
doors to the west. So peculiar is the political life of the great
metropolis that his path for this short distance is blockaded by dozens
who seek the awesome confessional of his ear.
“Mr. Powers, if you don’t mind, when you’re through I would like a word
with you.”
“Mr. Powers, if you’re not too busy, I want to ask you a question.”
“Mr. Powers--” how often is this simple form of request made into his
ear. Three hours’ walking, less than three hundred feet--this tells
the story of the endless number that seek to buttonhole him. “Rubbing
something offen him,” is the way the politicians interpret these
conversations.
Being a big man with a very “big” influence, he is inclined to be
autocratic, an attitude of mind which endless whispered pleas are
little calculated to modify. Always he carries himself with a reserved
and secret air. There is something uncompromising about the wide mouth,
with its long upper lip, the thin line of the lips set like the edge of
an oyster shell, the square, heavily-weighted jaw beneath, which is
cold and hard. Yet his mouth is continually wrinkling at the corners
with the semblance of a smile, and those nearest as well as those
farthest from him will tell you that he has a good heart. You may take
that with a grain of salt, or not, as you choose.
I had not been in the district very long before I saw in the windows of
nearly every kind of store a cheaply-printed placard announcing that
the annual outing of the Michael J. Powers Association would take place
on Tuesday, August 2d, at Wetzel’s Grove, College Point. The steamer
_Cygnus_, leaving Pier 30, East River, would convey them. Games,
luncheon and dinner were to be the entertainment. Tickets five dollars.
Any one who has ever taken even a casual glance at the East Side would
be struck by the exorbitance of such a charge as five dollars. No one
would believe for an instant that these saving Germans, Jews and other
types of hard-working nationalities would willingly invest anything
over fifty cents in any such outing. Times are always hard here, the
size of a dollar exceedingly large. Yet there was considerable stir
over the prospective pleasure of the day in this district.
“Toosday is a great day,” remarked my German barber banteringly, when I
called on the Saturday previous to get shaved.
“What about Tuesday?”
“Mr. Powers holds his picnic. Der will be some beer drunk, you bet.”
“What do you know about it? Do you belong to the association?”
“Yes. I was now six years a member alretty. It is a fine association.”
“What makes them charge five dollars? There can’t be very many around
here who can afford to pay that much.”
“Der will be t’ree t’ousand, anyway,” he answered, “maybe more.
Efferybody goes. Mr. Powers say ‘Go,’ den dey go.”
“Oh, Mr. Powers makes you go, does he?”
“No,” he replied conservatively. “It is a nice picnic. We haf music, a
cubble of bands. Der is racing, schwimming, all de beer you want for
nodding, breakfast und dinner, a nice boat ride. Oh, we haf a good
time.”
“Do you belong to Tammany?”
“No, sir.”
“Hold any office under Mr. Powers?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, why do you go, then? There must be some reason.”
“I haf de polling place in my back room,” he finally admitted.
“How much do you get for that?”
“Sixty-five dollars a year.”
“And you give five of that back for a ticket?”
He smiled, but made no reply.
It was on Monday that the German grocer signified his intention of
going.
“Do all of you people have to attend?” I inquired.
“No,” he replied, “we don’t have to. There will be somebody there from
most of the stores around here, though.”
“Why?”
“Ask Mr. Powers. There’ll be somebody there from every saloon,
barbershop, restaurant and grocery in the district.”
“But why?”
“Ho,” he returned, “it’s a good picnic. Mr. Powers looks mighty fine
marching at the head. They say he is next after Croker now.”
Among the petty dealers of the neighborhood generally could be found
the same genial acceptance of the situation.
“Dat is a great parade,” said a milk dealer to me. “You will see
somet’ing doing if you are in de distric’ dat night. Senators walk
around just de same as street cleaners; police captains, too.”
I thought of the condescension of these high-and-mighties deigning to
walk with the common street cleaners, coerced into line.
“Are you going?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Want to go?”
“Oh, it’s good enough.”
“What do you think of Powers?”
“He is a great man. Stands next to Croker. Wait till you see de
procession dat goes by here.”
[Illustration: The Michael J. Powers Association]
This was the point, the procession. Any such rich material evidence
of power was a sufficient reason for loyalty in the minds of these
people. They worship power. None know it better than these particular
individuals who lead them. The significance of forcing so many to
march, coming thus rapidly home to me, I dropped around to the district
Tammany club on the afternoon and evening preceding this eventful
day. The palatial chambers of the district leader in the club are
his arena, and on this particular evening these same were the center
of much political activity. Signs of the power of which I had heard
and seen other evidences were here renewed before my eyes. Arranged
in a great meeting-chamber, the political hall of the club, were
tables and counters, behind which were standing men who, as I learned
immediately afterward, were of high standing in the district and
city organization. Deputy commissioners of the water department, the
department of highways, of sewers; ex-State senators, ex-assemblymen,
police sergeants, detective sergeants, aldermen, were all present and
all doing yeoman service.
Upon the tables were immense sheets, yards in diameter, with lists of
names. Back of the tables were immense piles of caps, badges and canes.
As fast as the owners of the names on the list appeared their names
were checked and their invitation cards, which they threw down cheerily
upon the table in company with a five-dollar bill, were marked paid and
passed back for further use. At the other tables these cards were then
good for a cap, a cane, and two badges, all of which the members were
expected to wear.
Energetic as were the half-dozen deputy commissioners, police
sergeants, detective sergeants, ex-assemblymen and the like, who
labored at this clerical task without coats or vests, they were no
match for the throng of energetic Tammanyites who filed in and out,
carrying their hats and canes away with them. Hundreds of clerks,
precinct captains, wardmen, street-cleaners, two-thousand-dollar-a-year
clerks, swarmed the spacious lobby and greeted one another in that
perfunctory way so common to most political organizations. The
“Hellos,” “Well, old mans,” “Well, how are things?” and “There goes”
were as thick and all-pervading as the tobacco smoke which filled the
rooms. Tammanyites in comfortable positions of all degrees moved about
in new clothes and squeaky shoes. Distinct racial types illustrated
how common is the trait of self-interest and how quick are the young
Germans, Irish and Jews to espouse some cause or profession where
self-interest and the simultaneous advancement of the power of some
particular individual or organization are not incompatible. Smilingly
they greeted one another, with that assumption of abandon and good
fellowship which was as evidently assumed for the occasion as could be.
In the case of many it was all too plain that it was an effort to be as
bright and genial as they appeared to be. However, they had mastered
the externals and could keep a straight face. How hard those straight
mouths could become, how defiant those narrow protruding jaws, only
time and a little failure on some one’s part would tell.
While the enthusiasm of this labor was at its highest Mr. Powers put
in an appearance. He was as pictured. On this occasion, his clothes
were plain black, his necktie black, his face a bright red, partially
due to a recent, and very close shave. He moved about with catlike
precision and grace, and everywhere politicians buttonholed or bowed to
him, the while he smiled upon every one in the same colorless, silent
and decidedly secret way.
“Mr. Powers, we’re going to run out of caps before long,” one official
hurried forward to say.
“Dugan has that in charge,” he replied.
“I guess we’ll have a full attendance,” whispered another of those high
in his favor.
“That’s good.”
While he was sitting in his rosewood-finished office at one side of the
great room dozens of those who had come from other districts to pay
their respects and buy a ticket looked in upon him.
“I’ll be with you in the morning, Michael,” said a jolly official from
another district.
“Thank you, George,” he replied smiling. “We’ll have a fine day, I
hope.”
“I hope so,” said the other.
Sitting about in their chairs, some of the older officials who had come
to the club on this very special occasion fell into a reflective mood
and dug up the conditions of the past.
“Do you remember Mike as an alderman, Jerry?”
“I do. There was none better.”
“Remember his quarrel with Murtha?”
“Aye! He was for taking no odds from anybody those days.”
“Brave as a lion, he was.”
“He was.”
“There’s no question of his nerve to-day.”
“None at all.”
“He’s a good leader.”
“He is.”
“How did Powers ever come to get his grip upon the district?” I
inquired of an old office-holder who was silently watching the buzzing
throng in the rooms before him.
“He was always popular with the boys,” he answered. “Long before the
fortieth was ever divided he was popular with the boys of one section
of it. Creamer was leader at that time.”
“Yes, but how did he get up?”
“How does anybody get up?” he returned. “He worked up. When he was
assistant mechanic in the Fire Department, getting a hundred and twenty
a month, he gave half of it away. Anybody could get money off him; that
was the trouble. I’ve known him as a lad to give seventy-seven dollars
away in one month.”
“Who was he, that he should distribute money so freely?”
“Captain of two hundred, of course. He wasn’t called upon to spend his
own money, though.”
“And that started him?”
“He was always a smart fellow,” returned the speaker. “Creamer liked
him. Creamer was a fighter himself. Mike was as brave as a lion. When
they divided the district he got John Kelly to give Powers the other
half. He did it, of course, because he could trust Powers to stand with
him. But he did it, just the same.”
“Kelly was head of Tammany Hall then?”
“He was.”
While we were talking a cart-driver or street-cleaner made his way
through the broad street-door towards the private office where so many
others were, taking off his hat as he did so and waiting respectfully
to one side. Dozens of young politicians were trifling about. The
deputy commissioner of highways, the assistant deputy tax commissioner,
the assistant deputy of the department of sewers, and others were
lounging comfortably in the chief’s room. Three or four black-suited,
priestly-looking assistants from the office of the chief of police were
conferring in that wise, subtle and whispering way which characterizes
all the conversation of those numerous aspirants for higher political
preferment.
Some one stalked over to the waiting newcomer and said: “Well?”
“Is Mr. Powers here this evening?”
At the sound of his name the leader, who was lounging in his
Russia-leather chair within, raised his head, and seeing the figure in
the reception area, exclaimed:
“Put on your hat, old man! No one is expected to put off his hat here.
Come right in!”
He paused, and as the street-sweeper approached he turned lightly to
his satellites. “Get the hell out of here, now, and let this man have
a chance,” he said quickly, the desire to be genial with all being
apparent. The deputies came out of the room smiling and the old man was
ushered in.
“Now, Mr. Cassidy,” I heard him begin, but slowly he moved around to
the door and closed it. The conversation was terminated so far as we
listeners from without were concerned. Only the profuse bowing of
the old man as he came out, the “Thank ye, Mr. Powers, thank ye,”
repeated and repeated, gave any indication as to what the nature of the
transaction might have been.
While such incidents were passing the evening for some, the great crowd
of ticket-purchasers continued. Hundreds upon hundreds filed in and
out, some receiving a nod, some a mere glance of recognition, some only
a scrutiny of a very peculiar sort.
“Are these all members of the club?” I asked of a friend, an
ex-assemblyman and now precinct captain in the block in which I voted.
“They’re nearly all members of the district organization,” he replied.
“How many votes do you claim to control?”
“About five thousand.”
“How many votes are there in the district?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Then you have fully half the votes assured before election-time rolls
around?”
“We’ve got to have,” he replied significantly. “There’s no going into a
fight under Powers, unless he knows where the votes are. He won’t stand
for it.”
While sitting thus watching the proceedings, the hours passed and the
procession thinned down to a mere handful. By midnight it looked as if
all were over, and the leader came forth and quietly took his leave.
“Anything more, Eddie?” he asked of a peaked-face young Irishman
outside his office door.
“Nothing that I can think of.”
“You’ll see to the building?” he asked the deputy commissioner of taxes.
“It’ll look like a May party in the morning, Chief.”
THE FIRE
It is two o’clock of a sultry summer afternoon in one of those
amazingly crowded blocks on the East Side south of Fourteenth Street,
which is drowsing out its commonplace existence through the long and
wearisome summer. The men of the community, for it may as well be
called a community since it involves all that makes a community, and
that in a very small space, are away at work or in their small stores,
which take up all of the ground floors everywhere. The housewives are
doing their shopping in these same stores--groceries, bakeries, meat
and fish markets. From the streets which bound this region people are
pouring through, a busy host, coming from what sections of the city
and the world and going to what sections of the city and the world no
one may divine. Wagons rattle, trucks rumble by with great, creaking
loads, a slot conduit trolley puts a clattering car past every fifteen
or twenty seconds. The riffraff of life fills it as full as though it
were the center of the world. Children, since there is no school now,
are playing here. The streets are fairly alive with a noisy company
of urchins who play at London Bridge and My Love’s Lover, and are
constantly getting in the way of one another and of every one else who
chances to pass this way.
Suddenly, in the midst of an almost wearisome peace, comes the cry
of fire. It comes from the cleanly depths of Number 358, in the
middle of this block, where one Frederick Halsmann, paint-dealer and
purveyor of useful oils to the inhabitants of this neighborhood, has
apparently been busy measuring out a gallon of gasoline. He has been
doing a fairly thriving business here for years, the rejuvenation of a
certain apartment district nearby having brought him quite a demand for
explosive and combustible oils, such as naphtha, gasoline and benzine,
to say nothing of turpentine and some other less dangerous products,
all of which he has stored in his basement. There is a law against
keeping more than twenty gallons of any kind of explosive oil in a
store or the basement of a store, but this law, like so many others of
the great city, enjoys its evasions. What is the law between friends?
All the same, and at last, a fire has broken out--no one ever knows
quite how. A passing stranger notes smoke issuing from a grating in
front of the store. He calls the attention of Mr. Halsmann to it,
but even before that the latter has seen it. He starts to descend an
outside stairway leading to his particular basement but is halted by a
terrific explosion which knocks him and some strangers down, shatters
the windows in his own and other stores four or five numbers away, and
tears a hole in the floor of his store through which his paints, a
counter, a cash register and some other things begin to tumble. He is
too astounded to quite grasp it all but recovering his feet he begins
to shout: “Maria! Maria! Come quick! And the children! Come out! Come
down!”
But his cries come too late. He has scarcely got the words out of his
mouth when a second explosion, far more violent than the first, tears
up the floor and the stairs leading to his home and throws the lurid
fire into the rooms above. It smashes the glass in the front windows
of stores across the street and blows a perfect hurricane of fire in
the same direction. People run, yelling and screaming, a hundred voices
raising the cry of “Fire!”
“My God! My God!” cries an old Jewish butcher over the way. He is
standing in front of his store wringing his hands. “It is Halsmann’s
store! Run quick!” This to a child near him. Then he also runs. An idle
policeman breaks for the nearest fire alarm box, and the crowds of the
neighboring thoroughfares surge in here until the walks and the paving
stones are black with people. A hundred heads pop out of neighboring
windows. A thousand voices take up the cry of “Fire!”
From the houses adjoining, and even in this one, for the upper floors
have not yet been completely shattered, people are hurrying. A woman
with a child on the third floor is screaming and waving her free
hand frantically. A score of families in the adjoining buildings are
gathering their tawdry valuables together and hastening into the
street. Some policemen from neighboring beats, several from the back
rooms of saloons, come running, and the fight to obtain a little order
in anticipation of the fire engines begins.
[Illustration: The Fire]
“Get back there!” commands Officer Casey, whose one idea of natural
law in a very unspiritual world is that all policemen should always
be in front where they can see best. He begins pushing hard at the
vitals of a slender citizen whose curiosity is out of all proportion to
his strength. “Get back, I say! Ye’d think ye owned the earth, the way
ye’re shovin’ in here. Get back!”
“Give ’em a crack over the sconce,” advises Officer Rooney, who can
see no use in wasting time bandying words. “Back with ye! I’ll not be
tellin’ ye twice. Back!” And he places a brawny shoulder so as to do
the utmost damage in the matter of crushing bones. It is rather good
fun for a policeman who only a moment before was wondering what to do
with his time.
In the meanwhile the flames are sweeping upward. In the basement,
where gasoline sat by kerosene, and naphtha by that, the urge of the
flames is irresistible. Already one small barrel and a five-gallon
measure of gasoline have gone, sacrificing to its concentrated force
the lives of Halsmann’s wife and child. Now, a large half-barrel
having been reached, the floors to the third level are ripped out by
a terrifying crash that shatters the panes of glass in the windows in
the next block and Plumber Davidson, on the third floor of the house
next door, running to get his pocketbook out of a kitchen drawer and a
kit of tools he had laid down before putting his head out of the front
window, is seen to be caught and pinioned, and slaughtered where he
stands. Street-sweeper Donnelson’s wife, a stout slattern of a woman,
who had run with many agonized exclamations to a cradle to pick up her
little round-headed Johnnie and then to the mantel to grab a new clock,
is later found in the basement of the same building, caught midway
between the iron railing of a stair and a timber. Mrs. Steinmetz, the
Jewish peddler’s wife, of the fourth floor, is blown to the ceiling
from her kitchen floor, and then, tumbling down, left unconscious on a
stretch of planking, from which later she is rescued.
Outside, on the ground below, the people are gazing in terror and
intense satisfaction. Here is a spectacle for you, if you please, here
the end of a dull routine of many days. The fire-god has broken loose.
The demon flame is trying his skill against the children of men and the
demon water. He has caught them unawares. He has seized upon the place
where the best of their ammunition is stored. From his fortress in
the cellar he is hurling huge forks of flame and great gusts of heat.
Before him now men and women stand helpless. White-faced onlookers gaze
upward with expressions of mingled joy and pain.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
And the wail of a siren.
And yet another.
And yet another.
They announce the men of the Fortieth Hook and Ladder Company, of the
Twenty-seventh Hook and Ladder and Fire Patrol, of the Thirty-third
Engine and Hook and Ladder Company, and the Fifty-first Engine and Hose
Company, down through a long list of stations covering an area of a
half-dozen square miles.
In the midst of the uproar about the burning building, the metallic cry
of this rescuing host is becoming more and more apparent. From every
section they come, the glistening surfaces of their polished vehicles
and implements shining in the sun, the stacks of their engines
issuing volumes of smoke. Fire boxes drop fiery sparks as they speed
past neighboring corners, the firemen stoking as they come. Groups of
hook-and-ladder handlers are unhooking and making ready their ladders.
Others, standing upright on their careening vehicles, are adjusting
rubber coats and making ready to invade the precincts of danger at
once. The art of balancing on one foot while tugging at great coils of
hose that are being uncoiled from speeding vehicles is being deftly
illustrated. These men like this sort of thing. It is something to
do. They are trained men, ready to fight the fire demon at a moment’s
notice, and they are going about their work with the ease and grace of
those who feel the show as well as the importance of that which they
do. Once more, after days of humdrum, they are the center of a tragedy,
the cynosure of many eyes. It is exhilarating thus to be gazed at, as
any one can see. They swing down from their machines in front of this
holocaust with the nonchalance of men going to a dinner.
And the police reserves, they are here now too. This indifferent block,
so recently the very heart of humdrum, is now the center of a great
company of policemen. The regular width of the street from side to
side and corner to corner has been cleared and is now really parked
off by policemen pushing back the gaping and surging throng. There are
cries of astonishment as the onrushing flames leap now from building
to building, shouts of “Stay where you are!” to helpless women and
children standing in open windows from which the smoke is threatening
to drive them; there are great, wave-like pushings forward and
recedings, as the officers, irritated by the eagerness of the crowd,
endeavor to hold it in check.
“McGinnity and six men to the roof of 354!” comes the bellowing cry of
a megaphone in the hands of a battalion chief.
“Hennessy and Company H, spread out the life net!”
“Williams! Williams! You and Dubo scale the walls quick! Get that woman
above there! Turn your hose on there, Horton, turn your hose on! Where
is Company B? Can’t you people get in line for the work here?”
The assurance of the firemen, so used to the petty blazes that could be
extinguished in half an hour by the application of a stream or two of
water, has been slightly shaken by the evidence of the explosive nature
of the material stored in the basement of this building. The sight of
people hurrying from doorways with their few little valuables gathered
up in trembling arms, or screaming in windows from which the flames
and smoke have fairly shut off rescue, is, after all, disconcerting to
the bravest. While the last explosion is shooting upward and outward
and flames from the previously ignited ones are bursting through the
side walls of adjoining structures and cutting off escape for a score,
the firemen are loosing ladders and hose from a dozen still rolling
vehicles and setting about the task of rescuing the victims. Suddenly a
cask of kerosene, heated to the boiling point in the seething cauldron
of the cellar, explodes, throwing a shower of blazing oil aloft
which descends as a rain of fire. Over the crowd it pours, a licking,
death-dealing rain, which sends them plunging madly away. In the rush,
women and children are trampled and more than one over-ambitious
sightseer is struck by a falling dab of flaming oil. A police captain,
standing in the middle of the street, is caught by a falling shower and
instantly ignited. An old Polish Jew, watching the scene from the door
of his eight-by-ten shop, is caught on the hand and sent crying within.
Others run madly with burning coats and blazing hats, while over the
roofs and open spaces can be seen more of these birdlike flames of fire
fluttering to their destructive work in the distance. The power of the
fire demon is at its height.
And now the servants of the water demon, the firemen, dismayed and
excited, fall back a pace, only to return and with the strength of
water at their command assail the power of the fire again. Streams
of water are now spouting from a score of nozzles. A group of eight
firemen, guided by a rotund battalion chief who is speaking through
a trumpet, ascends the steps of a nearby doorway and gropes its way
through the dark halls to apartments where frightened human beings may
be cowering, too crazed by fear to undertake to rescue themselves.
Another group of eight is to be seen working its way with scaling
ladders to the roof of another building. They carry ropes which they
hang over the eaves, thus constructing a means of egress for those who
are willing and hardy enough to lay hold and descend in this fashion.
Still another group of eight is spreading a net into which hovering,
fear-crazed victims calling from windows above are commanded to jump.
Through it all the regular puffing of the engines, the muffled voices
of the captains shouting, and the rattling beat of the water as it
plays upon the walls and batters its way through the windows and doors,
can be heard as a monotone, the chorus of this grand contest in which
man seeks for mastery over an element.
And yet the fire continues to burn. It catches a dressmaker who has
occupied the rear rooms of the third floor of the building, two doors
away from that of the paint-dealer’s shop, and while she is still
waving frantically for aid she is enveloped with a glorious golden
shroud of fire which hides her completely. It rushes to where a lame
flower-maker, Ziltman, is groping agonizedly before his windows on the
fifth floor of another tenement, and sends into his nostrils a volume
of thick smoke which smothers him entirely. It sends long streamers
of flame licking about doorposts and window frames of still other
buildings, filling stairways and area-landings with great dark clouds
of vapor and bursting forth in lurid, sinister flashes from nooks and
corners where up to now fire has not been suspected. It appears to be
an all-devouring Nemesis, feeding as a hungry lion upon this ruck of
wooden provender and this wealth of human life. The bodies of stricken
human beings are but fuel for it--but small additions to its spirals of
smoke and its tongues of flame.
And yet these battalions of fighters are not to be discouraged. They
guess this element to be a blind one, indifferent alike to failure or
success. It may rage on and consume the whole city. It may soon be
compelled to slink back to a smoldering heap. It appears to desire
to burn fiercely, and yet they know that it will give way before its
logical foe. Upon it, now, they are heaping a score of streams, beating
at distant windows, tearing out distant doors, knocking the bricks from
their plastered places, of houses not on fire at all and so setting
up a barrier between it and other buildings, destroying in fact the
form and order of years in order to make a common level upon which its
enemy, water, can meet and defeat it.
But these little ants of beings, how they have scurried before this
battle royal between these two elements! How fallen! How harried and
bereft and tortured they seem! Under these now blackened and charred
timbers and fallen bricks and stones and twisted plates of iron are
not a few of them, dead. And beyond the still tempestuous battlefield,
where flame and water still fight, are thousands more of them, agape
with wonder and fear and pity. They do not know what water is, nor
fire. They only know what they do, how dangerous they are, how really
deadly and how indifferent to their wishes or desires. Forefend!
forefend! is the wisest thought that comes to them, else these twain,
and other strange and terrible things like them, will devour us all.
But these elements. Here they are and here they continue to battle
until a given quantity of water has been able to overcome a given
amount of fire. Like the fabled battle between the Efrit and the King’s
daughter, they have fought each other over rooftops and in cellars and
in the very air, where flame and water meet, and under twisted piles
of timber and iron and stone. Wherever any of the snaky heads of the
demon fire have shown themselves, the flattened gusts of the demon
water have assailed them. The two have fought in crevices where no
human hand could reach. They have grappled with one another in titanic
writhings above the rooftops, where the eyes of all men could see. They
have followed one another to unexpected depths, fire showing itself
wherever water has neglected to remain, the water returning where the
fire has begun its battling anew. They have chased and twisted and
turned, until at last, out-generaled in this instance, fire has receded
and water conquered all.
But the petty little creatures who have been the victims of their
contest, the chance occupants of the field upon which they chose to
battle. But look at them now, agape with wonder and terror. And how
they scurried! How jumped from the windows into nets, how clambered
like monkeys down ladders, how gropingly they have staggered through
halls of smoke, thick, rich smoke, as dark and soft and smooth as the
fleece of a ram and as deadly as death.
And now small men, shocked by all that has befallen, gather and
congratulate themselves on their victory or meditate on and bemoan
their losses. The terror of it all!
“I say, John,” says the battalion chief of the second division to the
battalion chief of the first, “that was something of a fire, eh?”
“It was that,” agrees the latter, looking grimly from under the rim of
his wet red helmet.
“That Dutchman must have had a half-dozen barrels of naphtha or
gasoline down there to cause such a blowup as that. Why, that last
blast, just before I got here, sent the roof off, they tell me.”
“It did that,” returns the other thoughtfully. “There’ll be a big
rumpus about it in the papers to-morrow. They ought to inspect these
places better.”
“That’s right. Well, he got his fill. His wife’s down there now, I
think, and his baby. He ain’t been seen since the first explosion.”
“Too bad. But they oughtn’t to do such things. They know the danger of
it. Still, you never can tell ’em nothin’.”
THE CAR YARD
If I were a painter one of the first things I would paint would be one
or another of the great railroad yards that abound in every city, those
in New York and Chicago being as interesting as any. Only I fear that
my brush would never rest with one portrait. There would be pictures
of it in sunshine and cloud, in rain and snow, in light and dark, and
when heat caused the rails and the cars to bake and shimmer, and the
bitter cold the mixture of smoke and steam to ascend in tall, graceful,
rhythmic plumes that appear to be composed of superimposed circles and
spirals of smoke and mist.
The variety of the cars. The variety of their contents. The long
distances and differing climates and countries from which they have
come--the Canadian snows, the Mexican uplands, Florida, California,
Texas and Maine. As a boy, in the different cities and towns in which
our family dwelt, I was forever arrested by the spectacle of these
great freight trains, yellow, white, red, blue, green, toiling through
or dissipating themselves in some terminal maze of tracks. I was always
interested to note how certain cars, having reached their destination,
would be sidetracked and left, and then presently the consignee or his
agent or expressman would appear and the car be opened. Ice, potatoes,
beef, furniture, machinery, boxed shipments of all kinds, would be
taken out by some lone worker who, having come with a wagon, would
back it up to the opened door and remove the contents. Most interesting
of all to me were the immense shipments of live stock, the pigs, sheep,
steers, on their last fatal journey and looking so non-understandingly
out upon the strange world in which they found themselves, and baa-ing
or moo-ing or squealing in tones that gave evidence of the uncertainty,
the distress and the wonder that was theirs.
For a time in Chicago, between my eighteenth and nineteenth years, I
was employed as a car-tracer in one of the great freight terminals of
a railroad entering Chicago, a huge, windy, forsaken realm far out on
the great prairie west of the city and harboring literally a thousand
or more cars. And into it and from it would move such long freight
trains, heavy with snow occasionally, or drenched with rain, and
presenting such a variety of things in cars: coal, iron, cattle, beef,
which would here be separated and entangled with or disentangled from
many others and then moved on again in the form of other long trains.
The clanging engine bells, the puffing stacks, the arresting, colorful
brakemen and trainmen in their caps, short, thick coats, dirty gloves,
and with their indispensable lanterns over their arms. In December and
January, when the days were short and the nights fell early, I found
myself with long lists of car numbers, covering cars in transit and
concerning which or their contents owners or shippers were no doubt
anxious, hurrying here and there, now up and down long tracks, or under
or between the somber cars that lined them, studying by the aid of my
lantern the tags and car numbers, seeing if the original labels or
addresses were still intact, whether the seals had remained unbroken,
on what track the car was, and about where, and checking these various
items on the slip given me, and, all being correct, writing O. K.
across the face of it all. Betimes I would find a consigned car
already in place on some far sidetrack, the consignee having already
been notified, and some lone worker with a wagon busily removing
the contents. Sometimes, being in doubt, I would demand to see the
authorization, and then report. But except for occasional cars, that
however accurately billed never seemed to appear, no other thing went
wrong.
Subsequent to that time I have always been interested by these great
tangles. Seeing them as in New York facing river banks where ships
await their cargoes, or surrounded by the tall coal pockets and grain
elevators of a crowded commercial section, I have often thought how
typical of the shift and change of life they are, how peculiarly of
this day and no other. Imagine a Roman, a Greek, an Egyptian or an
Assyrian being shown one of these immense freight yards with their
confusing mass of cars, their engines, bells, spirals of smoke and
steam, their interesting variety of color, form and movement. How
impossible to explain to such an one the mechanism if not the meaning
of it all. How impossible it would be for him to identify what he
saw with anything that he knew. The mysterious engines, the tireless
switching, the lights, the bells, the vehicles, the trainmen and
officials. And as far as some future age that yet may be is concerned,
all that one sees here or that relates to this form of transportation
may even in the course of a few hundred years have vanished as
completely as have the old caravanseries of the Orient--rails, cars,
engines, coal and smoke and steam, even the intricate processes by
which present freight exchange is effected. And something entirely
different may have come in its place, transportation by air, for
instance, the very mechanism of flight and carriage directed by
wireless from given centers.
[Illustration: The Car Yard]
And yet, as far as life itself is concerned, its strife and change,
how typical of it are these present great yards with their unending
evidences of movement and change. These cars that come and go, how
heavy now with freight, or import; how empty now of anything suggesting
service or use even, standing like idle, unneeded persons upon some
desolate track, while the thunder of life and exchange passes far
to one side. And anon, as in life, each and every one of them finds
itself in the very thick of life, thundering along iron rails from
city to city, themselves, or rather their contents, eagerly awaited
and welcomed and sought after, and again left, as before. And then the
old cars, battered and sway-backed by time and the elements and long
service, standing here and there unused and useless, their chassis bent
and sometimes cracked by undue strain or rust, their sides bulging,
their roofs and doors decayed and warped or broken, quite ready for
that limbo of old cars, the junk yard rather than the repair shop.
And yet they have been so useful, have seen and done so much, been in
such varied and interesting places--the cities, the towns, the country
stations, the lone sidings where they have waited or rolled in sun
and rain. Here in this particular New York yard over which I am now
brooding, upon a great viaduct which commands it all, is one old car,
recently emptied of its load of grain, about which on this winter’s
day a flock of colorful pigeons are rising and falling, odd companions
for such a lumbering and cumbersome thing, yet so friendly to and
companionable with it, some of them walking peacefully upon its roof,
others picking up remaining grains within its open door, others on the
snowy ground before it picking still other fallen grains, and not at
all disturbed by the puffing engines elsewhere. It might as well be a
great boat accompanied by a cloud of gulls. And that other car there,
that dusty, yellow one, labeled Central of Georgia, yet from which
now a great wagonful of Christmas trees is being taken from Georgia,
or where? Has it been to Maine or Labrador or the Canadian north for
these, and where will it go, from here, and how soon? Leaning upon this
great viaduct that crosses this maze of tracks and commands so many of
them, a great and interesting spectacle, I am curious as to the history
or the lives of these cars, each and every one, the character of the
places and lives among which each and every one of them has passed its
days. They appear so wooden, so lumpish, so inert and cumbersome and
yet the places they have been, the things they have seen!
I am told by the physicists that each and every atom of all of this
wealth of timber and steel before me is as alive as life; that it
consists, each and every particle, of a central spicule of positive
energy about which revolve at great speed lesser spicules of negative
energy. And so these same continue to revolve until each particular
atom, for some chemic or electronic reason, shall have been dissolved,
when forthwith these spicules re-arrange themselves into new forms,
to revolve as industriously and as unceasingly as before. Springs the
thought then: Is anything inert, lacking in response, perception, mood?
And if not, what may each of these individual cars with their wealth
of experience and observation think of this life, their place in it,
their journeys and their strange and equally restless and unknowing
companion, man?
THE FLIGHT OF PIGEONS
In all the city there is no more beautiful sight than that which is
contributed by the flight of pigeons. You may see them flying in one
place and another, here over the towering stacks of some tall factory,
there over the low roofs of some workaday neighborhood; the yard of a
laborer, the roof of some immense office building, the eaves of a shed
or barn furnishing them shelter and a point of rendezvous from which
they sail. I have seen them at morning, when the sky was like silver,
turning in joyous circles so high that the size of a large flock of
forty was no more than a hand’s breadth. I have seen them again at
evening, wheeling and turning in a light which was amethystine in its
texture, so soft that they seemed swimming in a world of dream. In the
glow of a radiant sunset, against the bosom of lowering storm clouds,
when the turn of a wing made them look like a handful of snowflakes, or
the shafts of the evening sunlight turned their bodies to gold, I have
watched them soaring, soaring, soaring, running like children, laughing
down the bosom of the wind, wheeling, shifting, rising, falling,
the one idyllic note in a world of commonplace--or, perhaps more
truthfully, the key central of what is a heavenly scene of beauty.
[Illustration: The Flight of Pigeons]
I do not know what it is that makes pigeons so interesting to me,
unless it is that this flight of theirs into the upper world is to
me the essence of things poetic, the one thing which I should like to
do myself. The sunny sides of the barnyard roofs they occupy, the quiet
beauty of the yards in which they live, their graceful and contented
acceptance of the simple and the commonplace, their cooing ease, the
charm of the landscapes over which they fly and against the outlines of
which they are so often artistically engraved, are to me of the essence
of the beautiful. I can think of nothing better. If I were to have the
privilege of reincarnation I might even choose to be a pigeon.
And, in connection with this, I have so often asked myself what there
is in pure motion which is so delightful, so enchanting, and before
the mystery of which, as manifested by the flight of pigeons my mind
pauses, for it finds no ready solution. The poetry of music, the poetry
of motion, the arch-significance of a graceful line in flight--these
are of psychic, perhaps of chemic subtlety (who knows?), blending into
some great scheme of universal rhythm, of which singing, dancing,
running, flying, the sinuous curvings of rivers, the rhythmic wavings
of trees, the blowings and restings of the winds, and every other
lovely thing of which the earth is heir, are but integral parts.
Nature has many secrets all her own. We peer and search. With her
ill moods we quarrel. Over her savageries we weep or rage. In her
amethystine hours of ease and rest we rest also and wonder, moved to
profound and regal melancholy over our own brief hours in her light, to
unreasoned joy and laughter over her beauty in her better moods, their
pensive exaltation.
As for myself, I only know that whenever I see these birds, their coats
of fused slate and bright metallic colors shielding them so smoothly,
their feet of coral, their eyes of liquid black, smooth-rimmed with
pink, and strutting so soberly at ease on every barn roof or walk
or turning, awing, in some heavenly light against a sky of blue or
storm-black--I only know that once more a fugue of most delicate and
airy mood is being fingered, that the rendition of another song is at
hand.
To fly so! To be a part of sky, sunlight, air! To be thus so delicately
and gracefully organized as to be able to rest upon the bosom of a
breeze, or run down its curving surface in long flights, to have the
whole world-side for a spectacle, the sunny roof of a barn or a house
for a home! Not to brood over the immensities, perhaps, not to sigh
over the too-well-known end!
Fold you your hands and gaze.... They speak of joy accomplished.
Fold your hands and gaze. As you look you have that which they
bring--beauty. It is without flaw and without price.
ON BEING POOR
Poverty is so relative. I have lived to be thirty-two now, and am just
beginning to find that out. Hitherto, in no vague way, poverty to me
seemed to be indivisibly united with the lack of money. And this in the
face of a long series of experiences which should have proved to any
sane person that this was only relatively true. Without money, or at
times with so little that an ordinary day laborer would have scoffed at
my supply, I still found myself meditating gloomily and with much show
of reason upon the poverty of others. But what I was really complaining
of, if I had only known, was not poverty of material equipment (many
of those whom I pitied were materially as well if not better supplied
than I was) but poverty of mind, the most dreadful and inhibiting
and destroying of all forms of poverty. There are others, of course:
Poverty of strength, of courage, of skill. And in respect to no one
of these have I been rich, but poverty of mind, of the understanding,
of taste, of imagination--therein lies the true misery, the freezing
degradation of life.
For I walk through the streets of this great city--so many of them no
better than the one in which I live--and see thousands upon thousands,
materially no worse off than myself, many of them much better placed,
yet with whom I would not change places save under conditions that
could not be met, the principal one being that I be permitted to keep
my own mind, my own point of view. For here comes one whose clothes are
good but tasteless, or dirty; and I would not have his taste or his
dirt. And here is another whose shabby quarters cost him as much as do
mine and more, and yet I would not live in the region which he chooses
for half his rent, nor have his mistaken notion of what is order,
beauty, comfort. Nothing short of force could compel me. And here is
one sufficiently well dressed and housed, as well dressed and housed
as myself, who still consorts with friends from whom I could take no
comfort, creatures of so poor a mentality that it would be torture to
associate with them.
And yet how truly poor, materially, I really am. For over a year now
the chamber in which I dwell has cost me no more than four dollars a
week. My clothes, with the exception of such minor changes as ties
and linen, are the very same I have had for several years. I am so
poor at this writing that I have not patronized a theater in months. A
tasteful restaurant such as always I would prefer has this long while
been beyond my purse. I have even been beset by a nervous depression
which has all but destroyed my power to write, or to sell that which
I might write. And, as I well know, illness and death might at any
time interfere and cut short the struggle that in my case has thus far
proved materially most profitless; and yet, believe me, I have never
felt poor, or that I have been cheated of much that life might give.
Nor have I felt that sense of poverty that appears to afflict thousands
of those about me.
[Illustration: Being Poor]
I cannot go to a theater, for instance, lacking the means. But I can
and do go to many of the many, many museums, exhibits, collections and
arboreta that are open to me for nothing in this great city. And for
greater recreation even, I turn to such books of travel, of discovery,
of scientific and philosophic investigation and speculation as chance
to fit in with my mood at the time and with which a widespread public
beneficence has provided me, and where I find such pleasure, such
relief, such delight as I should hesitate to attempt to express in
words.
But apart from these, which are after all but reports of and
commentaries upon the other, comes the beauty of life itself. I know
it to be a shifting, lovely, changeful thing ever, and to it, the
spectacle of it as a whole, in my hours of confusion and uncertainty
I invariably return, and find such marvels of charm in color, tone,
movement, arrangement, which, had I the genius to report, would fill
the museums and the libraries of the world to overflowing with its
masterpieces. The furies of snow and rain that speed athwart a hidden
sun. The wracks and wisps of cloud that drape a winter or a summer
moon. A distant, graceful tower from which a flock of pigeons soar. The
tortuous, tideful rivers that twist among great forests of masts and
under many graceful bridges. The crowding, surging ways of seeking men.
These cost me nothing, and I weary of them never.
And sunsets. And sunrises. And moonsets. And moonrises. These are not
things to which those materially deficient would in the main turn for
solace, but to me they are substances of solace, the major portion of
all my wealth or possible wealth, in exchange for which I would not
take a miser’s hoard. I truly would not.
SIX O’CLOCK
The hours in which the world is working are numerous and always
fascinating. It is not the night-time or the Sabbath or the day of
pleasure that counts, but the day’s work. Whether it be as statesman
or soldier, poet or laborer, the day’s work is the thing. And at the
end of the day’s work, in its commoner forms at least, comes the signal
of its accomplishment, the whistle, the bell, the fading light, the
arresting face of the clock.
To me, personally, there is no hour which quite equals that which
heralds the close of the day’s toil. I know, too, that others are
important, the getting up and lying down of men, but this of ceasing
after a day’s work, when we lay down the ax or the saw, or the pen
or pencil, stay our machine, take off our apron and quit--that is
wonderful. Others may quit earlier. The lawyer and the merchant and the
banker may cease their labors an hour earlier. The highly valued clerk
or official is not opposed if he leaves at four-thirty or at five, and
at five-thirty skilled labor generally may cease. But at six o’clock
the rank and file are through, “the great unwashed,” as they have been
derisively termed, the real laboring man and laboring woman. It is for
them then that the six o’clock whistle blows; that the six o’clock bell
strikes; it is for them that the evening lamps are lit in millions of
homes; it is for them that the blue smoke of an evening fire curls
upward at nightfall and that the street cars and vehicles of transfer
run thick and black.
The streets are pouring with them at six o’clock. They are as a
great tide in the gray and dark. They come bearing their baskets and
buckets, their armfuls of garnered wood, their implements of labor and
of accomplishment, and their faces streaked with the dirt of their
toil. While you and I, my dear sir, have been sitting at our ease this
last hour they have been working, and where we began at nine they
began at seven. They have worked all day, not from seven-thirty until
five-thirty or from nine until four, but from seven to six, and they
are weary.
You can see it in their faces. Some have a lean, pinched appearance
as though they were but poorly nourished or greatly enervated. Some
have a furtive, hurried look, as though the problem of rent and food
and clothing were inexplicable and they were thinking about it all the
time. Some are young yet and unscathed--the most are young (for the
work of the world is done by the youth of the world)--and they do not
see as yet to what their labor tends. Nearly all are still lightened
with a sense of opportunity; for what may the world not hold in store?
Are not its bells still tinkling, its lights twinkling? Are not youth
and health and love the solvents of all our woes?
[Illustration: Six O’clock]
These crowds when the whistles blow come as great movements of the sea
come. If you stand in the highways of traffic they are at once full to
overflowing. If you watch the entrance to great mills they pour forth
a living stream, dark, energetic, undulant. To see them melting
away into the highways and byways is like seeing a stream tumble and
sparkle, like listening to the fading echoes of a great bell. They
come, vivid, vibrant, like a deep, full-throated note. They go again as
bell notes finally go.
If you stand at the entrance of one of our great industrial
institutions you may see for yourself. Its walls are like those of
a prison, tall, dark, many-windowed; its sound like that of a vast
current of water pouring over a precipice. Inside a thousand or
a hundred thousand shuttles may be crashing; I know not. Patient
figures are hurrying to and fro. You may see them through the brightly
lighted windows of a winter’s night. Suddenly the great whistle sounds
somewhere in the thick of the city. Then another and another. In a
moment a score and a hundred siren voices are calling out the hour of
cessation and the rush of the great world of machinery is stilling. The
figures disappear from the machines. The tiny doors at the bottom of
the walls open. Out they come, hurrying, white-faced, black-shawled,
the vast contingent of men and boys, girls and children; into the black
night they hurry, the fresh winds sweeping about their insignificant
figures. This is but one mill and all over the world as the planet
rolls eastward these whistles are blowing, the factories are ceasing,
the figures are pouring forth.
It is on such as these, O students of economics, that all our fine-spun
fancies of life are based. It is on such as these that our statecraft
is erected. Kings sit in palaces, statesmen confer in noble halls,
because of these and such as these. The science of government--it _is_
because of these. The art of production--it is by and for these. The
importance of distribution--it concerns these. All our carefully woven
theories of morals, of health, of property--they have these for their
being; without them they are not.
The world runs with a rushing tide of life these days. It has broken
forth into a veritable storm of creation. Men are born by the millions.
They die in great masses silently. To-day they are here, to-morrow cut
down and put away. But in these crowds of workers we see the flower
of it all, the youth, the enthusiasm, the color. Life is here at its
highest, not death. There are no sick here: they have dropped out.
There are no halt, or very few, no lame. All the weaklings have been
cut down and there remains here, running in a hurrying, sparkling
stream, the energy, the strength, the hope of the world. That they may
not be too hardly used is obvious, for then life itself ceases; that
they may not be too utterly brutalized is sure, for then life itself
becomes too brutal for endurance. That they may only be driven in part
is a material truism. They cannot be driven too far; they must be led
in part. For that the maxim, “Feed my sheep.”
But in the spectacle of living there is none other like this. It is all
that life may ever be, energetic, hungry, eager. It is the hope of the
world, and the yearning of the world concentrated. Here are passion,
desire, despair, running eagerly away. The great whistles of the world
sound their presence nightly. The sinking of the sun marks their sure
approach. It is six o’clock, and the work of the day is ended--for the
night.
THE TOILERS OF THE TENEMENTS
New York City has one hundred thousand people who, under unfavorable
conditions, work with their fingers for so little money that they are
understood, even by the uninitiated general public, to form a class by
themselves. These are by some called sewing-machine workers, by others
tenement toilers, and by still others sweatshop employees; but, in a
general sense, the term, tenement workers, includes them all. They form
a great section in one place, and in others little patches, ministered
to by storekeepers and trade agents who are as much underpaid and
nearly as hard-working as they themselves.
Go into any one of these areas and you will encounter a civilization
that is as strange and un-American as if it were not included in this
land at all. Pushcarts and market-stalls are among the most distinctive
features. Little stores and grimy windows are also characteristic of
these sections. There is an atmosphere of crowdedness and poverty
which goes with both. Any one can see that these people are living
energetically. There is something about the hurry and enthusiasm of
their life that reminds you of ants.
If you stay and turn your attention from the traffic proper, the houses
begin to attract your attention. They are nearly all four-story or
five-story buildings, with here and there one of six, and still another
of seven stories; all without elevators, and all, with the exception of
the last, exceedingly old. There are narrow entrance-ways, dingy and
unlighted, which lead up dark and often rickety stairs. There are other
alley-ways, which lead, like narrow tunnels, to rear tenements and back
shops. Iron fire escapes descend from the roof to the first floor, in
every instance, because the law compels it. Iron stairways sometimes
ascend, where no other means of entrance is to be had. There are old
pipes which lead upward and carry water. No such thing as sanitary
plumbing exists. You will not often see a gas-light in a hall in as
many as two blocks of houses. You will not see one flat in ten with hot
and cold water arrangements. Other districts have refrigerators and
stationary washstands, and bath tubs as a matter of course, but these
people do not know what modern conveniences mean. Steam heat and hot
and cold water tubs and sinks have never been installed in this area.
The houses are nearly all painted a dull red, and nearly all are
divided in the most unsanitary manner. Originally they were built five
rooms deep, with two flats on a floor, but now the single flats have
been subdivided and two or three, occasionally four or five, families
live and toil in the space which was originally intended for one.
There are families so poor, or so saving and unclean, that they huddle
with other families, seven or eight persons in two rooms. Iron stands
covered by plain boards make a bed which can be enlarged or reduced at
will. When night comes, four, five, six, sometimes seven such people
stretch out on these beds. When morning comes the bedclothes, if such
they may be called, are cleared away and the board basis is used as a
table. One room holds the stove, the cooking utensils, the chairs, and
the sewing machine. The other contains the bed, the bed-clothing, and
various kinds of stored material. Eating, sleeping, and usually some
washing are done there.
I am giving the extreme instances, unfortunately common to the point
of being numerous. In the better instances three or four people are
housed in two rooms. How many families there are that live less closely
quartered than this would not be very easy to say. On the average, five
people live in two rooms. A peddler or a pushcart man who can get to
where he can occupy two rooms, by having his wife and children work, is
certain that he is doing well. Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,
go out to work. If the father cannot get work and the mother can, then
that is the order of procedure. If the daughter cannot get work and the
mother and father can, it is the daughter’s duty to take care of the
house and take in sewing. If any of the boys and girls are too young to
go out and enter the shops, duty compels them to help on the piecework
that is taken into the rooms. Everything is work, in one form or
another, from morning until night.
As for the people themselves, they are a strange mixture of all races
and all creeds. Day after day you will see express wagons and trucks
leaving the immigration station at the Battery, loaded to crowding with
the latest arrivals, who are being taken as residents to one or another
colony of this crowded section. There are Greeks, Italians, Russians,
Poles, Syrians, Armenians and Hungarians. Jews are so numerous that
they have to be classified with the various nations whose language
they speak. All are poverty-stricken, all venturing into this new world
to make their living. The vast majority have absolutely nothing more
than the ten dollars which the immigration inspectors are compelled to
see that they have when they arrive. These people recruit the territory
in question.
In the same hundred thousand, and under the same tenement conditions,
are many who are not foreign-born. I know personally of American
fathers who have got down to where it is necessary to work as these
foreigners work. There are home-grown American mothers who have never
been able to lift themselves above the conditions in which they find
themselves to-day. Thousands of children born and reared in New York
City are growing up under conditions which would better become a slum
section of Constantinople.
I know a chamber in this section where, at a plain wooden bench
or table, sits a middle-aged Hungarian and his wife, with a
fifteen-year-old daughter, sewing. The Hungarian is perhaps not
honestly Gentile, for he looks as if he might have Hebrew blood in
his veins. The mother and the daughter partake of a dark olive tinge,
more characteristic of the Italian than of anything else. It must be
a coincidence, however, for these races rarely mix. Between them and
upon a nearby chair are piled many pairs of trousers, all awaiting
their labor. Two buckles and a button must be sewed on every one. The
rough edges at the bottom must be turned up and basted, and the
inside about the top must be lined with a kind of striped cotton which
is already set loosely in place. It is their duty to sew closely with
their hands what is already basted. No machine worker can do this work,
and so it is sent out to such as these, under the practice of tenement
distribution. Their duty is to finish it.
[Illustration: Toilers of the Tenements]
There would be no need to call attention to these people except that in
this instance they have unwittingly violated the law. Tenement workers,
under the new dispensation, cannot do exactly as they please. It is not
sufficient for them to have an innate and necessitous desire to work.
They must work under special conditions. Thus, it is now written that
the floors must be clean and the ceilings whitewashed. There must not
be any dirt on the walls. No room in which they work must have such
a thing as a bed in it, and no three people may ever work together
in one room. Law and order prescribe that one is sufficient. These
others--father and daughter, or mother and daughter, or mother and
father--should go out into the shops, leaving just one here to work.
Such is the law.
These three people, who have only these two trades, have complied with
scarcely any of these provisions. The room is not exactly as clean as
it should be. The floor is dirty. Overhead is a smoky ceiling, and in
one corner is a bed. The two small windows before which they labor
do not give sufficient ventilation, and so the air in the chamber is
stale. Worst of all, they are working three in a chamber, and have no
license.
“How now,” asks an inspector, opening the door--for there is very
little civility of manner observed by these agents of the law who
constantly regulate these people--“any pants being finished here?”
“How?” says the Hungarian, looking purblindly up. It is nothing new to
him to have his privacy thus invaded. Unless he has been forewarned and
has his door locked, police and detectives, to say nothing of health
inspectors and other officials, will frequently stick their heads in
or walk in and inquire after one thing or another. Sometimes they
go leisurely through his belongings and threaten him for concealing
something. There is a general tendency to lord it over and browbeat
him, for what reason he has no conception. Other officials do it in the
old country; perhaps it is the rule here.
“So,” says the inspector, stepping authoritatively forward, “finishing
pants, eh? All three of you? Got a license?”
“Vot?” inquires the pale Hungarian, ceasing his labor.
“Where is your license--your paper? Haven’t you got a paper?”
The Hungarian, who has not been in this form of work long enough to
know the rules, puts his elbows on the table and gazes nervously into
the newcomer’s face. What is this now that the gentleman wants? His
wife looks her own inquiry and speaks of it to her daughter.
“What is it he wants?” says the father to the child.
“It is a paper,” returns the daughter in Hungarian. “He says we must
have a license.”
“Paper?” repeats the Hungarian, looking up and shaking his head in the
negative. “No.”
“Oh, so you haven’t got a license then? I thought so. Who are you
working for?”
The father stares at the child. Seeing that he does not understand, the
inspector goes on: “The boss, the boss! What boss gave you these pants
to finish?”
“Oh,” returns the little girl, who understands somewhat better than the
rest, “the boss, yes. He wants to know what boss gave us these pants.”
This last in a foreign tongue to her father.
“Tell him,” says the mother in Hungarian, “that the name is Strakow.”
“Strakow,” repeats the daughter.
“Strakow, eh?” says the inspector. “Well, I’ll see Mr. Strakow. You
must not work on these any more. Do you hear? Listen, you,” and he
turns the little girl’s face up to him, “you tell your father that he
can’t do any more of this work until he gets a license. He must go up
to No. 1 Madison Avenue and get a paper. I don’t know whether they’ll
give it to him or not, but he can go and ask. Then he must clean this
floor. The ceiling must be whitewashed--see?”
The little girl nods her head.
“You can’t keep this bed in here, either,” he adds. “You must move the
bed out into the other room if you can. You mustn’t work here. Only one
can work here. Two of you must go out into the shop.”
All the time the careworn parents are leaning forward eagerly, trying
to catch the drift of what they cannot possibly understand. Both
interrupt now and then with a “What is it?” in Hungarian, which the
daughter has no time to heed. She is so busy trying to understand half
of it herself that there is no time for explanation. Finally she says
to her parents:
“He says we cannot all work here.”
“Vot?” says the father. “No vork?”
“No,” replies the daughter. “Three of us can’t work in one room. It’s
against the law. Only one. He says that only one can work in this room.”
“How!” he exclaims, as the little girl goes on making vaguely apparent
what these orders are. As she proceeds the old fellow’s face changes.
His wife leans forward, her whole attitude expressive of keen,
sympathetic anxiety.
“No vork?” he repeats. “I do no more vork?”
“No,” insists the inspector, “not with three in one room.”
The Hungarian puts out his right leg, and it becomes apparent that an
injury has befallen him. Words he pours upon his daughter, who explains
that he has been a pushcart peddler but has received a severe injury to
his leg and cannot walk. Helping to sew is all that he can do.
“Well,” says the inspector when he hears of this, “that’s too bad, but
I can’t help it. It’s the law. You’ll have to see the department about
it. I can’t help it.”
Astonished and distressed, the daughter explains, and then they sit in
silence. Five cents a pair is all they have been able to earn since
the time the father became expert, and all they can do, working from
five in the morning until eleven at night, is two dozen pairs a day--in
other words, to earn seven dollars and twenty cents a week. If they
delay for anything, as they often must, the income drops to six, and
quite often to five, dollars. Two dollars a week is their tax for rent.
“So!” says the father, his mouth open. He is too deeply stricken and
nonplussed to know what to do. The mother nervously turns her hands.
“You hear now,” says the inspector, taking out a tag and fastening it
upon the goods--“no more work. Go and see the department.”
“How?” asks the father, staring at his helpless family after the door
has closed.
How indeed!
In the same round the inspector will come a little later to the shop
from which the old Hungarian secured the trousers for finishing. He
is armed with full authority over all of these places. In his pocket
lie the tags, one of which he puts on a lot of clothing just ordered
halted. If that tag is removed it is a penal offense. If it stays
on no one can touch the goods until the contractor explains to the
factory inspector how he has come to be giving garments for finishing
to dwellers in tenements who have not a license. This is a criminal
offense on his part. Now he must not touch the clothes he sent over
there. If the old Hungarian returns them he must not accept them or
pay him any money. This contractor and his clients offer a study in
themselves.
His shop is on the third floor of a rear building, which was once
used for dwelling purposes but is now given over entirely to clothing
manufactories or sweatshops. A flight of dark, ill-odored, rickety
stairs gives access to it. There is noise and chatter audible, a thick
mixture of sounds from whirring sewing machines and muttering human
beings. When you open the door a gray-haired Hebrew, whose long beard
rests patriarchally upon his bosom, looks over his shoulders at you
from a brick furnace, where he is picking up a reheated iron. Others
glance up from their bent positions over machines and ironing-boards.
It is a shadowy, hot-odored, floor-littered room.
“Have you a finisher doing work for you by the name of Koslovsky?”
inquires the inspector of a thin, bright-eyed Syrian Jew, who is
evidently the proprietor of this establishment.
“Koslovsky?” he says after him, in a nervous, fawning, conciliatory
manner. “Koslovsky? What is he? No.”
“Finisher, I said.”
“Yes, finisher--finisher, that’s it. He does no work for me--only a
little--a pair of pants now and then.”
“You knew that he didn’t have a license, didn’t you?”
“No, no. I did not. No license? Did he not have a license?”
“You’re supposed to know that. I’ve told you that before. You’ll have
to answer at the office for this. I’ve tagged his goods. Don’t you
receive them now. Do you hear?”
“Yes,” says the proprietor excitedly. “I would not receive them. He
will get no more work from me. When did you do that?”
“Just this morning. Your goods will go up to headquarters.”
“So,” he replied weakly. “That is right. It is just so. Come over here.”
The inspector follows him to a desk in the corner.
“Could you not help me out of this?” he asks, using a queer Jewish
accent. “I did not know this once. You are a nice man. Here is a
present for you. It is funny I make this mistake.”
“No,” returns the inspector, shaking his head. “Keep your money. I
can’t do anything. These goods are tagged. You must learn not to give
out finishing to people without a license.”
“That is right,” he exclaims. “You are a nice man, anyhow. Keep the
money.”
“Why should I keep the money? You’ll have to explain anyhow. I can’t do
anything for you.”
“That is all right,” persists the other. “Keep it, anyhow. Don’t bother
me in the future. There!”
“No, we can’t do that. Money won’t help you. Just observe the
law--that’s all I want.”
“The law, the law,” repeats the other curiously. “That is right. I will
observe him.”
Such is one story--almost the whole story. This employer, so nervous in
his wrongdoings, so anxious to bribe, is but a little better off than
those who work for him.
In other tenements and rear buildings are other shops and factories,
but they all come under the same general description. Men, women and
children are daily making coats, vests, knee-pants and trousers.
There are side branches of overalls, cloaks, hats, caps, suspenders,
jerseys and blouses. Some make dresses and waists, underwear and
neckwear, waist bands, skirts, shirts and purses; still others, fur,
or fur trimmings, feathers and artificial flowers, umbrellas, and even
collars. It is all a great allied labor of needlework, needlework done
by machine and finishing work done by hand. The hundred thousand that
follow it are only those who are actually employed as supporters. All
those who are supported--the infants, school children, aged parents,
and physically disabled relatives--are left out. You may go throughout
New York and Brooklyn, and wherever you find a neighborhood poor enough
you will find these workers. They occupy the very worst of tumble-down
dwellings. Shrewd Italians, and others called padrones, sometimes lease
whole blocks from such men as William Waldorf Astor, and divide up each
natural apartment into two or three. Then these cubbyholes are leased
to the toilers, and the tenement crowding begins.
You will see by peculiar evidences that things have been pretty bad
with these tenements in the past. For instance, between every front
and back room you will find a small window, and between every back
room and the hall, another. The construction of these was compelled by
law, because the cutting up of a single apartment into two or three
involved the sealing up of the connecting door and the shutting off of
natural circulation. Hence the state decided that a window opening into
the hall would be some improvement, anyhow, and so this window-cutting
began. It has proved of no value, however. Nearly every such window is
most certainly sealed up by the tenants themselves.
In regard to some other matters, this cold enforcement of the present
law is, in most cases, a blessing, oppressive as it seems at times.
Men should not crowd and stifle and die in chambers where seven occupy
the natural space of one. Landlords should not compel them to, and
poverty ought to be stopped from driving them. Unless the law says
that the floor must be clean and the ceiling white, the occupants will
never find time to make them so. Unless the beds are removed from
the work-room and only one person allowed to work in one room, the
struggling “sweater” will never have less than five or six suffering
with him. Enforce such a law, and these workers, if they cannot work
unless they comply with these conditions, will comply with them, and
charge more for their labor, of course. Sweatshop manufacturers cannot
get even these to work for nothing, and landlords cannot get tenants
to rent their rooms unless they are clean enough for the law to allow
them to work in them. Hence the burden falls in a small measure on the
landlord, but not always.
The employer or boss of a little shop, who is so nervous in wrongdoing,
so anxious to bribe, is but a helpless agent in the hands of a greater
boss. He is no foul oppressor of his fellow man. The great clothing
concerns in Broadway and elsewhere are his superiors. What they give,
he pays, barring a small profit to himself. If these people are
compelled by law to work less or under more expensive conditions, they
must receive more or starve, and the great manufactories cannot let
them actually starve. They come as near to it now as ever, but they
will pay what is absolutely essential to keep them alive; hence we see
the value of the law.
To grow and succeed here, though, is something very different. Working,
as these people do, they have very little time for education. The great
struggle is for bread, and unless the families are closely watched,
children are constantly sent to work before they are twelve. I was
present in one necktie factory once where five of its employees were
ordered out for being without proof that they were fourteen years of
age. I have personally seen shops, up to a dozen, inspected in one
morning, and some struggling little underling ordered out from each.
“For why you come home?” is the puzzled inquiry of the parents at night.
“Da police maka me.”
Down here, and all through this peculiar world, the police are
everything. They regulate the conduct, adjudicate the quarrels,
interfere with the evil-doers. The terror of them keeps many a child
studying in the school-room where otherwise it would be toiling in the
chamber at home or the shop outside. Still the struggle is against
them, and most of them grow up without any of those advantages so
common to others.
At the same time, there are many institutions established to reach
these people. One sees Hebrew and Legal Aid Societies in large and
imposing buildings. Outdoor recreation leagues, city playgrounds,
schools, and university settlements--all are here; and yet the
percentage of opportunity is not large. Parents have to struggle too
hard. Their ignorant influence upon the lives of the young ones is too
great.
I know a lawyer, though, of considerable local prestige, who has worked
his way out of these conditions; and Broadway from Thirty-fourth Street
south, to say nothing of many other streets, is lined with the signs
of those who have overcome the money difficulty of lives begun under
these conditions. Unfortunately the money problem, once solved, is not
the only thing in the world. Their lives, although they reach to the
place where they have gold signs, automobiles and considerable private
pleasures, are none the more beautiful. Too often, because of these
early conditions, they remain warped, oppressive, greedy and distorted
in every worthy mental sense by the great fight they have made to get
their money.
Nearly the only ideal that is set before these strugglers still toiling
in the area, is the one of getting money. A hundred thousand children,
the sons and daughters of working parents whose lives are as difficult
as that of the Hungarian portrayed and whose homes are as unlovely,
are inoculated in infancy with the doctrine that wealth is all,--the
shabbiest and most degrading doctrine that can be impressed upon
anyone.
THE END OF A VACATION
It was the close of summer. The great mountain and lake areas to the
north of New York were pouring down their thousands into the hot,
sun-parched city. Vast throngs were coming back on the steamboats
of the Hudson. Vaster throngs were crowding the hourly trains which
whirled and thundered past the long lane of villages which stretches
between Albany and New York City. The great station at Albany was
packed with a perspiring mass. The several fast expresses running
without stop to New York City were overwhelmed. Particularly was the
Empire State Express full. In the one leaving Albany at eight in the
evening passengers were standing in the aisles.
It was a little, dark, wolf of a man who fought his way and that of his
wife behind him to the car steps, and out of the scrambling, pushing
throng rescued a car seat. He put his back against those who were
behind and stood still until his wife could crowd in. Then he took his
place beside her and looked grimly around. For her part, she arranged
herself indifferently and looked wearily out of the window. She was
dark, piquant, petite, attractive.
[Illustration: The Close of Summer]
Behind these two there came another person, who seemed not so anxious
for a seat. While others were pushing eagerly he stepped to one
side, holding his place close to the little wolf man yet looking
indifferently about him. He was young, ruddy, stalwart, an artist’s
ideal of what a summer youth ought to be. And now and then he looked in
the direction of the wolf man’s wife. But there appeared to be nothing
of common understanding between them.
The train pulled out with a slow clacking sound. It gained in headway,
and lights of yard engines and those of other cars, as well as street
lamps and houses, flashed into view and out again. Then came the long
darkness of the open country and the river bank, and the people settled
to endure the several hours in such comfort as they could. Some read
newspapers, some books. The majority stared wearily out of the window,
not attempting to talk. They were tired. The joys of their vacations
were behind them. Why talk, with New York and early work ahead?
In the midst of these stood the young athlete, ruminating. In his seat
before him sat the wolf man, studying a notebook. Beside him, the
young wife, dark, piquant, nervously restless, kept her face to the
window, arranging her back hair now and then with a jeweled hand, and
occasionally turning her face inward to look at the car. It was as if
a vast gulf lay between her and her spouse, as if they were miles and
miles apart, and yet they were obviously married. You could see that by
the curt, gruff questions he addressed to her, by the quick, laconic,
uninterpretative replies. She was weary and so was he.
The train neared Poughkeepsie. For the twentieth or more time the
jeweled hand had felt the back of her dark piled-up hair. For the
fourth or fifth time the elbow had rested on the back of the seat,
the hand falling lazily toward her cheek. Just once it dropped full
length along the back ridge, safely above and beyond her husband’s
head and toward the hand of the standing athlete, who appeared totally
unconscious of the gesture. Then it was withdrawn. A stir of interest
seemed to go with it, a quick glance. There was something missing. The
athlete was not looking.
At Yonkers the crowd was already beginning to stir and pull itself
together. At Highbridge it was dragging satchels from the bundle racks
and from beneath the seats. The little wolf man was closing up his
notebook, looking darkly around. For the thirtieth time the jeweled
hand felt of the dark hair, the elbow rested on the seat-top, and
then for the second time the arm slipped out and rested full length,
the hand touching an elbow which was now resting wearily, holding the
shoulder and supporting the chin of the man who was standing. There was
the throb as of an electric contact. The elbow rose ever so slightly
and pressed the fingers. The eyes of the wolf’s wife met the eyes of
her summer ideal, and there stood revealed a whole summer romance,
bright sun-shades, lovely flowers, green grass, trysting-places,
a dark, dangerous romance, with a grim, unsuspecting wolf in the
background. The arm was withdrawn, the hair touched, the window turned
to wearily. All was over.
And yet you could see how it might continue, could feel that it would.
In the very mood of the two was indicated ways and means. But now
this summer contact was temporarily over. The train rolled into Grand
Central Station. The crowd arose. There was a determined shuffle
forward of the wolf man, with his wife close behind him, and both
were gone. The athlete followed respectfully after. He gave the wolf
man and his wife a wide berth. He followed, however, and looked and
thought--backward into the summer, no doubt, and forward.
THE TRACK WALKER
If you have nothing else to do some day when you are passing through
the vast network of subway or railway tracks of any of the great
railways running northward or westward or eastward out of New York,
give a thought to the man who walks them for you, the man on whom your
safety, in this particular place, so much depends.
He is a peculiar individual. His work is so very exceptional, so very
different from your own. While you are sitting in your seat placidly
wondering whether you are going to have a pleasant evening at the
theater or whether the business to which you are about to attend will
be as profitable as you desire, he is out on the long track over which
you are speeding, calmly examining the bolts that hold the shining
metals together. Neither rain nor sleet may deter him. The presence
of intense heat or intense cold or dirt or dust is not permitted to
interfere with his work. Day after day, at all hours and in all sorts
of weather, he may be seen quietly plodding these iron highways, his
wrench and sledge crossed over his shoulders, and if it be night, or
in the subway, a lantern over one arm, his eyes riveted on the rails,
carefully watching to see if any bolts are loose or any spikes sprung.
In the subway or the New York Central Tunnel, upward of two hundred
cannon-ball flyers rush by him each day, on what might be called a
four-track or ten-track bowling alley, and yet he dodges them all for
perhaps as little as any laborer is paid. If he were not watchful, if
he did not perform his work carefully and well, if he had a touch of
malice or a feeling of vengefulness, he could wreck your train, mangle
your body and send you praying and screaming to your Maker. There would
be no sure way of detecting him.
Death lurks on the path he travels--subway or railway. Here, if
anywhere, it may be said to be constantly lurking. What with the noise,
which, in some places, like the subway and the various tunnels, is a
perfect and continuous uproar, the smoke, which hangs like a thick,
gloomy pall over everything, and the weak, ineffective lights which
shine out on your near approach like will-o’-the-wisps, the chances of
hearing and seeing the approach of any particular train are small. Side
arches, or small pockets in the walls, in some places, are provided for
the protection of the men, but these are not always to be reached in
time when a train thunders out of the gloom. If you look sharp you may
sometimes see a figure crouching in one of these as you scurry past. He
is so close to the grinding wheels that the dust and soot of them are
flung over him like a spray.
And yet for all this, the money that is paid these men is beggarly
small. The work they do is not considered exceptionally valuable.
Thirty to thirty-five cents an hour is all they are paid, and this
for ten to twelve hours’ work every day. That their lives are in
constant danger is not a factor in the matter. They are supposed to
work willingly for this, and they do. Only when one is picked off,
his body mangled by a passing train, is the grimness of the sacrifice
emphasized, and then only for a moment. The space which such accidents
receive in the public prints is scarcely more than a line.
And now, what would you say of men who would do this work for so
little? What estimate would you put on their mental capacity? Would you
say that they are worth only what they can be made to work for? One of
these men, an intelligent type of laborer, not a drinker nor one who
even smoked, attracted my attention once by the punctuality with which
he crossed a given spot on his beat. He was a middle-aged man, married,
and had three children. Day after day, week after week, he used to
arrive at this particular spot, his eye alert, his step quick, and when
a train approached he seemed to become aware of it as if by instinct.
When finally asked by me why he did not get something better to do, he
said: “I have no trade. Where could I get more?”
This man was killed by a train. Sure as was his instinct and keen his
eye, he was nevertheless caught one evening, and at the very place
where he deemed himself most sure. His head was completely obliterated,
and he had to be identified by his clothes. When he was removed,
another eager applicant was given his place, and now he is walking the
same tunnel with a half-dozen others. If you question these men they
will all tell you the same story. They do not want to do what they are
doing, but it is better than nothing.
Rough necessity, a sense of duty, and behold, we are as bricks and
stones, to be put anywhere in the wall, at the bottom of the foundation
in the dark, or at the top in the light. And who chooses for us?
[Illustration]
THE REALIZATION OF AN IDEAL
Any quality to which the heart of man aspires it may attain.
Would you have virtue in the world, establish it yourself.
Would you have tenderness, be tender. It is only by acting
in the name of that which you deem to be an ideal that its
realization is brought to pass.
In the crowded section of the lower East Side of New York, where
poverty reigns most distressingly, there stands a church which is
a true representative of the religion of the poor. It is an humble
building, crowded in among the flats and tenements that make the homely
neighborhood homelier, and sends a crude and distorted spire soaring
significantly toward the sky. There is but little light inside, for
that which the crowded flat-buildings about does not shut out is
weakened by the dusty stained-glass windows through which it has to
pass. An arched and dark-angled ceiling lends a sense of dignity to it
and over it all broods the solemn atmosphere of simplicity and faith.
It is in this church (and no doubt others of a similar character
elsewhere) that is constantly recurring the miracle of earthly faith.
Here it is, hour after hour, that one sees entering out of the welter
and the din of the streets those humble examples of the poor and
ignorant, who come here out of the cares of many other states to
rest a while and pray.
[Illustration: The Realization of an Ideal]
Near the door, between two large, gloomy pillars, there is a huge
wooden cross, whereon is hung a life-size figure of the Christ. The
hands and feet are pierced with the customary large forty-penny weight
nails. The side is opened with an appalling gash, the forehead is
crowned with the undying crown of thorns, which is driven down until
the flesh is made to bleed.
Before this figure you may see kneeling, any day, not one but many
specimens of those by whom the world has dealt very poorly. Their
hands are rough, their faces worn and dull; on the gnarled and weary
bodies are hung clothes of which you and I would be ashamed. Some carry
bags, others huge bundles. With hands extended upward, their faces
bearing the imprint of unquestioning faith, they look into the soft,
pain-exhausted face of the Christ, imploring that aid and protection
which the ordinary organization of society does not and cannot afford.
It is in this church, as it seems to me, that the hour’s great lesson
of tenderness is given.
I call the world’s attention to this picture with the assurance that
this is the great, the beautiful, and the important lesson. If there
be those who do not see in the body-racked figure of Christ an honest
reiteration of an actual event, who cannot honestly admit that such a
thing could have reasonably occurred, there is still a lesson just as
impressive and just as binding as though it had. These people whom you
see kneeling here and lifting up their hands present an actuality of
faith which cannot be denied. This Christ, if to you and to me a myth,
is to them a reality. And in so far as He is real to them He implies an
ardent desire on the part of the whole human race for tenderness and
mercy which it may be as well not to let go unanswered. For if Christ
did not suffer, if His whole life-story was a fiction and a delusion,
then all the yearning and all the faith of endless millions of men, who
have lived believing and who died adoring, only furnishes proof that
the race really needs such an ideal--that it must have tenderness and
mercy to fly to or it could not exist.
Man is a hopeful animal. He lives by the belief that some good must
accrue to him or that his life is not worth the living. It is this
faith then, that in disaster or hours of all but unendurable misery
causes him to turn in supplication to a higher power, and unless these
prayers are in some measure answered, that faith can and will be
destroyed, and life will and does become a shambles indeed. Hence, if
one would balance peace against danger and death it becomes necessary
for each to act as though the ideals of the world are in some sense
real and that he in person is sponsor for them.
These prayers that are put up, and these supplications, if not
addressed to the actual Christ, are nevertheless sent to that sum of
human or eternal wisdom or sympathy as you will of which we are a part.
If you believe that hope is beautiful and that mercy is a virtue, if
you would have the world more lovely and its inhabitants more kind, if
you would have goodness triumph and sorrow laid aside, then you must
be ready to make good to such supplicants and supplications as fall to
you the virtues thus pathetically appealed to. You must act in the name
of tenderness. If you cannot or will not, by so much is the realization
of human ideals, the possibility of living this life at all decently by
any, made less.
THE PUSHCART MAN
One of the most appealing and interesting elements in city life,
particularly that metropolitan city life which characterizes New York,
is the pushcart man. This curious creature of modest intellect and
varying nationality infests all the highways of the great city without
actually dominating any of them except a few streets on the East Side.
He is as hard-working, in the main, as he is ubiquitous. His cart is so
shabby, his stock in trade so small. If he actually earns a reasonable
wage it is by dint of great energy and mere luck, for the officers of
the law in apparently every community find in the presence of this
person an alluring source of profit and he is picked and grafted upon
as is perhaps no other member of the commonplace brotherhood of trade.
I like to see them trundling their two-wheeled vehicles about the city,
and I like to watch the patience and the care with which they exercise
their barely tolerated profession of selling. You see them everywhere;
vendors of fruit, vegetables, chestnuts on the East Side, selling even
dry goods, hardware, furs and groceries; and elsewhere again the Greeks
selling neckwear, flowers and curios, the latter things at which an
ordinary man would look askance, but which the lower levels of society
somehow find useful.
I have seen them tramping in long files across Williamsburg Bridge at
one, two and three o’clock in the morning to the Wallabout Market in
Brooklyn. And I have seen them clambering over hucksters’ wagons there
and elsewhere searching for the choicest bits, which they hope to sell
quickly. The market men have small consideration for them and will as
lief strike or kick at them as to reach a bargain with them.
For one thing, I remember watching an old pushcart vendor one
sweltering afternoon in summer from one o’clock in the afternoon
to seven the same evening, and I was never more impressed with the
qualities which make for success in this world, qualities which are
rare in American life, or in any life, for that matter, for patience
and good nature and sturdy charitable endurance are not common
qualities anywhere.
He had his stand at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, New York,
then the center of the shopping life of the city--or I had better
say that he attempted to keep it there, for he was not altogether
successful. He was a dark, gray-headed, grizzle-cheeked “guinea” or
“dago,” as he was scornfully dubbed by the Irish policeman who made his
life a burden. His eye was keen, his motion quick, his general bodily
make-up active, despite the fact that he was much over fifty years of
age.
“That’s a good one,” the Irish policeman observed to me in passing,
noting that I was looking at him. “He’s a fox. A fine time I have
keeping my eye on him.”
The old Italian seemed to realize that we were talking about him for
he shifted the position of his cart nervously, moving it forward a
few feet. Finding himself undisturbed, he remained there. Presently,
however, a heavy ice-wagon lumbered up from the west and swung in with
a reckless disregard of the persons, property and privileges of the
vendors who were thus unobtrusively grouped together. At the same time
the young Irish-American driver raised his voice in a mighty bellow:
“Get out of there! Move on out! What the hell d’ye want to block up the
street for, anyway? Go on!”
With facile manipulation of his reins he threw his wagon tongue
deliberately among them and did his best to cause some damage in order
to satisfy his own passing irritation.
All three vendors jumped to the task of extricating their carts, but I
could not help distinguishing the oldest of the three for the dexterity
with which he extricated his and the peaceful manner in which he pushed
it away. The lines of his face remained practically undisturbed. All
his actions denoted a remarkable usedness to difficulty. Not once did
he look back, either to frown or complain. Instead, his only concern
was to discover the whereabouts of the policeman. For him he searched
the great crowd in every direction, even craning his neck a little.
When he had satisfied himself that the coast was clear, he pushed in
close to the sidewalk again and began his wait for customers.
While he was thus waiting the condition of his cart and the danger of
an unobserved descent on the part of a policeman engaged his entire
attention. Some few peaches had fallen awry, and these he busily
straightened. One pile of those which he was selling “two for five”
had now become low and this he replenished from baskets of hitherto
undisturbed peaches, carefully dusting the fuzz off each one with
a small brush in order to heighten their beauty and add to the
attractiveness of the pile. Incidentally his eye was upon the crowd,
for every once in a while his arm would stretch out in a most dramatic
manner, inviting a possible purchaser with his subtle glance.
[Illustration: The Push-cart Man]
“Peaches! Fine! Peaches! Fine! Fine!”
Whenever a customer came close enough, these words were called to him
in a soft, persuasive tone. He would bend gracefully forward, pick up
a peach as if the mere lifting of it were a sufficient inducement,
take up a paper bag as if the possible transaction were an assured
thing, and look engagingly into the passerby’s eyes. When it was really
settled that a purchase was intended, no word, however brief, could
fail to convey to him the import of the situation and the number of
peaches desired.
“Five--ten.” The mention of a sum of money. “These,” or your hand held
up, would bring quickly what you desired.
Grace was the perfect word with which to describe this man’s actions.
From one until seven o’clock of this sweltering afternoon, every moment
of his time was occupied. The police made it difficult for him to earn
his living, for the simple reason that they were constantly making him
move on. Not only the regular policemen of the beat, but the officers
of the crossing, and the wandering wayfarers from other precincts all
came forward at different times and hurried him away.
“Get out, now!” ordered one, in a rough and even brutal tone. “Move on.
If I catch you around here any more to-day I’ll lock you up.”
The old Italian lowered his eyes and hustled his cart out into the sun.
“And don’t you come back here any more,” the policeman called after
him; then turning to me he exclaimed: “Begob, a man pays a big license
to keep a store, and these dagos come in front of his place and take
all his business. They ought to be locked up--all of them.”
“Haven’t they a right to stand still for a moment?” I inquired.
“They have,” he said, “but they haven’t any right to stand in front of
any man’s place when he don’t want them there. They drive me crazy,
keeping them out of here. I’ll shoot some of them yet.”
I looked about to see what if any business could be injured by their
stopping and selling fruit, but found only immense establishments
dealing in dry goods, drugs, furniture and the like. Some one may have
complained, but it looked much more like an ordinary case of official
bumptiousness or irritation.
At that time, being interested in such types, I chose to follow this
one, to see what sort of a home life lay behind him. It was not
difficult. By degrees, and much harried by the police, his cart with
only a partially depleted stock was pushed to the lower East Side,
in Elizabeth Street, to be exact. Here he and his family--a wife and
three or four children--occupied two dingy rooms in a typical East Side
tenement. Whether he was at peace with his swarthy, bewrinkled old
helpmate I do not know, but he appeared to be, and with his several
partially grown children. On his return, two of them, a boy and a
girl, greeted him cheerfully, and later, finding me interested and
following him, and assuming that I was an officer of the law, quickly
explained to me what their father did.
“He’s a peddler,” said the boy. “He peddles fruit.”
“And where does he get his fruit?” I asked.
“Over by the Wallabout. He goes over in the morning.”
I recalled seeing the long procession of vendors beating a devious way
over the mile or more of steel bridge that spans the East River at
Delancey Street, at one and two and three of a winter morning. Could
this old man be one of these tramping over and tramping back before
daylight?
“Do you mean to say that he goes over every day?”
“Sure.”
The old gentleman, by now sitting by a front window waiting for his
dinner and gazing down into the sun-baked street not at all cooled by
the fall of night, looked down and for some reason smiled. I presume he
had seen me earlier in the afternoon. He could not know what we were
talking about, however, but he sensed something. Or perhaps it was
merely a feeling of the need of being pleasant.
Upon making my way to the living room and kitchen, as I did, knowing
that I could offer a legal pretext, I found the same shabby and dark,
but not dirty. An oil stove burned dolefully in the rear. Mrs. Pushcart
Man was busy about the evening meal.
The smirks. The genuflections.
“And how much does your father make a day?” I finally asked, after some
other questions.
This is a lawless question anywhere. It earned its own reward. The son
inquired of the father in Italian. The latter tactfully shrugged his
shoulders and held out his hands. His wife laughed and shrugged her
shoulders.
“‘One, two dollars,’ he says,” said the boy.
There was no going back of that. He might have made more. Why should he
tell anybody--the police or any one else?
And so I came away.
But the case of this one seemed to me to be so typical of the lot
of many in our great cities. All of us are so pushed by ambition as
well as necessity. Yet all the feelings and intuitions of the average
American-born citizen are more or less at variance with so shrewd an
acceptance of difficulties. We hurry more, fret and strain more, and
yet on the whole pretend to greater independence. But have we it? I am
sure not. When one looks at the vast army of clerks and underlings,
pushing, scheming, straining at their social leashes so hopelessly
and wearing out their hearts and brains in a fruitless effort to be
what they cannot, one knows that they are really no better off and one
wishes for them a measure of this individual’s enduring patience.
A VANISHED SEASIDE RESORT
At Broadway and Twenty-third Street, where later, on this and some
other ground, the once famed Flatiron Building was placed, there stood
at one time a smaller building, not more than six stories high, the
northward looking blank wall of which was completely covered with a
huge electric sign which read:
SWEPT BY OCEAN BREEZES
THE GREAT HOTELS
PAIN’S FIREWORKS
SOUSA’S BAND
SEIDL’S GREAT ORCHESTRA
THE RACES
NOW--MANHATTAN BEACH--NOW
Each line was done in a different color of lights, light green for the
ocean breezes, white for Manhattan Beach and the great hotels, red for
Pain’s fireworks and the races, blue and yellow for the orchestra and
band. As one line was illuminated the others were made dark, until
all had been flashed separately, when they would again be flashed
simultaneously and held thus for a time. Walking up or down Broadway
of a hot summer night, this sign was an inspiration and an invitation.
It made one long to go to Manhattan Beach. I had heard as much or more
about Atlantic City and Coney Island, but this blazing sign lifted
Manhattan Beach into rivalry with fairyland.
“Where is Manhattan Beach?” I asked of my brother once on my first
coming to New York. “Is it very far from here?”
“Not more than fifteen miles,” he replied. “That’s the place you ought
to see. I’ll take you there on Sunday if you will stay that long.”
Since I had been in the city only a day or two, and Sunday was close at
hand, I agreed. When Sunday came we made our way, via horse-cars first
to the East Thirty-fourth Street ferry and then by ferry and train,
eventually reaching the beach about noon.
Never before, except possibly at the World’s Fair in Chicago, had I
ever seen anything to equal this seaward-moving throng. The day was hot
and bright, and all New York seemed anxious to get away. The crowded
streets and ferries and trains! Indeed, Thirty-fourth Street near the
ferry was packed with people carrying bags and parasols and all but
fighting each other to gain access to the dozen or more ticket windows.
The boat on which we crossed was packed to suffocation, and all such
ferries as led to Manhattan Beach of summer week-ends for years
afterward, or until the automobile arrived, were similarly crowded.
The clerk and his prettiest girl, the actress and her admirer, the
actor and his playmate, brokers, small and exclusive tradesmen, men
of obvious political or commercial position, their wives, daughters,
relatives and friends, all were outbound toward this much above the
average resort.
It was some such place, I found, as Atlantic City and Asbury Park are
to-day, yet considerably more restricted. There was but one way to get
there, unless one could travel by yacht or sail-boat, and that was
via train service across Long Island. As for carriage roads to this
wonderful place there were none, the intervening distance being in part
occupied by marsh grass and water. The long, hot, red trains leaving
Long Island City threaded a devious way past many pretty Long Island
villages, until at last, leaving possible home sites behind, the road
took to the great meadows on trestles, and traversing miles of bending
marsh grass astir in the wind, and crossing a half hundred winding and
mucky lagoons where lay water as agate in green frames and where were
white cranes, their long legs looking like reeds, standing in the water
or the grass, and the occasional boat of a fisherman hugging some mucky
bank, it arrived finally at the white sands of the sea and this great
scene. White sails of small yachts, the property of those who used
some of these lagoons as a safe harbor, might be seen over the distant
grass, their sails full spread, as one sped outward on these trains. It
was romance, poetry, fairyland.
And the beach, with its great hotels, held and contained all summer
long all that was best and most leisurely and pleasure-loving in New
York’s great middle class of that day. There were, as I knew all the
time, other and more exclusive or worse beaches, such as those at
Newport and Coney Island, but this was one which served a world which
was plainly between the two, a world of politicians and merchants,
and dramatic and commercial life generally. I never saw so many
prosperous-looking people in one place, more with better and smarter
clothes, even though they were a little showy. The straw hat with
its blue or striped ribbon, the flannel suit with its accompanying
white shoes, light cane, the pearl-gray derby, the check suit, the
diamond and pearl pin in necktie, the silk shirt. What a cool, summery,
airy-fairy realm!
And the women! I was young and not very experienced at the time, hence
the effect, in part. But as I stepped out of the train at the beach
that day and walked along the boardwalks which paralleled the sea,
looking now at the blue waters and their distant white sails, now at
the great sward of green before the hotels with its formal beds of
flowers and its fountains, and now at the enormous hotels themselves,
the Manhattan and the Oriental, each with its wide veranda packed with
a great company seated at tables or in rockers, eating, drinking,
smoking and looking outward over gardens to the blue sea beyond, I
could scarcely believe my eyes--the airy, colorful, summery costumes of
the women who made it, the gay, ribbony, flowery hats, the brilliant
parasols, the beach swings and chairs and shades and the floating
diving platforms. And the costumes of the women bathing. I had never
seen a seaside bathing scene before. It seemed to me that the fabled
days of the Greeks had returned. These were nymphs, nereids, sirens in
truth. Old Triton might well have raised his head above the blue waves
and sounded his spiral horn.
And now my brother explained to me that here in these two enormous
hotels were crowded thousands who came here and lived the summer
through. The wealth, as I saw it then, which permitted this! Some few
Western senators and millionaires brought their yachts and private
cars. Senator Platt, the State boss, along with one or more of the
important politicians of the State, made the Oriental, the larger and
more exclusive of the two hotels, his home for the summer. Along the
verandas of these two hotels might be seen of a Saturday afternoon
or of a Sunday almost the entire company of Brooklyn and New York
politicians and bosses, basking in the shade and enjoying the beautiful
view and the breezes. It was no trouble for any one acquainted with the
city to point out nearly all of those most famous on Broadway and in
the commercial and political worlds. They swarmed here. They lolled and
greeted and chatted. The bows and the recognitions were innumerable. By
dusk it seemed as though nearly all had nodded or spoken to each other.
And the interesting and to me different character of the amusements
offered here! Out over the sea, at one end of the huge Manhattan Hotel,
had been built a circular pavilion of great size, in which by turns
were housed Seidl’s great symphony orchestra and Sousa’s band. Even now
I can hear the music carried by the wind of the sea. As we strolled
along the beach wall or sat upon one or the other of the great verandas
we could hear the strains of either the orchestra or the band. Beyond
the hotels, in a great field surrounded by a board fence, began at
dusk, at which time the distant lighthouses over the bay were beginning
to blink, a brilliant display of fireworks, almost as visible to the
public as to those who paid a dollar to enter the grounds. Earlier in
the afternoon I saw many whose only desire appeared to be to reach the
race track in time for the afternoon races. There were hundreds and
even thousands of others to whom the enclosed beach appeared to be all.
The hundreds of dining-tables along the veranda of the Manhattan facing
the sea seemed to call to still other hundreds. And yet again the walks
among the parked flowers, the wide walk along the sea, and the more
exclusive verandas of the Oriental, which provided no restaurant but
plenty of rocking-chairs, seemed to draw still other hundreds, possibly
thousands.
But the beauty of it all, the wonder, the airy, insubstantial, almost
transparent quality of it all! Never before had I seen the sea, and
here it was before me, a great, blue, rocking floor, its distant
horizon dotted with white sails and the smoke of but faintly visible
steamers dissolving in the clear air above them. Wide-winged gulls were
flying by. Hardy rowers in red and yellow and green canoes paddled
an uncertain course beyond the breaker line. Flowers most artfully
arranged decorated the parapet of the porch, and about us rose a babel
of laughing and joking voices, while from somewhere came the strains of
a great orchestra, this time within one of the hotels, mingling betimes
with the smash of the waves beyond the seawall. And as dusk came on,
the lights of the lighthouses, and later the glimmer of the stars above
the water, added an impressive and to me melancholy quality to it all.
It was so insubstantial and yet so beautiful. I was so wrought up by it
that I could scarcely eat. Beauty, beauty, beauty--that was the message
and the import of it all, beauty that changes and fades and will
not stay. And the eternal search for beauty. By the hard processes
of trade, profit and loss, and the driving forces of ambition and
necessity and the love of and search for pleasure, this very wonderful
thing had been accomplished. Unimportant to me then, how hard some of
these people looked, how selfish or vain or indifferent! By that which
they sought and bought and paid for had this thing been achieved, and
it was beautiful. How sweet the sea here, how beautiful the flowers
and the music and these parading men and women. I saw women and girls
for the favor of any one of whom, in the first flush of youthful
ebullience and ignorance, I imagined I would have done anything. And
at the very same time I was being seized with a tremendous depression
and dissatisfaction with myself. Who was I? What did I amount to?
What must one do to be worthy of all this? How little of all this had
I known or would ever know! How little of true beauty or fortune or
love! It mattered not that life for me was only then beginning, that I
was seeing much and might yet see much more; my heart was miserable.
I could have invested and beleaguered the world with my unimportant
desires and my capacity. How dare life, with its brutal non-perception
of values, withhold so much from one so worthy as myself and give so
much to others? Why had not the dice of fortune been loaded in my favor
instead of theirs? Why, why, why? I made a very doleful companion for
my very good brother, I am sure.
And yet, at that very time I was asking myself who was I that I should
complain so, and why was I not content to wait? Those about me, as
I told myself, were better swimmers, that was all. There was nothing
to be done about it. Life cared no whit for anything save strength
and beauty. Let one complain as one would, only beauty or strength
or both would save one. And all about, in sky and sea and sun, was
that relentless force, illimitable oceans of it, which seemed not to
know man, yet one tiny measure of which would make him of the elect
of the earth. In the dark, over the whispering and muttering waters,
and under the bright stars and in eyeshot of the lamps of the sea, I
hung brooding, listening, thinking; only, after a time, to return to
the hot city and the small room that was mine to meditate on what life
could do for one if it would. The flowers it could strew in one’s path!
The beauty it could offer one--without price, as I then imagined--the
pleasures with which it could beset one’s path.
With what fever and fury it is that the heart seeks in youth. How
intensely the little flame of life burns! And yet where is its true
haven? What is it that will truly satisfy it? Has any one ever
found it? In subsequent years I came by some of the things which my
soul at that time so eagerly craved, the possession of which I then
imagined would satisfy me, but was mine or any other heart ever really
satisfied? No. And again no.
Each day the sun rises, and with it how few with whom a sense of
contentment dwells! For each how many old dreams unfulfilled, old and
new needs unsatisfied. Onward, onward is the lure; what life may still
do, not what it has done, is the all-important. And to ask of any one
that he count his blessings is but an ungrateful bit of meddling at
best. He will none of it. At twenty, at thirty, at sixty, at eighty,
the lure is still there, however feeble. More and ever more. Only the
wearing of the body, the snapping of the string, the weakening of the
inherent urge, ends the search. And with it comes the sad by-thought
that what is not realized here may never again be anywhere. For if
not here, where is that which could satisfy it as it is here? Of all
pathetic dreams that which pictures a spiritual salvation elsewhere for
one who has failed in his dreams here is the thinnest and palest, a
beggar’s dole indeed. But that youthful day by the sea!
* * * * *
Twenty-five years later I chanced to visit a home on the very site
of one of these hotels, a home which was a part of a new real-estate
division. But of that old, sweet, fair, summery life not a trace. Gone
were the great hotels, the wall, the flowers, the parklike nature of
the scene. In twenty-five years the beautiful circular pavilion had
fallen into the sea and a part of the grounds of the great Manhattan
Hotel had been eaten away by winter storms. The Jersey Coast,
Connecticut, Atlantic City, aided by the automobile, had superseded
and effaced all this. Even the great Oriental, hanging on for a few
years and struggling to accommodate itself to new conditions, had at
last been torn down. Only the beach remained, and even that was changed
to meet new conditions. The land about and beyond the hotels had been
filled in, planted to trees, divided by streets and sold to those who
craved the freshness of this seaside isle.
But of this older place not one of those with whom I visited knew
aught. They had never seen it, had but dimly heard of it. So clouds
gather in the sky, are perchance illuminated by the sun, dissolve, and
are gone. And youth, viewing old realms of grandeur or terror, views
the world as new, untainted, virgin, a realm to be newly and freshly
exploited--as, in truth, it ever is.
But we who were----!
[Illustration]
THE BREAD-LINE
It is such an old subject in New York. It has been here so long. For
thirty-five or forty years newspapers and magazines have discussed the
bread-line, and yet there it is, as healthy and vigorous a feature of
the city as though it were something to be desired. And it has grown
from a few applicants to many, from a small line to a large one. And
now it is a sight, an institution, like a cathedral or a monument.
A curious thing, when you come to think of it. Poverty is not
desirable. Its dramatic aspect may be worth something to those who are
not poor, for prosperous human nature takes considerable satisfaction
in proclaiming: “Lord, I am not as other men,” and having it proved
to itself. But this thing, from any point of view is a pathetic and a
disagreeable thing, something you would feel the city as a corporation
would prefer to avoid. And yet there it is.
For the benefit of those who have not seen it I will describe it again,
though the task is a wearisome one and I have quite another purpose
than that of description in doing so. The scene is the side door of
a bakery, once located at Ninth Street and Broadway, and now moved
to Tenth and Broadway, the line extending toward the west and Fifth
Avenue, where formerly it was to the east and Fourth Avenue. It is
composed of the usual shabby figures, men of all ages, from fifteen
or younger to seventy. The line is not allowed to form before eleven
o’clock, and at this hour perhaps a single figure will shamble around
the corner and halt on the edge of the sidewalk. Then others, for
though they appear to come slowly, some dubiously, they almost all
arrive one at a time. Haste is seldom manifest in their approach.
Figures appear from every direction, limping slowly, slouching
stupidly, or standing with assumed or real indifference, until the end
of the line is reached, when they take their places and wait.
A low murmur of conversation begins after a time, but for the most part
the men stand in stupid, unbroken silence. Here and there may be two
or three talkative ones, and if you pass close enough you will hear
every topic of the times discussed or referred to, except those which
are supposed to interest the poor. Wretchedness, poverty, hunger and
distress are seldom mentioned. The possibilities of a match between
prize-ring favorites, the day’s evidence in the latest murder trial,
the chance of war somewhere, the latest improvements in automobiles, a
flying machine, the prosperity or depression of some other portion of
the world, or the mistakes of the government at Washington--these, or
others like them, are the topics of whatever conversation is held. It
is for the most part a rambling, disconnected conversation.
“Wait until Dreyfus gets out of prison,” said one to his little
black-eyed neighbor one night, years ago, “and you’ll see them guys
fallin’ on his neck.”
“Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t,” the other muttered. “Them
Frenchmen ain’t strong for Jews.”
The passing of a Broadway car awakens a vague idea of progress, and
some one remarks: “They’ll have them things runnin’ by compressed air
before we know it.”
“I’ve driv’ mule-cars by here myself,” replies another.
A few moments before twelve a great box of bread is pushed outside
the door, and exactly on the hour a portly, round-faced German takes
his position by it, and calls: “Ready!” The whole line at once, like
a well-drilled company of regulars, moves quickly, in good marching
time, diagonally across the sidewalk to the inner edge and pushes, with
only the noise of tramping feet, past the box. Each man reaches for a
loaf and, breaking line, wanders off by himself. Most of them do not
even glance at their bread but put it indifferently under their coats
or in their pockets. They betake themselves heaven knows where--to
lodging houses, park benches (if it be summer), hall-bedrooms possibly,
although in most cases it is doubtful if they possess one, or to
charitable missions of the poor. It is a small thing to get, a loaf
of dry bread, but from three hundred to four hundred men will gather
nightly from one year’s end to the other to get it, and so it has its
significance.
The thing that I protest against is that it endures. It would be so
easy, as it seems to me, in a world of even moderate organization to
do something that would end a spectacle of this kind once and for all,
if it were no more than a law to destroy the inefficient. I say this
not in cruelty but more particularly with the intention of awakening
thought. There is so much to do. In America the nation’s roads have not
even begun to be made. Over vast stretches of the territory of the
world the land is not tilled. There is not a tithe made of what the
rank and file could actually use. Most of us are wanting strenuously
for something.
A rule that would cause the arrest of a man in this situation would
be merciful. A compulsory labor system that would involve regulation
of hours, medical treatment, restoration of health, restoration of
courage, would soon put an end to the man who is “down and out.” He
would of course be down and out to the extent that he had fallen into
the clutches of this machine, but he would at least be on the wheel
that might bring him back or destroy him utterly. It is of no use
to say that life cannot do anything for the inefficient. It can. It
does. And the haphazard must, and in the main does, give way to the
well-organized. And the injured man need not be allowed to bleed to
death. If a man is hurt accidentally a hospital wagon comes quickly. If
he is broken in spirit, moneyless, afraid, nothing is done. Yet he is
in far greater need of the hospital wagon than the other. The treatment
should be different, that is all.
[Illustration]
OUR RED SLAYER
If you wish to see an exemplification of the law of life, the survival
of one by the failure and death of another, go some day to any one of
the great abattoirs which to-day on the East River, or in Jersey City,
or elsewhere near the great metropolis receive and slay annually the
thousands and hundreds of thousands of animals that make up a part of
the city’s meat supply. And there be sure and see, also, the individual
who, as your agent and mine, is vicariously responsible for the awful
slaughter. You will find him in a dark, red pit, blood-covered,
standing in a sea of blood, while hour after hour and day after day
there passes before him a line of screaming animals, hung by one leg,
head down, and rolling steadily along a rail, which is slanted to get
the benefit of gravity, while he, knife in hand, jabs unweariedly at
their throats, the task of cutting their throats so that they may die
of bleeding and exhaustion having become a wearisome and commonplace
labor, one which he scarcely notices at all. He is a blood-red slayer,
this individual, a butcher by trade, big, brawny, muscular, but
clothed from head to foot in a tarpaulin coat and cap, which from long
spattering by the blood of animals he has slain, have become this
darksome red. Day after day and month after month here you may see
him--your agent and mine--the great world wagging its way, the task of
destroying life never becoming less arduous, the line of animals never
becoming less thin.
A peculiar life to lead, is it not? One would think a man of any
sensibility would become heartsick, or at the least, revolted and
disgusted; but this man does not seem to be. Rather, he takes it as a
matter of course, a thing which has no significance, any more than the
eating of his food or the washing of his hands. Since it is a matter
of business or of living, and seeing that others live by his labor, he
does not care.
But it has significance. These creatures we see thus automatically and
hopelessly trundling down a rail of death are really not so far removed
from us in the scale of existence. You will find them but a little way
down the ladder of mind, climbing slowly and patiently towards those
heights to which we think we have permanently attained. There is a
force back of them, a law which wills their existence, and they do not
part with it readily. There is a terror of death for them as there is
for us, and you will see it here exemplified, the horror that makes
them run cold with the knowledge of their situation.
You will hear them squeal, the hogs; you will hear them baa, the sheep;
you will hear the grinding clank of the chains and see the victims
dropping: hogs, half-alive, into the vats of boiling water; the sheep
into the range of butchers and carvers who flay them half-alive;
while our red representative--yours and mine--stands there, stabbing,
stabbing, stabbing, that we who are not sheep or hogs and who pay him
for his labor may live and be merry and not die. Strange, isn’t it?
A gruesome labor. A gruesome picture. We have been flattering ourselves
these many centuries that our civilization had somehow got away from
this old-time law of life living on death, but here amid all the gauds
and refinements of our metropolitan life we find ourselves confronted
by it, and here stands our salaried red man who murders our victims for
us, while we look on indifferently, or stranger yet, remain blissfully
unconscious that the bloody labor is in existence.
We live in cities such as this; crowd ourselves in ornamented chambers
as much as possible; walk paths from which all painful indications of
death have been eliminated, and think ourselves clean and kind and free
of the old struggle, and yet behold our salaried agent ever at work;
and ever the cry of the destroyed is rising to what heaven we know not,
nor to what gods. We dream dreams of universal brotherhood and prate of
the era of coming peace, but this slaughter is a stumbling-block over
which we may not readily vault. It augurs something besides peace and
love in this world. It forms a great commentary on the arrangement of
the universe.
And yet this revolting picture is not without its relieving feature,
though alas! the little softness visible points no way by which the
victims may be spared. The very butcher is a human being, a father with
little children. One day, after a discouraging hour of this terrible
panorama, I walked out into the afternoon sunlight only to brood over
the tragedy and terror of it all. This man struck me as a demon, a
chill, phlegmatic, animal creature whose horrible eyes would contain no
light save that of non-understanding and indifference. Moved by some
curious impulse, I made my way to his home--to the sty where I expected
to find him groveling--and found instead a little cottage, set about
with grass and flowers, and under a large tree a bench. Here was my
murderer sitting, here taking his evening’s rest.
The sun was going down, the shadows beginning to fall. In the cool of
the evening he was taking his ease, a rough, horny-handed man, large
and uncouth, but on his knee a child. And such a child--young, not over
two years, soft and delicate, with the bloom of babyhood on its cheek
and the light of innocence in its eye; and here was this great murderer
stroking it gently, the red man touching it softly with his hand.
I stood and looked at this picture, the thought of the blood-red pit
coming back to me, the gouts of blood, the knife, the cries of his
victims, the death throes; and then at this green grass and this tree
and the father and his child.
Heaven forefend against the mysteries of life and its dangers. We know
in part, we believe in part, but these things surpass the understanding
of man and make our humble consciousness reel with the inexplicable
riddle of existence. To live, to die, to be generous, to be brutal! How
in the scheme of things are the conditions and feelings inextricably
jumbled, and how we grope and stumble through our days to our graves!
[Illustration]
WHENCE THE SONG
Along Broadway in the height of the theatrical season, but more
particularly in that laggard time from June to September, when the
great city is given over to those who may not travel, and to actors
seeking engagements, there is ever to be seen a certain representative
figure, now one individual and now another, of a world so singular that
it might well engage the pen of a Balzac or that of a Cervantes. I have
in mind an individual whose high hat and smooth Prince Albert coat are
still a delicious presence. In his coat lapel is a ruddy boutonnière,
in his hand a novel walking-stick. His vest is of a gorgeous and
affluent pattern, his shoes shiny-new and topped with pearl-gray spats.
With dignity he carries his body and his chin. He is the cynosure of
many eyes, the envy of all men, and he knows it. He is the successful
author of the latest popular song.
Along Broadway, from Union to Greeley Squares, any fair day during
the period of his artistic elevation, he is to be seen. Past the rich
shops and splendid theaters he betakes himself with leisurely grace. In
Thirtieth Street he may turn for a few moments, but it is only to say
good-morning to his publishers. In Twenty-eighth Street, where range
the host of those who rival his successful house, he stops to talk with
lounging actors and ballad singers. Well-known variety stars nod to
him familiarly. Women whose sole claim to distinction lies in their
knack of singing a song, smile in greeting as he passes. Occasionally
there comes a figure of a needy ballad-monger, trudging from publisher
to publisher with an unavailable manuscript, who turns upon him, in
passing, the glint of an envious glance. To these he is an important
figure, satisfied as much with their envy as with their praise, for is
not this also his due, the reward of all who have triumphed?
I have in mind another figure, equally singular: a rouged and powdered
little maiden, rich in feathers and ornaments of the latest vogue;
gloved in blue and shod in yellow; pretty, self-assured, daring, and
even bold. There has gone here all the traditional maidenly reserve you
would expect to find in one so young and pleasing, and yet she is not
evil. The daughter of a Chicago butcher, you knew her when she first
came to the city--a shabby, wondering little thing, clerk to a music
publisher transferring his business east, and all eyes for the marvels
of city life.
Gradually the scenes and superlatives of elegance, those showy men and
women coming daily to secure or sell songs, have aroused her longings
and ambitions. Why may not she sing, why not she be a theatrical
celebrity? She will. The world shall not keep her down. That elusive
and almost imaginary company known as _they_, whose hands are ever
against the young, shall not hold her back.
Behold, for a time, then, she has gone; and now, elegant, jingling with
silver ornaments, hale and merry from good living, she has returned.
To-day she is playing at one of the foremost vaudeville houses.
To-morrow she leaves for Pittsburgh. Her one object is still a salary
of five hundred or a thousand a week and a three-sheet litho of herself
in every window and upon every billboard.
“I’m all right now,” she will tell you gleefully. “I’m way ahead of the
knockers. They can’t keep me down. You ought to have seen the reception
I got in Pittsburgh. Say, it was the biggest yet.”
Blessed be Pittsburgh, which has honored one who has struggled so hard,
and you say so.
“Are you here for long?”
“Only this week. Come up and see my turn. Hey, cabbie!”
A passing cabman turns in close to the walk with considerable alacrity.
“Take me to Keith’s. So long. Come up and see my turn to-night.”
This is the woman singer, the complement of the male of the same art,
the couple who make for the acceptance and spread of the popular song
as well as the fame of its author. They sing them in every part of the
country, and here in New York, returned from a long season on the road,
they form a very important portion of this song-writing, song-singing
world. They and the authors and the successful publishers--but we may
simplify by yet another picture.
In Twenty-seventh or Twenty-eighth Street, or anywhere along Broadway
from Madison to Greeley Squares, are the parlors of a score of
publishers, gentlemen who coördinate this divided world for song
publishing purposes. There is an office and a reception-room; a
music-chamber, where songs are tried, and a stock room. Perhaps, in
the case of the larger publishers, the music-rooms are two or three,
but the air of each is much the same. Rugs, divans, imitation palms
make this publishing house more bower than office. Three or four
pianos give to each chamber a parlor-like appearance. The walls are
hung with the photos of celebrities, neatly framed, celebrities of the
kind described. In the private music-rooms, rocking-chairs. A boy or
two waits to bring _professional copies_ at a word. A salaried pianist
or two wait to run over pieces which the singer may desire to hear.
Arrangers wait to make orchestrations or take down newly schemed out
melodies which the popular composer himself cannot play. He has evolved
the melody by a process of whistling and must have its fleeting beauty
registered before it escapes him forever. Hence the salaried arranger.
Into these parlors then, come the mixed company of this distinctive
world: authors who have or have not succeeded, variety artists who
have some word from touring fellows or know the firm, masters of small
bands throughout the city or the country, of which the name is legion,
orchestra-leaders of Bowery theaters and uptown variety halls, and
singers.
“You haven’t got a song that will do for a tenor, have you?”
The inquirer is a little, stout, ruddy-faced Irish boy from the
gas-house district. His common clothes are not out of the ordinary
here, but they mark him as possibly a non-professional seeking free
copies.
“Sure, let me see. For what do you want it?”
“Well, I’m from the Arcadia Pleasure Club. We’re going to give a
little entertainment next Wednesday and we want some songs.”
“I think I’ve got just the thing you want. Wait till I call the boy.
Harry! Bring me some professional copies of ballads.”
The youth is probably a representative of one of the many Tammany
pleasure organizations, the members of which are known for their
propensity to gather about east and west side corners at night and
sing. One or two famous songs are known to have secured their start
by the airing given them in this fashion on the street corners of the
great city.
Upon his heels treads a lady whose ruffled sedateness marks her as one
unfamiliar with this half-musical, half-theatrical atmosphere.
“I have a song I would like to have you try over, if you care to.”
The attending publisher hesitates before even extending a form of
reception.
“What sort of a song is it?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know. I guess you’d call it a sentimental
ballad. If you’d hear it I think you might----”
“We are so over-stocked with songs now, Madam, that I don’t believe
there’s much use in our hearing it. Could you come in next Friday?
We’ll have more leisure then and can give you more attention.”
The lady looks the failure she has scored, but retreats, leaving the
ground clear for the chance arrival of the real author, the individual
whose position is attested by one hit or mayhap many. His due is that
deference which all publishers, if not the public, feel called upon
to render, even if at the time he may have no reigning success.
[Illustration: Whence the Song]
“Hello, Frank, how are you? What’s new?”
The author, cane in hand, may know of nothing in particular.
“Sit down. How are things with you, anyhow?”
“Oh, so-so.”
“That new song of yours will be out Friday. We have a rush order on it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, and I’ve got good news for you. Windom is going to sing it next
year with the minstrels. He was in here the other day and thought it
was great.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“That song’s going to go, all right. You haven’t got any others, have
you?”
“No, but I’ve got a tune. Would you mind having one of the boys take it
down for me?”
“Surest thing you know. Here, Harry! Call Hatcher.”
Now comes the pianist and arranger, and a hearing and jotting down of
the new melody in a private room. The favored author may have piano and
pianist for an indefinite period any time. Lunch with the publishers
awaits him if he remains until noon. His song, when ready, is heard
with attention. The details which make for its publication are rushed.
His royalties are paid with that rare smile which accompanies the
payment of anything to one who earns money for another. He is to be
petted, conciliated, handled with gloves.
At his heels, perhaps, another author, equally successful, maybe, but
almost intolerable because of certain marked eccentricities of life and
clothing. He is a negro, small, slangy, strong in his cups, but able to
write a good song, occasionally a truly pathetic ballad.
“Say, where’s that gem o’ mine?”
“What?”
“That effusion.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That audience-killer--that there thing that’s goin’ to sweep the
country like wildfire--that there song.”
Much laughter and apology.
“It will be here Friday, Gussie.”
“Thought it was to be here last Monday?”
“So it was, but the printers didn’t get it done. You know how those
things are, Gussie.”
“I know. Gimme twenty-five dollars.”
“Sure. But what are you going to do with it?”
“Never you mind. Gimme twenty-five bones. To-morrow’s rent day up my
way.”
Twenty-five is given as if it were all a splendid joke. Gussie is a
bad negro, one day radiant in bombastic clothing, the next wretched
from dissipation and neglect. He has no royalty coming to him, really.
That is, he never accepts royalty. All his songs are sold outright. But
these have earned the house so much that if he were to demand royalties
the sum to be paid would beggar anything he has ever troubled to ask
for.
“I wouldn’t take no royalty,” he announces at one time, with a
bombastic and yet mellow negro emphasis, which is always amusing. “Doan
want it. Too much trouble. All I want is money when I needs it and
wants it.”
Seeing that nearly every song that he writes is successful, this is a
most equitable arrangement. He could have several thousand instead of a
few hundred, but being shiftless he does not care. Ready money is the
thing with him, twenty-five or fifty when he needs it.
And then those “peerless singers of popular ballads,” as their programs
announce them, men and women whose pictures you will see upon every
song-sheet, their physiognomy underscored with their own “Yours
Sincerely” in their own handwriting. Every day they are here, arriving
and departing, carrying the latest songs to all parts of the land.
These are the individuals who in their own estimation “make” the songs
the successes they are. In all justice, they have some claim to the
distinction. One such, raising his or her voice nightly in a melodic
interpretation of a new ballad, may, if the music be sufficiently
catchy, bring it so thoroughly to the public ear as to cause it to
begin to sell. These individuals are not unaware of their services in
the matter, nor slow to voice their claims. In flocks and droves they
come, whenever good fortune brings “the company” to New York or the end
of the season causes them to return, to tell of their success and pick
new songs for the ensuing season. Also to collect certain pre-arranged
bonuses. Also to gather news and dispense it. Then, indeed, is the day
of the publisher’s volubility and grace. These gentlemen and ladies
must be attended to with that deference which is the right of the
successful. The ladies must be praised and cajoled.
“Did you hear about the hit I made with ‘Sweet Kitty Leary’ in Kansas
City? I knocked ’em cold. Say, it was the biggest thing on the bill.”
The publisher may not have heard of it. The song, for all the
uproarious success depicted, may not have sold an extra copy, and yet
this is not for him to say. Has the lady a good voice? Is she with a
good company? He may so ingratiate himself that she will yet sing one
of his newer and as yet unheard of compositions into popularity.
“Was it? Well, I’m glad to hear it. You have the voice for that sort of
a song, you know, Marie. I’ve got something new, though, that will just
suit you--oh, a dandy. It’s by Harry Welch.”
For all this flood of geniality the singer may only smile
indifferently. Secretly her hand is against all publishers. They are
out for themselves. Successful singers must mind their P’s and Q’s.
Payment is the word, some arrangement by which she shall receive a
stated sum per week for singing a song. The honeyed phrases are well
enough for beginners, but we who have succeeded need something more.
“Let me show you something new. I’ve got a song here that is fine. Come
right into the music-room. Charlie, get a copy of ‘She May Have Seen
Better Days.’ I want you to play it over for Miss Yaeger.”
The boy departs and returns. In the exclusive music-room sits the
singer, critically listening while the song is played.
“Isn’t that a pretty chorus?”
“Well, yes, I rather like that.”
“That will suit your voice exactly. Don’t ever doubt it. I think that’s
one of the best songs we have published in years.”
“Have you the orchestration?”
“Sure; I’ll get you that.”
Somehow, however, the effect has not been satisfactory. The singer has
not enthused. He must try other songs and give her the orchestrations
of many. Perhaps, out of all, she will sing one. That is the chance of
the work.
As for her point of view, she may object to the quality of anything
except for that which she is paid. It is for the publisher to see
whether she is worth subsidizing or not. If not, perhaps another house
will see her merits in a different light. Yet she takes the songs
and orchestrations along. And the publisher turning, as she goes,
announces, “Gee, there’s a cold proposition for you. Get her to sing
anything for you for nothing?--Nix. Not her. Cash or no song.” And he
thumbs his fingers after the fashion of one who pays out money.
Your male singer is often a bird of the same fine feather. If you
wish to see the ideal of dressiness as exemplified by the gentlemen
of the road, see these individuals arrive at the offices of the
publishers. The radiance of half-hose and neckties is not outdone by
the sprightliness of the suit pattern or the glint of the stone in
the shirt-front. Fresh from Chicago or Buffalo they arrive, rich in
self-opinion fostered by rural praise, perhaps possessed of a new droll
story, always loaded with the details of the hit they made.
“Well, well! You should have seen how that song went in Baltimore. I
never saw anything like it. Why, it’s the hit of the season!”
New songs are forthcoming, a new batch delivered for his service next
year.
Is he absolutely sure of the estimation in which the house holds his
services? You will hear a sequel to this, not this day perhaps but a
week or a month later, during his idle summer in New York.
“You haven’t twenty-five handy you could let me have, have you, Pat?
I’m a little short to-day.”
Into the publisher’s eye steals the light of wisdom and decision. Is
this individual worth it? Will he do the songs of the house twenty-five
dollars’ worth of good next season? Blessed be fate if there is a
partner to consult. He will have time to reflect.
“Well, George, I haven’t it right here in the drawer, but I can get it
for you. I always like to consult my partner about these things, you
know. Can you wait until this afternoon?”
Of course the applicant can wait, and between whiles are conferences
and decisions. All things considered, it may be advisable to do it.
“We will get twenty-five out of him, any way. He’s got a fine tenor
voice. You never can tell what he might do.”
So a pleasant smile and the money may be waiting when he returns. Or,
he may be put off, with excuses and apologies. It all depends.
There are cases, however, where not even so much delay can be risked,
where a hearty “sure” _must_ be given. This is to that lord of the
stage whose fame as a singer is announced by every minstrel billboard
as “the renowned baritone, Mr. Calvin Johnson,” or some such. For him
the glad hand and the ready check, and he is to be petted, flattered,
taken to lunch, dinner, a box theater party--anything--everything,
really. And then, there is that less important one who has
over-measured his importance. For him the solemn countenance and the
suave excuse, at an hour when his need is greatest. Lastly, there is
the sub-strata applicant in tawdry, make-believe clothes, whose want
peeps out of every seam and pocket. His day has never been as yet,
or mayhap was, and is over. He has a pinched face, a livid hunger, a
forlorn appearance. Shall he be given anything? Never. He is not worth
it. He is a “dead one.” Is it not enough if the publisher looks after
those of whose ability he is absolutely sure. Certainly. Therefore this
one must slop the streets in old shoes and thin clothing, waiting. And
he may never obtain a dime from any publisher.
Out of such grim situations, however, occasionally springs a success.
These “down and out” individuals do not always understand why fate
should be against them, why they should be down, and are not willing to
cease trying.
“I’ll write a song yet, you bet,” is the dogged, grim decision. “I’ll
get up, you bet.”
Once in a while the threat is made good, some mood allowing. Strolling
along the by-streets, ignored and self-commiserating, the mood seizes
them. Words bubble up and a melody, some crude commentary on the
contrasts, the losses or the hopes of life, rhyming, swinging as
they come, straight from the heart. Now it is for pencil and paper,
quick. Any old scrap will do--the edge of a newspaper, the back of
an envelope, the edge of a cuff. Written so, the words are safe and
the melody can be whistled until some one will take it down. And
so, occasionally, is born--has been often--the great success, the
land-sweeping melody, selling by the hundreds of thousands and netting
the author a thousand a month for a year or more.
Then, for him, the glory of the one who is at last successful. Was he
commonplace, hungry, envious, wretchedly clothed before? Well, now,
see! And do not talk to him of other authors who once struck it, had
their little day and went down again, never to rise. He is not of
them--not like them. For him, now, the sunlight and the bright places.
No clothing too showy or too expensive, no jewelry too rare. Broadway
is the place for him, the fine cafés and rich hotel lobbies. What about
those other people who looked down on him once? Ha! they scorned him,
did they? They sneered, eh? Would not give him a cent, eh? Let them
come and look now! Let them stare in envy. Let them make way. He is a
great man at last and the whole world knows it. The whole country is
making acclaim over that which he has done.
For the time being, then, this little center of song-writing and
publishing is for him the all-inclusive of life’s importance. From
the street organs at every corner is being ground the _one_ melody,
so expressive of his personality, into the ears of all men. In the
vaudeville houses and cheaper concert halls men and women are singing
it nightly to uproarious applause. Parodies are made and catch-phrases
coined, all speaking of his work. Newsboys whistle and older men pipe
its peculiar notes. Out of open windows falls the distinguished melody,
accompanied by voices both new and strange. All men seem to recognize
that which he has done, and for the time being compliment his presence
and his personality.
Then the wane.
Of all the tragedies, this is perhaps the bitterest, because of the
long-drawn memory of the thing. Organs continue to play it, but the
sale ceases. Quarter after quarter, the royalties are less, until at
last a few dollars per month will measure them completely. Meanwhile
his publishers ask for other songs. One he writes, and then another,
and yet another, vainly endeavoring to duplicate that original note
which made for his splendid success the year before. But it will not
come. And, in the meanwhile, other song-writers displace him for the
time being in the public eye. His publishers have a new hit, but it
is not his. A new author is being bowed to and taken out to dinner.
But he is not that author. A new tile-crowned celebrity is strolling
up his favorite Broadway path. At last, after a dozen attempts and
failures, there is no hurry to publish his songs. If the period of
failure is too long extended he may even be neglected. More and more,
celebrities crowd in between him and that delightful period when he was
greatest. At last, chagrined by the contrast of things, he changes
his publishers, changes his haunts and, bitterest of all, his style
of living. Soon it is the old grind again, and then, if thoughtless
spending has been his failing, shabby clothing and want. You may see
the doubles of these in any publisher’s sanctum at any time, the
sarcastically referred-to _has been_.
Here, also, the disengaged ballad singer, “peerless tenor” of some
last year’s company, suffering a period of misfortune. He is down on
his luck in everything but appearances, last year’s gorgeousness still
surviving in a modified and sedate form. He is a singer of songs,
now, for the publishers, by toleration. His one lounging-place in all
New York where he is welcome and not looked at askance is the chair
they may allow him. Once a day he makes the rounds of the theatrical
agencies; once, or if fortune favors, twice a day he visits some cheap
eating-house. At night, after a lone stroll through that fairyland
of theaters and gaudy palaces to which, as he sees it, he properly
belongs--Broadway, he returns to his bed, the carpeted floor of a room
in some tolerant publisher’s office, where he sleeps by permission,
perhaps, and not even there, too often.
Oh, the glory of success in this little world in his eye at this
time--how now, in want, it looms large and essential! Outside, as he
stretches himself, may even now be heard the murmur of that shiny,
joyous rout of which he was so recently a part. The lights, the
laughter; the songs, the mirth--all are for others. Only he, only he
must linger in shadows, alone.
To-morrow it will come out in words, if you talk with him. It is in
the publisher’s office, perhaps, where gaudy ladies are trying songs,
or on the street, where others, passing, notice him not but go their
way in elegance.
“I had it once, all right,” he will tell you. “I had my handful. You
bet I’ll get it next year.”
Is it of money he is thinking?
An automobile swings past and some fine lady, looking out, wakes to
bitterness his sense of need.
“New York’s tough without the coin, isn’t it? You never get a glance
when you’re out of the game. I spend too easy, that’s what’s the matter
with me. But I’ll get back, you bet. Next time I’ll know enough to
save. I’ll get up again, and next time I’ll stay up, see?”
Next year his hopes may be realized again, his dreams come true. If so,
be present and witness the glories of radiance after shadow.
“Ah, me boy, back again, you see!”
“So I see. Quite a change since last season.”
“Well, I should smile. I was down on my luck then. That won’t happen
any more. They won’t catch me. I’ve learned a lesson. Say, we had a
great season.”
Rings and pins attest it. A cravat of marvelous radiance speaks for
itself in no uncertain tones. Striped clothes, yellow shoes, a new hat
and cane. Ah, the glory, the glory! He is not to be caught any more,
“you bet,” and yet here is half of his subsistence blooming upon his
merry body.
_They_ will catch him, though, him and all in the length of time.
One by one they come, old, angular misfortune grabbing them all by
the coat-tails. The rich, the proud, the great among them sinking,
sinking, staggering backward until they are where he was and deeper,
far deeper. I wish I could quote those little notices so common in all
our metropolitan dailies, those little perfunctory records which appear
from time to time in theatrical and sporting and “song” papers, telling
volumes in a line. One day one such singer’s voice is failing; another
day he has been snatched by disease; one day one radiant author arrives
at that white beneficence which is the hospital bed and stretches
himself to a final period of suffering; one day a black boat steaming
northward along the East River to a barren island and a field of weeds
carries the last of all that was so gay, so unthinking, so, after all,
childlike of him who was greatest in his world. Weeds and a headboard,
salt winds and the cry of seagulls, lone blowings and moanings, and all
that light and mirth is buried here.
Here and there in the world are those who are still singing melodies
created by those who have gone this unfortunate way, singers of “Two
Little Girls in Blue” and “White Wings,” “Little Annie Rooney” and “The
Picture and the Ring,” the authors of “In the Baggage Coach Ahead” and
“Trinity Chimes,” of “Sweet Marie” and “Eileen”--all are here. There
might be recited the successes of a score of years, quaint, pleasing
melodies which were sung the land over, which even to-day find an
occasional voice and a responsive chord, but of the authors not one but
could be found in some field for the outcasts, forgotten. Somehow the
world forgets, the peculiar world in which they moved, and the larger
one which knew them only by their songs.
It seems strange, really, that so many of them should have come to
this. And yet it is true--authors, singers, publishers, even--and
yet not more strange is it than that their little feeling, worked
into a melody and a set of words, should reach far out over land and
water, touching the hearts of the nation. In mansion and hovel, by
some blazing furnace of a steel mill, or through the open window of
a farmland cottage, is trolled the simple story, written in halting
phraseology, tuned as only a popular melody is tuned. All have seen the
theater uproarious with those noisy recalls which bring back the sunny
singer, harping his one indifferent lay. All have heard the street
bands and the organs, the street boys and the street loungers, all
expressing a brief melody, snatched from the unknown by some process of
the heart. Yes, here it is, wandering the land over like a sweet breath
of summer, making for matings and partings, for happiness and pain.
That it may not endure is also meet, going back into the soil, as it
does, with those who hear it and those who create.
Yet only those who venture here in merry Broadway shall witness the
contrast, however. Only they who meet these radiant presences in the
flesh will ever know the marvel of the common song.
CHARACTERS
The glory of the city is its variety. The drama of it lies in its
extremes. I have been thinking to-day of all the interesting characters
that have passed before me in times past on the streets of this
city: generals, statesmen, artists, politicians, a most interesting
company, and then of another company by no means so distinguished or
so comfortable--the creatures at the other end of the ladder who, far
from having brains, or executive ability, or wealth, or fame, have
nothing save a weird astonishing individuality which would serve to
give pause to almost the dullest. Many times I have been compelled by
sheer astonishment to stop in the midst of duties that hurried me to
contemplate some weird creature, drawn up from heaven knows what depths
of this very strange and intricate city into the clear, brilliant
daylight of a great, clean thoroughfare, and to wonder how, in all
conscience, life had come to produce such a thing. The eyes of them!
The bodies! The hats, the coats, the shoes, the motions! How often
have I followed amazedly for blocks, for miles even, attempting to
pigeonhole in my own mind the astonishing characteristics of a figure
before me, attempting to say to myself what I really thought of it
all, what misfortune or accident or condition of birth or of mind had
worked out the sad or grim spectacle of a human being so distorted, a
veritable caricature of womanhood or manhood. On the streets of New
York I have seen slipping here and there truly marvelous creatures, and
have realized instantly that I was looking at something most different,
peculiar, that here again life had accomplished an actual _chef
d’œuvre_ of the bizarre or the grotesque or the mad, had made something
as strange and unaccountable as a great genius or a great master of
men. Only it had worked at the other extreme from public efficiency
or smug, conventional public interest, and had produced a singular
variation, inefficient, unsocial, eccentric or evil, as you choose,
qualities which worked to exclude the subject of the variation from any
participation in what we are pleased to call a normal life.
I am thinking, for instance, of a long, lean faced, unkempt and
bedraggled woman, not exceptionally old, but roughened and hardened
by what circumstances I know not into a kind of horse, whom once of
an early winter’s morning I encountered at Broadway and Fourteenth
Street pushing a great rattletrap of a cart in which was piled old
rags, sacks, a chair, a box and what else I know not, and all this with
long, lean strides and a kind of determined titan energy toward the
North River. Her body was clad in a mere semblance of clothing, rags
which hung limp and dirty and close to her form and seemingly wholly
insufficient for the bitter weather prevailing at the time. Her hair
was coarse and iron-gray, done in a shapeless knot and surmounted by
something in the shape of a small hat which might have been rescued
from an ashheap. Her eyes were fixed, glassy almost, and seemingly
unseeing. Here she came, vigorous, stern, pushing this tatterdemalion
cart, and going God knows where. I followed to see and saw her enter,
finally, a wretched, degraded west side slum, in a rear yard of
which, in a wretched tumble-down tenement, which occupied a part of
it, she appeared to have a room or floor. But what days and years of
chaffering, think you, were back of this eventual result, what years
of shabby dodging amid the giant legs of circumstances? To grow out
of childhood--once really soft, innocent childhood--into a thing like
this, an alley-scraping horse--good God!
And then the men. What a curious company they are, just those few who
stand out in my memory, whom, from a mere passing opportunity to look
upon, I have never been able to forget.
Thus, when I first came to New York and was on _The World_ there came
into the reportorial room one cold winter’s night a messenger-boy,
looking for a certain reporter, for whom he had a message, a youth who
positively was the most awkward and misshapen vehicle for the task in
hand that I have ever seen. I should say here that whatever the rate
of pay now, there are many who will recall how little they were paid
and how poorly they were equipped--a tall youth, for instance, with a
uniform and cap for one two-thirds his size; a short one with trousers
six inches too long and gathered in plenteous folds above his shoes,
and a cap that wobbled loosely over his ears; or a fat boy with a tight
suit, or a lean boy with a loose one. Parsimony and indifference were
the outstanding characteristics of the two most plethoric organizations
serving the public in that field.
But this one. He was eighteen or nineteen (as contrasted with others
of this same craft who were in the room at this very time, and who
were not more than twelve or thirteen; that was before the child-labor
laws), and his face was too large, and misshapen, a grotesquerie of the
worst invention, a natural joke. His ears were too big and red, his
mouth too large and twisted, his nose too humped and protruding, and
his square jaw stood out too far, and yet by no means forcefully or
aggressively. In addition, his hair needed cutting and stuck out from
underneath his small, ill-fitting cap, which sat far up on the crown of
his head. At the same time, his pants and coat being small, revealed
extra lengths of naked red wrist and hands and made his feet seem even
larger than they were.
In those days, as at present, it was almost a universal practice to kid
the messenger-boy, large or small, whoever and wherever he was--unless,
as at times he proved to be, too old or weary or down on his luck; and
even then he was not always spared. In this instance it chanced that
the reporter for whom this youth was looking was seated at a desk with
myself and some others. We were chatting and laughing, when suddenly
this apparition appeared.
“Why, hello Johnnie!” called the one addressed, turning and taking
the message yet finding time to turn on the moss-covered line of
messenger-boy humor. “Just in from the snow, are you? The best thing
is never to get a hair-cut in winter. Positively, the neck should be
protected from these inclement breezes.”
“A little short on the pants there, James,” chipped in a second, “but I
presume the company figures that the less the baggage or equipment the
greater the speed, eh?”
“In the matter of these suits,” went on a third, “style and fit are
necessarily secondary to sterling spiritual worth.”
“Aw, cut it!” retorted the youth defiantly.
Being new to New York and rather hard-pressed myself, I was throughout
this scene studying this amazing figure and wondering how any
corporation could be so parsimonious as to dress a starveling employee
in so shabby a way, and from what wretched circumstances such a youth,
who would endure such treatment and such work, must spring. Suddenly,
seeing me looking at him and wondering, and just as the recipient of
the message was handing him back his book signed, his face became
painfully and, as it seemed to me, involuntarily contorted with such
a grimace of misery and inward spiritual dissatisfaction as I had not
seen anywhere before. It was a miserable and moving grimace, followed
by a struggle not to show what he felt. But suddenly he turned and
drawing a big red cold wrist and hand across his face and eyes and
starting for the door, he blurted out: “I never did have no home, God
damn it! I never did have no father or mother, like you people, nor no
chance either. I was raised in an orphan asylum--” and he was gone.
“Sometimes,” observed the youth who had started this line of jesting,
getting up and looking apologetically at the rest of us, “this dam’
persiflage can be sprung in the wrong place and at the wrong time. I
apologize. I’m ashamed of myself, and sorry too.”
[Illustration: A Character]
“I’m sorry too,” said another, a gentlemanly Southerner, whom later I
came to know better and to like.
But that boy!
* * * * *
For years, when I was a youth and was reading daily at the old Astor
Library, there used to appear on the streets of New York an old man,
the spindling counterpart, so far as height, weight and form were
concerned, of William Cullen Bryant, who for shabbiness of attire,
sameness of appearance, persistence of industry and yet futility in
so far as any worth while work was concerned could hardly have been
outclassed. A lodger at the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, that
hopeless wayplace of the unfortunate, he was also a frequenter of the
Astor Library, where, as I came to know through watching him over
months and years even, he would burrow by the hour among musty volumes
from which he made copious notes jotted on paper with a pencil, both
borrowed from the library authorities. Year after year for a period of
ten years I encountered him from time to time wearing the same short,
gray wool coat, the same thin black baggy trousers, the same cheap
brownish-black Fedora hat, and the same long uncut hair and beard,
the former curly and hanging about his shoulders. His body, even in
the bitterest weather, never supported an overcoat. His hands were
always bare and the wrists more or less exposed. He came invariably
with a quick, energetic step toward the library or the Mills Hotel
and turned a clear, blue, birdlike eye upon whomsoever surveyed him.
But of ability--nothing, in so far as any one ever knew. The library
authorities knew nothing of anything he had ever achieved. Those who
managed the hotel of course knew nothing at all; they were not even
interested, though he had lived there for years. In short, he lived and
moved and had his being in want and thinness, and finally died--leaving
what? His effects, as I was informed afterwards by the attendants of
the “hotel” which had housed him for years, consisted of a small parcel
of clothes, worthless to any save himself, and a box of scribbled
notes, relating to what no one ever knew. They were disjointed and
meaningless scraps of information, I was told, and dumped out with the
ashes after his demise. What, think you, could have been his import to
the world, his message?
* * * * *
And then Samuel Clampitt--or so a hand-lettered scrawl over his gate
read--who maintained a junk-yard near the Harlem River and One Hundred
and Thirty-eighth Street. He was a little man, very dark, very hunched
at the shoulders, with iron-gray hair, heavy, bushy, black eyebrows,
a very dark and seamy skin, and hands that were quite like claws. He
bought and sold--or pretended to--old bottles, tin, iron, rags, and
the like. His place was a small yard or space of ground lying next to
a coal-yard and adjoining the river, and about this he had built, or
had found there, a high board fence. And within, whenever the gates
were opened and one was permitted to look in, were collections of junk
about as above tabulated, with, in addition, some bits of iron fencing,
old window-frames, part of stair railings, gasoliers and the like. He
himself was rarely to be seen; I saw him no more than four or five
times during a period of three years in which I passed his yard daily.
But, having occasion once to dispose of a collection of waste rags
and clothing, I eventually sought him out and found him, after trying
his gate on an average of once every two days during a period of two
weeks and more. The thing that interested me from the first was that my
tentative knockings at his gate, which was always closed and very high,
were greeted by savage roars from several Great Danes that were far
within and that pawed the high gate whenever I touched it or knocked.
Yet eventually I did find him, the gate being open and the dogs chained
and he inside. He was sitting in a dark corner of his little hut inside
the yard, no window or door giving onto the street, and eating from
a discolored tin pan on his lap which held a little bread, a tomato
and some sausage. The thing that interested me most (apart from the
fact that he appeared to me more of a gnome than a man) was these
same dogs, now chained to a post a score of feet from me and most
savagely snarling and charging as I talked. They were so savage and
showed such great, white, glistening teeth that I was eager to retreat
without waiting to complete my errand. However, I managed to explain my
purpose--but to no result. He was not interested in my collection of
junk, saying that he only bought material that was brought to him.
But the voice, so cracked and wheezy. And the eyes, shining like
sparks of light under his heavy brows. And the thin, parchment-like,
claw-like hands. He rasped irritatingly with his throat whenever he
talked, before and after each word or sentence--“eck--eck--eck--I
don’t go out to buy stuff--eck--eck--eck. I only buy what’s brought
here--eck--eck--eck. I don’t want any old rags--eck--eck--eck--I have
more than I can sell now--eck--eck--eck.” Then he fell to munching
again.
“Those look like savage dogs,” I ventured, hoping to lure him into a
conversation.
It was not to be.
“Eck--eck--eck--they need to be--eck--eck--eck.” That was all. He fell
silent and would say no more.
I went out, curious as to what sort of a business this was, anyhow, and
leaving him to himself.
But one morning, months later, turning a corner near there, a region
of empty lots and some old sealed and untenanted storehouses, I
found a crowd of boys following and stoning an old man who, on my
coming near and then running to his rescue, I found to be this old
dealer. He was attempting to hide behind a signboard which adjoined
one of the storehouses. His face and hands were already cut by
stones and bleeding. He was breathless and very much exhausted and
frightened, but still angry and savage. “They stoned me, the little
devils--eck--eck--eck. They hit me with rocks--eck--eck--eck. I’ll
have the law on ’em, I will--eck--eck--eck. I’ll get the police after
’em--eck--eck--eck. They’re always trying to break into my place and I
won’t let ’em--eck--eck--eck.”
I wondered who could break into that place with those dogs loose, who
would attempt it.
But that, as I found out later in conversation with boys of the
vicinity, was just the trouble. At various times they had sought to
enter to recover a tossed ball, possibly to steal something, and he had
set the dogs (which were always unchained in his absence) on them; or,
they had been attacked by the dogs and in turn had attempted to work
him and them some injury.
Yet for a period of three years after this, to my knowledge, he
continued to live there in that solitary place, harassed no doubt in
this way. If he ever did any business I did not see it. The gates were
nearly always closed, himself rarely to be seen.
Then one day a really terrible thing happened. Some children--not these
same wicked boys but others less familiar with the neighborhood, I
believe--were playing ball in an open space adjoining, and a fly being
struck, the ball fell into the junk-yard. Three of the more courageous
ones, as the papers stated afterwards, mounted the fence to see if they
could get the ball, and one of them, more courageous than the others,
actually leaped into the yard and was literally torn to bits by these
same dogs, all but eaten alive. And there was no one to save him before
he was dead. Old Clampitt was not there.
The horror was of course immediately reported to the police, who
came and killed the dogs and then arrested Clampitt. A newspaper
and police investigation of his life revealed nothing save that he
was assumed to be an old junk-dealer who was eccentric, a solitary,
without relatives or friends. He claimed to have kept the dogs for
protection, also that he had been set upon by youths of the vicinity
and stoned, which was true. Even so, he was held for weeks in jail
pending this investigation of his connections. No past crimes being
found, apparently he was released. But so terrified was he then by the
furore his savage dogs had aroused that he disappeared from this region
and was heard of no more. His old rag yard was abandoned. But I often
wondered about him afterwards, the years he spent there alone.
* * * * *
And then _Old Ragpicker_, whom I have described in _Plays of the
Natural and the Supernatural_, and who was as described.
And Hurstwood.
* * * * *
As interesting a type as I ever knew was an old hunchback who, as I
understood, had had a small music business in the Bowery, years and
years ago when that street was still a vaudeville center, a sort
of theatrical Broadway. Through experience he had come by a little
knowledge of popular songs and songbooks and had engaged in the
manufacture and sale of these things. But times changed and public
taste varied and he was not able to keep up with it all. From little
business to no business was an easy step, and then he failed and took
lodgings in one of the side streets off the Bowery, below Fourth
Street, eking out a precarious existence, heaven only knows how.
Age had hounded him even more than ill success. His naturally dark
skin darkened still further and his black eyes retreated into gloomy
sockets. I used to see him at odd times, at a period when I lived in
a vicinity near the Bowery, wending a lonely way through the crowded
streets there, but never until he accosted me one night in the dark
did I realize that he had become a beggar. A mumbled apology about
hunger, a deprecating, shamefaced cough, and he was off again, the
richer for a dime. In this case, time, to say nothing of life, had
worked one of those disturbing grotesqueries which arrest one. He
was so very somber, furtive, misshapen and lean, a veritable masque
of a man whose very glance indicated inconsolable disappointment and
whose presence, to many, would most certainly have come as an omen of
failure. A hall-bedroom, a lodging-house cot, an occasional meal, some
hidden corner in which to be at peace, in which to brood, and then a
few years later he was found dead, alone, seated before a small table,
his head leaning upon his arms in the shabby little room in which he
dwelt. I know this to be true, for from time to time I made effort to
hear of him. What, think you, would he have to say to his Creator if he
might?
* * * * *
And yet another character. One day I was walking in Brooklyn in a very
conservative neighborhood, when I saw what I fancied I never should
see, in America, a woman furtively picking a piece of bread out of a
garbage can. I had read of such things in Balzac, Hugo, Dickens--but
where else? And she was not absolutely wretchedly dressed, though her
appearance was far from satisfactory, and she had a tense expression
about her face which betokened stress of some kind. My astonishment
was such that I walked deliberately up to her and asked: “What is the
matter with you--are you hungry?”
She had hidden the bread under her shawl as I approached and may have
dropped it as we walked, for I did not see it again though her hands
appeared. Yet she refused to indulge in any conversation which would
explain.
“I’m all right,” she replied.
“But I saw you taking a piece of bread out of that can?”
“No.”
“Don’t you want any money?”
“No.”
She appeared to be confused and walked away from me, edging toward the
lines of fences to avoid contact. I put my hand in my pocket to offer
a coin, but she hurried on. There was nothing to do but let her go her
way--a thing which seemed intensely cruel, though there was apparently
nothing else to do. I have often thought of this one, dark, tense,
dreary, and half wondered whether it was all a dream or whether I
really saw it.
* * * * *
But the city for me, in my time, has been flecked with these shadows of
disaster in the guise of decayed mortals who stared at me out of hollow
eyes in the midst of the utmost gayety. You turn a corner laughing amid
scenes of enthusiasm and activity, perhaps, and here comes despair
along, hooded and hollow-eyed, accusing you of undue levity. You dine
at your table, serene in your moderate prosperity, and in looks want,
thin-lipped, and pale, asking how can you eat when she is as she is.
You feel the health and vigor of your body, warmly clad, and lo, here
comes illness or weakness, thin and pining, and with cough or sigh
or halting step, cries: “See how I suffer--and you--you have health!”
Weakness confronts strength, poverty wealth, health sickness, courage
cowardice, fortune the very depths of misfortune, and they know each
other not--or defy each other. Of a truth, they either despise or fear,
the one the other.
THE BEAUTY OF LIFE
The beauty of life is involved very largely with the outline of its
scenery. There are many other things which make up the joy of our world
for us, but this is one of the most salient of its charms. The stretch
of a level valley, the graceful rise of a hill, water running, a clump
or a forest of trees--these add to the majesty of our being and show us
how great a thing our world really is.
The significance of scenes in general which hold and bind our lives
for us, making them sweet or grim according to the sharpness of our
perceptions, is a wonderful thing. We are passing among them every
moment. A new arrangement is had with every move we make. If we but
lift our eyes we see a variation which is forever interesting and
forever new.
The fact significant is that every scene possesses that vital
instability which is the charm of existence. It is forever changing.
The waters are running, the winds blowing, the light waxing and waning,
and in the very ground such currents are at work as produce and modify
all the visible life and color that we know. Great forces are at work,
strong ones, and our own little lives are but a shadow of something
that wills activity and enjoys it, that wills beauty and is beauty. The
scenes that we see are purely representative of that.
[Illustration: The Beauty of Life]
But how, in the picturing of itself to itself, is the spirit of
the universe revealed to us? Here are forces which at bottom might be
supposed to be anything--grim, deadly, terrible--but on the surface
how fair is their face. The trees are beautiful--you would not
suppose there was anything deadly at work to create them. The water
is mellifluent, sweet--you could hardly assume that it was grim in
purpose or design. Every aspect of the scene reveals something pleasing
which could scarcely have been the result of a cruel tendency, and yet
we know that cruelty exists, or if not cruelty at least a tendency
to contention--one thing striving with another and wearing it away,
feeding upon it, destroying it which is productive of pain. And this
element of contention represents all the cruelty there is. And this is
not what is generally revealed in any scene.
Before such a picture of combined beauty and contentiousness--however
graceful--life living upon life, in order to produce at least a part of
this beauty--the mind pauses, wondering. It is so useless to quarrel
with an order which is compulsory and produces all that we know of
either joy or pain. This scene, as we look at it, is one of the joys,
one of the compensations, of our existence which we must take whether
we will or no, and which satisfies us whether or not we are aware
of the contentiousness beneath. Even the contentiousness cannot be
wholly sneered at or regretted, for at worst it produces the change
which produces the other scenes and variations of which our world is
full, and at worst it gives our life the edge of drama and tragedy,
to say nothing of those phases of our moods which make our world seem
beautiful.
Pity the mind for whom the immediate scene, involved as it is with
change and decay and contentiousness, has no direct appeal, for whom
the clouds hanging in the heavens, the wind stirring in the trees, the
genial face of the earth, spread before the eye, has no meaning. Here
are the birds daily circling in the air; here are the waters running
in a thousand varied forms; here are the houses, the churches, the
factories, and all their curious array of lines, angles, circles,
cones, or towers, shafts and pinnacles which form ever new and pleasing
combinations to which the mind, confused by other phases of life,
can still turn for both solace and delight. For one not so mentally
equipped a world of imagery is closed, with all that that implies:
poetry, art, literature--one might almost say religion, for upon so
much that is beautiful in nature does religion depend. To be dull to
the finer beauties of line and curve that are forever beating upon
the heart and mind--in earth, in air, in water, in sky or space--how
deadly! The dark places of the world are full of that. Its slums and
depths reek with the misery that knows no response to the physical
beauty of nature, the wonder of its forms. To perceive these, to see
the physical face of life as beautiful, to respond in feeling to the
magnificent panoramas from which the eye cannot escape, is to be at
once strong and wise mentally and physically, to have in the very blood
and brain the beauty, glory and power of all that ever was or will be
here on this earth.
A WAYPLACE OF THE FALLEN
In the center of what was once a fashionable section of New York, but
is now a badly deteriorated tenement region, stands a hotel which to
me is one of the curiosities of New York. It is really not a hotel at
all, in one sense, and yet in another it is, a hybrid or cross between
a hotel and a charity, one of those odd philanthropies of the early
years following nineteen hundred, which were supposed to bridge with
some form of relief the immense gap that existed between the rich and
the poor; a gap that was not supposed to exist in a republic devoted to
human brotherhood and the equality of man.
Let that be as it will. Exteriorly at least it is really a handsome
affair, nine stories in height, with walls of cream-colored brick and
gray stone trimmings, and a large, overhanging roof of dark-red curved
tiles which suggests Florence and the South. Set apart in an open
space it would be admirable. It is not, however, as its appearance
would indicate, a hotel of any distinction of clientele, for it was
built for an entirely different purpose. And, despite the aim and the
dreams of those who sought to reach those who might be only temporarily
embarrassed, rather than whose who were permanently so, and who might
use this as a wayplace on their progress upward rather than on their
way downward, still it is more the latter who frequent it most. It is
really a rendezvous for those who are “down and out.”
About the time that it was built, or a little after, I myself was
in a bad way. It was not exactly that I was financially helpless or
that I could not have come by relief in one and another form, if my
pride would have let me, as that my pride and a certain psyche which,
like a fever or a passion, must take its course, would not permit
me to do successfully any of the things that normally I could and
would have done. I was nervous, really very sick mentally, and very
depressed. Life to me wore a somber and at most times a forbidding air,
as though, indeed, there were furies between me and the way I would
go. Yet, return I would not. And courage not lacking, a certain grim
stubbornness that would not permit me to retreat nor yet to ask for
help, at last for a brief period I took refuge here, as might one beset
by a raging gale at sea take refuge in some seemingly quiet harbor, any
port indeed, in order to forfend against utter annihilation.
[Illustration: A Wayplace of the Fallen]
And a strange, sad harbor I found it to be indeed, a nondescript and
fantastic affair, sheltering a nondescript and quite fantastic throng.
The thin-bodied and gray-bearded old men loitering out their last
days here, and yet with a certain something about them that suggested
courage or defiance, or at least a vague and errant will to live. The
lean and down-at-heels and erratic-looking young men, with queer,
restless, nervous eyes, and queer, restless, deceptive and nervous
manners. And the chronic ne’er-do-wells, and bums even, pan-handlers,
street fiddle and horn players, street singers, street cripples and
beggars of one kind and another. Some of them I had even encountered
in the streets in my more prosperous hours and had given them
dimes, and here I encountered them again. They were all so poor, if
not physically or materially at least spiritually, or so nearly all,
as to make contact with them disconcerting, if not offensive. For they
walked, the most of them, with an air of rundown, hopeless inadequacy
that was really disturbing to look upon. All of them were garbed in
clothing which was not good and yet which at all times could not be
said to be absolutely ragged. Rather, in many cases it was more of
an intermediate character, such as you might expect to find on a
person who was out of a job but who was still struggling to keep up
appearances.
You would find, for instance, those whose suits were in a fair state
of preservation but whose shoes were worn or torn. Again, there were
those whose hats and shoes were good but whose trousers were worn and
frayed. Still others would show a good pair of trousers or a moderately
satisfactory coat, but such a gleam of wretched linen or so poor and
faded a tie, that one was compelled to notice it. And the mere sight
of it, as they themselves seemed to realize by their furtive efforts
at concealment, was sufficient to convict them of want or worse.
Between these grades and conditions there were so many other little
gradations, such as the inadvertently revealed edge of a cotton shirt
under a somewhat superior suit, the exposed end of a rag being used for
a handkerchief, the shifting edge of a false shirt front, etc., so that
by degrees one was moved to either sympathy or laughter, or both.
And the nature of the life here. It was such as to preclude any
reasonable classification from the point of view, say, of happiness or
comfort. For all its exterior pretentiousness and inner spaciousness,
it offered nothing really except two immense lounging-rooms or courts
about which the various tiers or floors of rooms were built and which
rose, uninterrupted, to the immense glass roofs or coverings nine
stories above. There were several other large rooms--a reading-room,
a smoking-room--equipped with chairs and tables, but which could only
be occupied between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m., and which were watched over by
as surly and disagreeable a type of orderly or guard as one would find
anywhere--such orderlies or guards, for instance, as a prison or an
institution of charity might employ. In fact, I never encountered an
institution in which a charge was made for service which seemed to me
more barren of courtesy, consideration or welcome.
We were all, as I soon found, here on sufferance. During a long day
that began between 9 a.m., at which hour the room you occupied had to
be vacated for the day, and 5 p.m., when it might be reoccupied once
more, and not before, there was nothing to do but walk the streets if
one was out of work, as most of these were, or sit in one or another
of these same rooms filled with these same nondescripts, who looked
and emanated the depression they felt and who were too taciturn or
too evasive or shy or despondent to wish to talk to anybody. And in
addition, neither these nor yourself were really welcome here. For, if
you remained within these lobbies during the hours of nine and five
daylight, these underlings surveyed you, if at all, with looks of
indifference or contempt, as who should say, “Haven’t you anything at
all to do?” and most of those with whom you were in contact could not
help but feel this. It was too obvious to be mistaken.
But to return to the type of person who came here to lodge. Where
did they all come from? one was compelled to ask oneself. How did it
happen that they were so varied as to age, vigor or the lack of it
and the like? For not all were old or sick or poorly dressed. Some
quite the contrary. And yet how did some of them manage to subsist,
even with the aid of such a place as this? What was before them? These
thoughts, somehow, would intrude themselves whether one would or no.
For some of them were so utterly hopeless looking. And others (I told
myself) were the natural idlers of the world, or what was left of them,
men too feeble, too vagrom in thought, or too indifferent to make an
earnest effort in any direction. At least there was the possibility
of many such being here. Again, there were those of better mood and
substance, like myself, say, who were here because of stress, and who
were temporarily driven to this form of economy, wretched as it was.
Others were obviously criminals or drug fiends, or those suffering from
some incurable or wasting disease, who probably had little money and no
strength, or very little, and who were seeking to hide themselves away
here, to rest and content themselves as obscurely and as cheaply as
possible. (The maximum charges for a room and a free bath in the public
bathroom, the same including towels and soap, ranged from twenty-five
to forty cents a day. A meal in the hotel dining-room, such as it was,
was fifteen cents. I ate several there.) Pick-pockets and thugs from
other cities drifted in here, and it was not difficult to pick out an
occasional detective studying those who chose to stay here. For the
rest, they were of the flotsam and jetsam of all metropolitan life--the
old, the young, the middle-aged, the former and the latter having in
the main passed the period of success without achieving anything,
the others waiting and drifting, perhaps until they should come upon
something better. Some of them looked to me to be men who had put up a
good fight, but in vain. Life had worsted them. Others looked as though
they had not put up any fight at all.
And, again, the nature of the rooms here offered (one of which I was
compelled to accept), the air or illusion of cells in an institution or
prison that characterized them! They were really not rooms at all, as
I found, but cells partitioned or arranged in such a way as to provide
the largest amount of renting space and personal supervision and
espionage to the founder and manager but only a bare bed to the guest.
As I have said, they were all arranged either about an inner court or
the exterior walls, so as to have the advantage of interior or exterior
lighting, quite as all hotels and prisons are arranged. But the size of
them and the amazingly small windows through which one looked, either
into one or other of these courts or onto the streets outside! They
were not more than five feet in width by eight in length, and contained
each a small iron bed, a single chair, and a very small closet or
wardrobe where some clothing might be installed, but so little that it
could hardly be called a convenience.
And, again, the walls were really not walls at all, but marble
partitions set upon iron legs or jacks two feet from the floor and
reaching to within three feet of the ceiling, which permitted the
observation of one’s neighbor’s legs from below, if you wished to
observe those conveniences, or of studying his entire chamber if you
chose to climb upon your bed and look over the top. These open spaces
were of course protected by iron screens, which prevented any one
entering save through the door.
It is obvious that any such arrangement would preclude any sense of
privacy. When you were in your cell there came to you from all parts of
the building the sounds of a general activity--the shuffling of feet,
the clearing of throats, the rattling of dominoes in the reading-room
below, voices in complaint or conversation, walkings to and fro, the
slamming of doors here, there and everywhere, and what not. Coupled
with this was the fact that the atmosphere of the whole building was
permeated with tobacco smoke, and tainted or permeated with breaths
in all degrees of strength from that of the drunkard to that of the
drug fiend or consumptive. It was as though one were living in a weird
dream. You were presumed to be alone, and yet you were not, and yet
you were, only there was no sense of privacy, only a sense of being
separated and then neglected and irritated.
And the way these noises and this atmosphere continued into the small
hours of the morning was maddening. There is something, to begin with,
about poverty and squalor that is as depressing and destructive as
a gas or a chemic ferment. Poverty has color and odor and radiation
as strong as any gas or ferment. It speaks. It mourns, and these
radiations are destructive. Hence the instinctive impulse to flee not
only disease but poverty.
At ten o’clock all lights in the lobbies and halls were supposed to be
put out, and they were put out. There being none in the rooms, all was
dark. Before this you would hear the shuffling of this throng bedward,
and the piling of chairs on tables in the lobbies for the night in
order that the orderlies of the hotel might sweep afterwards. There
followed a general opening and shutting of doors and the sound made by
individuals here and there stirring among their effects in the dark or
straightening their beds. Finally, during the small hours of the night,
when peace was supposed to reign, you would hear, whether you wished to
or not, your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor, even to the extent
of aisles and floors distant, snoring and coughing or complaining.
There were raucous demands from the irritated to “cut it out” or “turn
over,” and from others return remarks as “go to hell. Who do you think
you are!”--retorts, sometimes brutal, sometimes merely irritable,
which, however, kept the night vocal and one awake.
When, however, all these little difficulties had been finally ironed
out and the last man had either quit grumbling or decided to dispose of
his thoughts in a less audible way, there came an hour in which nature
seemed truly able, even here, to “knit up the raveled sleeve of care.”
The noisy had now become silent, the nervous peaceful. Throughout the
whole establishment an audible, rhythmic, synchronic breathing was now
apparent. You felt as though some great chemic or psychic force were at
work in the world, as though by some strange hocus-pocus of chemistry
or physics, life was still capable of solving its difficulties, even
though you were not, and as though these misfits of soul and body were
still breathing in unison with something, as though silence and shadow
were parts of some shrewd, huge plan to soothe the minds of the weary
and to bring final order out of chaos.
In the morning, however, one awoke once more (at least I did) to a
still more painful realization of what it means to be very poor. There
were no conveniences, as I found, at least none which were private.
Your bath was a public one, a shower only, one; of a series of spouting
discs in the basement, where you were compelled to foregather with
others, taking your clothes with you--for unless you arose early you
could not return to your room. The towels, fortunately, were separate,
except for some roll-towels that served at washstands. The general
toilet was either a long trough or a series of exposed closets,
doorless segments extending along one wall. The shaving-room consisted
of the mirrors above the washstands, nothing separate. Over all were
the guards loitering to see that nothing was misused.
There is no question as to the necessity of such rigid, almost
prison-like control, perhaps, but the general effect of it on one--or
on me, let me say--was coarse and bitter.
“Blime me” (the attendants were for some curious reason mostly
English), “you’d think there was no other time but nine for ’im to come
start shaving. I say, you can’t do that. We’re closing ’ere now. Cut it
out.”
This to a shabby soul with a three days’ growth of beard who has
evidently not reached the stage where he understands the regulations of
the institution.
“You’ll ’ave to quit splattering water ’ereabouts, I’m telling you.
This ain’t no bawth. If you want to do that, go in the basement.”
This to one who was not as careful about his shaving as he might be.
“You’ll ’ave to be moving out o’ ’ere now.”
This to one who had fixed himself comfortably in the lobby and who
might be in the way of some orderly who wanted to sweep or sprinkle a
little sawdust. On every hand, at every time, as I noticed, it was the
orderly or the hired servant, not the guest, who was the important and
superior person. And it seemed to me, after a three days’ study of it,
that they were really looking for flaws and slight mistakes on the part
of guests in order that they might show their authority and proclaim to
the world their strength. It was discouraging.
The saddest part of it was that this place, with all its drawbacks,
was still beyond the purse of many. Some, as anyone could see, only
came here between the hours of ten in the morning and ten at night,
the hours when lounging in these lobbies was permitted, to loaf and
keep warm. They could not afford one of these palatial rooms but must
only loaf here by day. It was at least warm and bright, and so, up to
ten o’clock at night, not unsatisfactory. But having no room to go
to at ten at night, they must make their way out. And this necessity,
exposing them for what they were, bench-warmers, soon made them known
to the guards or orderlies, who could be seen eyeing them, sometimes
speaking to them, suggesting that they come no more, that they “cut
it out.” They were bums, benchers, really below the level of those
who could afford to stop here, and so beneath that level of contempt
which was regularly meted out to those who could stop here. I myself
have seen them sidling or slipping out at 9:30 or 9:45, and with what
an air--like that of a dog that is in danger of a booting. I have also
seen a man at closing time count the remaining money in his possession,
calculate a moment, and then rise and slip out into the night. Men
such as these are not absolutely worthless, but they have reached the
lowest rung of the ladder, are going down, not up, and beyond them is
the Bowery, the hospital, and the river--the last, I think, the most
merciful of all.
HELL’S KITCHEN
N. B. When I first came to New York, and for years afterward, it was
a whim of the New York newspapers to dub that region on the West Side
which lies between Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets and Ninth
Avenue and the Hudson River as _Hell’s Kitchen_. There was assumed
to be operative there, shooting and killing at will, a gang of young
roughs that for savagery and brutality was not to be outrivaled by
any of the various savage groups of the city. Disturbances, murders,
riots, were assumed to be common; the residents of this area at once
sullen and tempestuous. Interested by the stark pictures of a slum life
so often painted, I finally went to reside there for a period. What
follows is from notes or brief pictures made at the time.
* * * * *
It is nine o’clock of a summer’s evening. Approaching my place at this
hour, suddenly I encounter a rabble issuing out of Thirty-ninth Street
into Tenth Avenue. It is noisy, tempestuous, swirling. A frowsy-headed
man of about thirty-eight, whose face is badly lacerated and bleeding
and whose coat is torn and covered with dust, as though he had been
rolling upon the ground, leads the procession. He is walking with
that reckless abandon which characterizes the movements of the angry.
A slatternly woman of doughy complexion follows at his heels. About
them sways a crowd of uncombed and stribbly-haired men and women and
children. In the middle of the street, directly on a line with the man
whom the crowd surrounds, but, to one side and nearer the sidewalk
walks another man, undersized, thickset and energetic, who seems to
take a great interest in the crowd. Though he keeps straight ahead,
like the others, he keeps turning and looking, as though he expected
a demonstration of some sort. No word is spoken by either the man or
the woman, and as the curious company passes along under the variable
glows of the store-lamps, shop-keepers and store-dealers come out and
make humorous comments, but seem to think it not worth while to follow.
I join the procession, since this now relates to my interests, and
finally shake an impish, black-haired, ten-year-old girl by the arm
until she looks up at me.
“What’s the matter?”
“Aw, he hit him with a banister.”
“Who hit him?”
“Why, that man out there in the street.”
“What did he hit him for?”
“I dunno,” she replies irritably. “He wouldn’t get out of the room.
They got to fightin’ in the hall.”
She moves away from me and I ply others fruitlessly, until, turning
into Thirty-seventh Street, the green lights of the police station
come into view. The object of this pilgrimage becomes apparent. I fall
silent, following.
Reaching the station door, the injured man and his woman attendant
enter, while the thickset individual who walked to one side, and the
curious crowd remain without.
“Well?” says the sergeant within, glaring intolerantly at the twain as
they push before him. The appearance of the injured man naturally takes
his attention most.
“Lookit me eye,” begins the wounded man, with that curious tone of
injured dignity which the drunk and disorderly so frequently assume.
“That--” and he interpolates a string of oaths descriptive of the man
who has assaulted him “--hit me with a banister leg.”
“Who hit you? Where is he? What did he hit you for?” This from the
sergeant in a breath. The man begins again. The woman beside him
interrupts with a description of her own.
“Shut up!” yells the sergeant savagely, showing his teeth. “I’ll ram me
fist down your throat if you don’t. Let him tell what’s the matter with
him. You keep still.”
The woman, overawed by the threat, stops her tirade. The man resumes.
“He hit me with a banister leg.”
“What for?”
“It was this way, Captain. I went to call on this here lady and that
---- came in and wanted me to get out of the room. I----”
“What relation is this man to you?” inquires the sergeant, addressing
the woman.
“Nothin’,” she replies blandly.
“Isn’t the other man your husband?”
[Illustration: Hell’s Kitchen]
“No, he ain’t, the blank-blank-blank-blank ----” and you have a
sweet string of oaths. “He’s a ----,” and she begins again to ardently
describe the assailant. The man assists her as best he can.
“I thought so,” exclaims the officer vigorously. “Now, you two get the
hell out of here, and stay out, before I club you both. Get on out!
Beat it!”
“Ain’t you goin’ to lock him up?” demands the victim.
“I lock nothing,” vouchsafes the sergeant intolerantly. “Clear out of
here, both of you. If I catch you coming around here any more I’ll give
you both six months.”
He calls an officer from the rear room and the two complainants,
together with others who have ventured in, myself included, beat a
sullen retreat, the crowd welcoming us on the outside. A buzz of
conversation follows. War is promised. When the victim is safely down
the steps he exclaims:
“All right! I ast him to arrest him. Now let ’em look out. I’ll go back
there, I will. Yes, I will. I’ll kill the bastard, that’s what I’ll
do. I’ll show him whether he’ll hit me with a banister leg, the ----,”
and as he goes now, rather straight and yet rhythmically forward, his
assailant, who has been opposite him all the while but in the middle of
the street, keeps an equal and amusing pace.
The crowd follows and turns into Thirty-ninth Street, a half-block east
of Tenth Avenue. It stops in front of an old, stale, four-story red
brick tenement. Some of its windows are glowing softly in the night. On
the third floor some one is playing a flute. Quiet and peace seem to
reign, and yet this----
“I’ll show him whether he’ll hit me,” insists the injured man, entering
the house. The woman follows, and then the short, thickset man from
the street. One after another they disappear up the narrow stairs
which begin at the back of the hall. Some of the crowd follows, myself
included.
Presently, after a great deal of scuffling and hustling on the fourth
floor, all return helter-skelter. They are followed by a large,
comfortably-built, healthy, white-shirted Irish-American, who lives
up there and who has strength and courage. Before him, pathetically
small in size and strength, the others move, the mutilated and still
protesting victim among them. Apparently he has been ejected from the
room in which he had been before.
“I’ll show him,” he is still boasting. “I’ll see whether he’ll hit me
with a banister leg, the ----.”
“That’s all right,” says the large Irishman with a brogue, pushing him
gently onto the sidewalk as he does so. “Go on now.”
“I’ll get even with him yet,” insists the victim.
“That’s all right. I don’t care what you do to-morrow. Go on now.”
The victim turns and looks up at this new authority fixedly, as though
he knew him well, scratches his head and then turns and solemnly walks
away. The other man does likewise. You wonder why.
“It’s over now,” says the new authority to the crowd, and he smiles
as blandly as if he had been taking part in an entertainment of some
kind. The crowd begins to dissolve. The man who drew the banister leg
or stick and who was to have been punished has also disappeared.
“But how is this?” I ask of some one. “How can he do that?”
“Him?” replies an Irish longshoreman who seems to wish to satisfy my
curiosity. “Don’t you know who that is? It’s Patsy Finnerty. He used
to be a champeen prize-fighter. He won all the fights around here ten
years ago. Everybody knows him. He’s in charge over at the steamship
dock now, but they won’t fight with him. If they did he wouldn’t give
’em no more work. They both work for him once in a while.”
I see it all in a blinding flash and go to my own room. How much more
powerful is self-interest as typified by Patsy than the police!
* * * * *
It is raining one night and I hear a voice in the room above mine,
singing. It is a good voice, sweet and clear, but a little weak and
faint down here.
“Tyro-al, Tyro-al! Tyro-al, Tyro-al!
Ich hab dich veeder, O mine Tyro-al!”
I know who lives up there by now: Mr. and Mrs. Schmick and a
little Schmick girl, about ten or eleven. Being courageous in this
vicinity because of the simplicity of these people, the awe they
have for one who holds himself rather aloof and dresses better than
they, and lonely, too, I go up. In response to my knock a little
fair-complexioned, heavily constructed German woman with gray hair and
blue eyes comes to the door.
“I heard some one singing,” I say, “and I thought I would come up and
ask you if I might not come in and listen. I live in the room below.”
“Certainly. Why, of course.” This with an upward lift of the voice.
“Come right in.” And although flustered and red because of what to her
seems an embarrassing situation, she introduces me to her black-haired,
heavy-faced husband, who is sitting at the center table with a zither
before him.
“Papa, here is a gentleman who wants to hear the music.”
I smile, and the old German arises, smiles and extends me a
welcoming hand. He is sitting in the center of this combination
sitting-room, parlor, kitchen and dining-room, his zither, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, on the table before him.
“I don’t know your name,” I say.
“Schmick,” he replies.
I apologize for intruding but they both seem rather pleased. Also the
little daughter, who is sitting in one corner.
“Were you singing?” I ask her.
“No. Mamma,” she replies.
I look at the gray-haired little mother and she shows me even, white
teeth in smiling at my astonishment.
“I sing but very little,” she insists, blushing red. “My woice is not
so strong any more.”
“Won’t you sing what you were singing just before I came in?” I ask.
Without any of that diffidence which characterizes so many of all
classes she rises and putting one hand on the shoulder of her heavy,
solemn-looking husband, asks him to strike the appropriate chord, and
then breaks forth into one of those plaintive folksongs of the Tyrol
which describes the longing of the singer for his native land.
“I have such a poor woice now,” she insists when she concludes. “When I
was younger it was different.”
“Poor!” I exclaim. “It’s very clear and beautiful. How old are you?”
“I will be fifty next August,” she answers.
This woman is possessed of a sympathetic and altogether lovely
disposition. How can she exist in Hell’s Kitchen, amid grime and
apparent hardness, and remain so sweet and sympathetic? In my youth and
ignorance I wonder.
* * * * *
I am returning one day from a serious inspection of the small stores
and shops of the neighborhood. As I near my door I am preceded up the
street by three grimy coal-heavers, evidently returning from work in an
immense coalyard in Eleventh Avenue.
“Come on in and have a pint,” invites one great hulking fellow, with
hands like small coal-shovels. He was, as it chanced, directly in front
of my doorway.
One of his two companions needs no second invitation, but the other, a
small, feeble-witted-looking individual, seems uncertain as to whether
to go on or stay.
“Come on! Come on back and have a pint!” shouts the first coal-heaver.
“What the hell--ain’t you no good at all? Come on!”
“Sure I am,” returns the other diffidently. “But I ought to be home by
half-past.”
“Aw, home be damned! It won’t take long to drink a pint. Come on.”
“All right,” returns the other, grinning sheepishly.
They go over the way to a saloon, and I pause in my own door. Presently
a little girl comes down, carrying a tin pail.
“Whose little girl are you?” I inquire, not recognizing her.
“Mamma ain’t home to-day,” she returns quickly.
“Mamma?” I reply. “Why do you say that? I don’t want your mamma. I live
here.”
“Oh, I thought you was the insurance man,” she adds, grinning. “You
look just like him.”
“Aren’t you the coal man’s little girl?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he just went into the saloon over there.”
“Huh-uh. Mine’s upstairs, drunk. He must be Mr. Kelly,” and she goes
quickly on with her bucket.
* * * * *
I am sitting in my room one night, listening to the sounds that float
vaguely about this curious little unit of metropolitan life, when a
dénouement in the social complications of this same coal-heaver’s life
is reached. I already know him now to be a rough man, for once or twice
I heard him damning his children very loudly. But I did not suspect
that there were likely to be complications over and above the world of
the purely material.
“Die frau hat sich selbst umgebracht!” (“The woman has taken her
life!”) I hear some one crying out in the hall, and then there is such
a running and shuffling in the general hubbub. A score of tenants from
the different floors are talking and gesticulating, and in the rear of
the hall the door opening into the coal-heaver’s dining-room is open.
My landlady, Mrs. Witty, is on the scene, and even while we gaze a
dapper little physician of the region, in a high hat and frockcoat,
comes running up the steps and enters the open door in the rear.
“The doctor! The doctor!” The word passes from one to another.
“What is it?” I ask, questioning a little girl whom I had often seen
playing tag on the sidewalk below.
“She took poison,” she answers.
“Who?”
“That woman in there.”
“The wife of the coal man?”
“Sure.”
“What did she take it for?”
“I dunno. Here comes another doctor--look!”
Another young doctor is hurrying up the steps.
While we are still gaping at the opening and closing door, Mrs.
Schmick, the little German woman who sang for me, comes out. She has
evidently been laboring in the sick room and seems very much excited.
“Is she dead?” ask a half-dozen people as she hurries upstairs for
something.
“No-oh,” she answers, puckering up her mouth in her peculiar way. “She
is very low, though. I must get some things,” and she hurries away.
The crowd waits, and finally some light on the difficulty begins to
break.
“She wouldn’t live with him if he didn’t stop going with her,” my own
landlady is saying. “I heard her say it.”
“Who? Who?” inquires another.
“Why, that woman in Fortieth Street. You know her.”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. She lives next door to the blacksmith’s shop, upstairs
there, the woman with the two little girls.”
“Her? Is that why she did it?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t say!”
They clatter on in this way and gradually it comes out in good order.
This coal-heaver knows a widow in the next block. He is either in
love with her or she is in love with him, and sometimes she comes
here into Thirty-ninth Street to catch a glimpse of him. He has been
seen with her a number of times and had been in the habit of driving
his coal-wagon through Fortieth Street in order to catch a glimpse of
her. His wife has frequently complained, of course, and there have
been rows, bitter nocturnal wrangles, in which he has not come off
triumphant. He has sworn and raved and struck his wife but he has
been made to promise not to drive through Fortieth Street just the
same. This day, however, he failed to keep this injunction. She was in
Fortieth Street and had seen him, then had come home and in a fit of
jealous rage and affectionate distemper had drunk a bottle of camphor.
The husband is not home yet.
While we are still patiently awaiting him he arrives, dark, heavy,
unprepared for the difficulty awaiting him, and very much astonished at
the company gathered about his door.
“My wife!” he exclaims when told.
“Yes, your wife.” This from several members of the company.
He hurries in, very shaken and frightened.
“What is this?” he demands as he passes the door and is confronted by
serious-looking physicians. More we could not hear.
But after a time out he comes for something at the drugstore, then in
again. He is in and out two or three times, and finally, before the
assembled company and in explanation, wrings his hands.
“I never done nothin’ to make her do this. I never done nothin’.” He
pauses, awaiting a denial, possibly, from some one, then adds: “The
disgrace! I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t for the disgrace!”
I meet Mrs. Schmick the next day in the hall. She has been
indefatigable in her labors.
“Will she die?”
“No, she gets better now.”
“Is he going to behave himself?”
She shrugs her shoulders, lifts up her hands dubiously.
“Mrs. Schmick,” I ask, interestedly, her philosophy of life arresting
me, “why do you work so hard? You didn’t even know her, did you?”
“Ach, no. But she is sick now. She is in trouble. I would do as much
for anybody.”
And this is Hell’s Kitchen, I recall.
* * * * *
Looking out of my front window I can see a great deal of all that goes
on here, in connection with this house, I mean. Through the single
narrow door under my window issue and return all those who have in
any way anything to do with it. The mailman comes very seldom. There
is a weekly life-insurance man who comes regularly, bangs on doors
and complains that some people are in but won’t answer. Ditto the gas
man. Ditto the milkman. Ditto the collector for a rug and clock house.
Many duns of many kinds who come to collect bills of all kinds and
never can “get in.” Of a morning only a half-dozen men and some six or
eight girls seem to creep wearily and unwillingly forth to work. At
night they and others, who have apparently other methods than that of
regular toil for occupying their time, return with quite a different
air. Truckmen and coalmen and Mr. Schmick arrive about the same time,
half-past five. The son of a morose malster’s clerk, who occupies the
second floor rear, back of me, arrives at six. Beer-can carrying is the
chief employment of the city cart-driver’s wife, who lives on the third
floor, the unemployed iron-worker, whose front room I rent, and the
ill-tempered woman with the three children on the fourth floor. The six
or eight girls who go out evenings after their day’s labor frequently
do not begin to drift back until after eleven, several of them not
before three or four. I have met them coming in. Queer figures slip in
and out at all times, men and women who cannot be placed by me in any
regular detail of the doings of this house. Some of them visit one or
another of several “apartments” too frequently to make their comings
and goings explicable on conventional grounds. It is a peculiar region
and house, this, with marked streaks of gayety at times, and some
very evident and frequently long-continued periods of depression and
dissatisfaction and misery.
I am hanging out of my window one evening as usual when the keenest
of all these local tragedies, in so far as this house and a home
are concerned, is enacted directly below me. One of the daughters
above-mentioned is followed down four flights of stairs and pushed out
upon the sidewalk by her irate father and a bundle of wearing apparel
thrown after her.
He is very angry and shouts: “You get out now. You can’t come back into
my house any more. Get out!”
He waves his arms dramatically. A crowd gathers. Men and women hang out
of windows or gather closely about him and the girl, while the latter,
quite young yet, perhaps fifteen, cries, and the onlookers eagerly
demand to know what the trouble is.
“She’s a street-walker, that’s what she is,” he screams. “She comes to
my house after running around all night with loafers. Let her get out
now.”
“Aw, what do you want to turn her off for?” demands a sympathetic
bystander who is evidently moved by the girl’s tears. Others voice the
same sentiment.
“You! You!” exclaims the old locksmith, who is her father, in
uncontrollable rage. “You mind your own business. She is a
street-walker, that’s what she is. She shall not come into my house any
more.”
There is wrangling and more exclamations, and finally into the thick of
the crowd comes a policeman, who tries to gather up all the phases of
the story.
“You won’t take her back, eh?” he asks of the father, after using all
sorts of arguments to prevent a family rupture. “All right, then,
come along,” he says to the girl, and leads her around to the police
station. “We’ll find some place for you, maybe, to-night anyhow.”
I heard that she did not stay at the station, after all, but what the
conclusion of her career was, outside of the fact that the matter was
reported to the Gerry Society, I never learned. But the reasons for
her predicament struck me as obvious. Here was too much toil, too much
gloom, too much solemnity for her, the non-appreciation which the
youthful heart so much abhors. Elsewhere, perhaps, was light, warmth,
merriment, beauty--or so she thought.
She went, she and so many others, fluttering eastward like a moth, into
the heart of the great city which lay mostly to the east. When she
returned, and with singed wings, she was no longer welcome.
* * * * *
But why they saw fit to dub it Hell’s Kitchen, however, I could never
discover. It seemed to me a very ordinary slum neighborhood, poor and
commonplace, and sharply edged by poverty, but just life and very, very
human life at that.
A CERTAIN OIL REFINERY
There is a section of land very near New York, lying at the extreme
southern point of the peninsula known as Bayonne, which is given up to
a peculiar business. The peninsula is a long neck of land lying between
those two large bays which extend a goodly distance on either hand, one
toward the city of Newark, the other toward the vast and restless ocean
beyond Brooklyn. Stormy winds sweep over it at many periods of the
year. The seagull and the tern fly high over its darksome roof-tops.
Tall stacks and bare, red buildings and scores of rounded tanks spread
helter-skelter over its surface, give it a dreary, unkempt and yet
not wholly inartistic appearance which appeals, much as a grotesque
deformity appeals or a masque intended to represent pain.
This section is the seat of a most prosperous manufacturing
establishment, a single limb of a many-branched tree, and its business
is the manufacturing, or rather refining, of oil. Of an ordinary
business day you would not want a more inspiring picture of that which
is known as manufacture. Great ships, inbound and outbound, from all
ports of the world, lie anchored at its docks. Long trains of oil cars
are backed in on many spurs of tracks, which branch from main-line
arteries and stand like caravans of steel, waiting to carry new burdens
of oil to the uttermost parts of the land. There are many buildings and
outhouses of all shapes and dimensions which are continually belching
forth smoke in a solid mass, and if you stand and look in any direction
on a gloomy day you may see red fires which burn and gleam in a steady
way, giving a touch of somber richness to a scene which is otherwise
only a mass of black and gray.
This region is remarkable for the art, as for the toil of it, if
nothing more. A painter could here find a thousand contrasts in black
and gray and red and blue, which would give him ample labor for his pen
or brush. These stacks are so tall, the building from which they spring
so low. Spread out over a marshy ground which was once all seaweed and
which now shows patches of water stained with iridescent oil, broken
here and there with other patches of black earth to match the blacker
buildings which abound upon it, you have a combination in shades and
tones of one color which no artist could resist. A Whistler could make
wonderful blacks and whites of this. A Vierge or a Shinn could show
us what it means to catch the exact image of darkness at its best. A
casual visitor, if he is of a sensitive turn, shudders or turns away
with a sense of depression haunting him. It is a great world of gloom,
done in lines of splendid activity, but full of the pathos of faint
contrasts in gray and black.
At that, it is not so much the art of it that is impressive as the
solemn life situation which it represents. These people who work in
it--and there are thousands of them--are of an order which you would
call commonplace. They are not very bright intellectually, of course,
or they would not work here. They are not very attractive physically,
for nature suits body to mind in most instances, and these bodies as
a rule reflect the heaviness of the intelligence which guides them.
They are poor Swedes and Poles, Hungarians and Lithuanians, people who
in many instances do not speak our tongue as yet, and who are used to
conditions so rough and bare that those who are used to conditions of
even moderate comfort shudder at the thought of them. They live in
tumbledown shacks next to “the works” and they arrange their domestic
economies heaven only knows how. Wages are not high (a dollar or a
dollar and a half a day is good pay in most instances), and many of
them have families to support, large families, for children in all the
poorer sections are always numerous. There are dark, minute stores,
and as dark and meaner saloons, where many of them (the men) drink.
Looking at the homes and the saloons hereabout, it would seem to you
as though any grade of intelligence ought to do better than this, as
if an all-wise, directing intelligence, which we once assumed nature
to possess, could not allow such homely, claptrap things to come into
being. And yet here they are.
Taken as a mass, however, and in extreme heat or cold, under rain
or snow, when the elements are beating about them, they achieve a
swart solemnity, rise or fall to a somber dignity or misery for which
nature might well be praised. They look so grim, so bare, so hopeless.
Artists ought to make pictures of them. Writers ought to write of
them. Musicians should get their inspiration for what is antiphonal
and contra-puntal from such things. They are of the darker moods of
nature, its meanest inspiration.
However, it is not of these houses alone that this picture is to be
made, but of the work within the plant, its nature, its grayness,
its intricacy, its rancidity, its commonplaceness, its mental
insufficiency; for it is a routine, a process, lacking from one year’s
end to another any trace of anything creative--the filling of one vat
and another, for instance, and letting the same settle; introducing
into one vat and another a given measure of chemicals which are known
to bring about separation and purifications or, in other words, the
process called refining; opening gates in tubes and funnels which drain
the partially refined oils into other vats and finally into barrels and
tanks, which are placed on cars or ships. You may find the how of it in
any encyclopedia. But the interesting thing to me is that men work and
toil here in a sickening atmosphere of blackness and shadow, of vile
odors, of vile substances, of vile surroundings. You could not enter
this yard, nor glance into one of these buildings, nor look at these
men tramping by, without feeling that they were working in shadow and
amid foul odors and gases, which decidedly are not conducive to either
health or the highest order of intelligence.
Refuse tar, oil and acids greet the nostrils and sight everywhere. The
great chimneys on either hand are either belching huge columns of black
or blue smoke, or vapory blue gases, which come in at the windows. The
ground under your feet is discolored by oil, and all the wagons, cars,
implements, machinery, buildings, and the men, of course, are splotched
and spotted with it. There seems to be no escape. The very air is full
of smoke and oil.
It is in this atmosphere that thousands of men are working. You may see
them trudging in in the morning, their buckets or baskets over their
arms, a consistent pallor overspreading their faces, an irritating
cough in some instances indicating their contact with the smoke and
fumes; and you may see them trudging out again at night, marked with
the same pallor, coughing with the same cough; a day of peculiar duties
followed by a night in the somber, gray places which they call home.
Another line of men is always coming in as they go out. It is a line of
men which straggles over all of two miles and is coming or going during
an hour, either of the morning or the night. There is no gayety in it,
no enthusiasm. You may see depicted on these faces only the mental
attitude which ensues where one is compelled to work at some thing in
which there is nothing creative. It is really, when all is said and
done, not a pleasant picture.
I will not say, however, that it is an unrelieved hardship for men
to work so. “The Lord tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb” is an
old proverb and unquestionably a true one. Indubitably these men do
not feel as keenly about these things as some of the more exalted
intellectual types in life, and it is entirely possible that a
conception of what we know as “atmosphere” may never have found
lodgment in their brains. Nevertheless, it is true that their physical
health is affected to a certain extent, and it is also true that the
home life to which they return is what it is, whether this be due to
low intelligence or low wages, or both. The one complements the
other, of course. If any attempt were made to better their condition
physically or mentally, it might well be looked upon by them as
meddling. At the same time it is true that up to this time nothing has
been done to improve their condition. Doing anything more for them than
paying them wages is not thought of.
[Illustration: An Oil Refinery]
A long trough, for instance, a single low wooden tub, in a small
boarded-off space, in the boss teamsters’ shanty, with neither soap
nor towels and only the light that comes from a low door, is all
the provision made for the host of “still-cleaners,” the men who
are engaged in the removal of the filthy refuse--tar, acids, and
vile residuums from the stills and agitators. In connection with the
boiler-room, where over three hundred men congregate at noontime and
at night, there is to be found nothing better. You may see rows of
grimy men congregate at noontime and at night, to eat their lunch or
dinner, there is to be found nothing better. You may see rows of grimy
men in various departments attempting to clean themselves under such
circumstances, and still others walking away without any attempt at
cleaning themselves before leaving. It takes too long. The idea of
furnishing a clean dining-room in which to eat or a place to hang coats
has never occurred to any one. They bring their food in buckets.
However, that vast problem, the ethics of employment, is not up for
discussion in this instance: only the picture which this industry
presents. On a gray day or a stormy one, if you have a taste for the
somber, you have here all the elements of a gloomy labor picture which
may not long endure, so steadily is the world changing. On the one
hand, masters of great force and wealth, penurious to a degree, on the
other the victims of this same penuriousness and indifference, dumbly
accepting it, and over all this smoke and gas and these foul odors
about all these miserable chambers. Truly, I doubt if one could wish a
better hell for one’s enemies than some of the wretched chambers here,
where men rove about like troubled spirits in a purgatory of man’s
devising; nor any mental state worse than that in which most of these
victims of Mother Nature find themselves. At the bottom nothing but
darkness and thickness of wit, and dullness of feeling, let us say, and
at the top the great brilliant blooms known to the world as the palaces
and the office buildings and the private cars and the art collections
of the principal owners of the stock of this concern. For those at the
top, the brilliancy of the mansions of Fifth Avenue, the gorgeousness
of the resorts of Newport and Palm Beach, the delights of intelligence
and freedom; for those beneath, the dark chamber, the hanging smoke,
pallor, foul odors, wretched homes. Yet who shall say that this is not
the foreordained order of life? Can it be changed? Will it ever be,
permanently? Who is to say?
THE BOWERY MISSION
In the lower stretches of the Bowery, in New York, that street
once famous for a tawdry sprightliness but now run to humdrum and
commonplace, stands the Bowery Mission. It is really a pretentious
affair of its kind, the most showy and successful of any religious
effort directed toward reclaiming the bum, the sot, the crook and the
failure. As a matter of fact, the three former, and not always the
latter, are not easily reclaimed by religion or anything else. It is
only when the three former degenerate into the latter that the thought
of religion seems at all enticing, and then only on the side that
leans toward help for themselves. The Bowery Mission as an institution
gathers its full quota of these failures, and its double row of stately
old English benches, paid for by earnest Christians who have heard of
it through much newspaper heralding of its services, are nightly filled
and overflowing.
The spirit of this organization is peculiar. It really does not ask
anything of its adherents or attendants, or whatever they might be
called, except that they come in. No dues are collected, no services
exacted. There is even a free lunchroom and an employment bureau run
in connection with it, where the hungry can get a cup of coffee and a
roll at midnight and the jobless can sometimes hear of something to
their advantage during the day. The whole spirit of the place is one of
helpfulness, though the task is of necessity dispiriting and in some
of its aspects gruesome.
For these individuals who frequent this place of worship are surely, of
all the flotsam of the city, the most helpless and woebegone. There is
something about the type of soul which turns to religion _in extremis_
which is not pleasing. It appears to turn to religion about as a
drowning man turns to a raft. There is the taint of personal advantage
about it and not a little of the cant and whine of one who would curry
favor with life or the Lord. Granting this, yet here they are, and here
they come, out of the Bowery and the side streets of the Bowery, that
wonderful ganglia of lodging houses; and in this place, and I presume
others of its stripe, listen to presumably inspiring sermons. In all
fairness, the speakers seem to realize that they have a difficult
task to perform in awakening these men to a consciousness of their
condition. They know that there is, if not cant, at least mental and
physical lethargy to overcome. These bodies are poisoned by their own
inactivity and sense of defeat. When one looks at them collectively the
idea instinctively forces itself forward: “What is there to save?”
And yet, shabby and depressing as are these facts, there is a
collective, coherent charm and color about the effort itself which to
one who views it entirely disinterestedly is not to be scoffed at.
The hall itself, a long deep store turned to a semblance of Gothic
beauty by a series of colored windows set in the store-front facing
the Bowery, and by a gallery of high-backed benches of Gothic design
at the back, and by mottoes and traceries in dark blue and gold which
harmonize fittingly with the walnut stain of the woodwork, is inviting.
Even the shabby greenish-brown and dusty gray coats of the audience
blend well with the woodwork, and even the pale colorless faces of gray
or ivory hue somehow add to what is unquestionably an artistic and
ornamental effect.
The gospel of God the All-Forgiving is the only doctrine here
thoroughly insisted upon. It is, in a way, a doctrine of inspiration.
That it is really never too late to change, to come back and begin all
over, is the basic idea. God, once appealed to, can do anything to
restore the contrite heart to power and efficiency. Believe in God,
believe that He really loves you, believe that He desires to make you
all you should be, and you will be. Your fortunes will change. You will
come into peace and decency and be respected once more. God will help
you.
It is interesting to watch the effect of this inspirational doctrine,
driven home as it is by imaginative address, oratorical fire, and
sometimes physical vehemence. The speakers, the ordinary religionists
of an inspirational and moral turn, not infrequently possess real
magnetism, the power to attract and sway their hearers. These dismal
wanderers, living largely in doubt and despair, can actually be seen
to take on a pseudo-courage as they listen. You can see them stir and
shift, the idea that possibly something can be done for them if only
they can get this belief into their minds, actually influencing their
bodies. And now and then some one who has got a soft job, a place,
through the ministrations of the mission workers, or who has been
pulled out of a state of absolute despair--or at least claims to have
been--will arise and testify that such has been the case. His long
wanderings in the dark will actually fascinate him by contrast and
he will expatiate with shabby eloquence upon his present decency and
comfort as contrasted with what he was. I remember one night hearing
an old man tell what a curse he had been to a kind-hearted sister,
and how he wanted but one thing, now that he was coming out of his
dream of evil, and that was to let her see some day that he had really
reformed. It was a pathetic wish, so little to hope for, but the wish
was seemingly sincere and the speaker fairly recovered.
And they claim to recover a percentage, small though it is, to actual
service and usefulness. The service may not be great, the usefulness
not very important, but such as it is, there it is. And if one could
but believe them, so dubious is all so-called reformation of this
sort, there is something pleasing in the thought that out of the muck
and waste of the slough of despond some of these might actually be
brought to health and decency, a worthwhile living, say. Yet are they?
Dirty, grimy, like flies immersed in glue, can they be--have they ever
been--dragged to safety and set on their feet again, clean, hopeful, or
even weakly so?
I remember listening one night to the story of the son of the man who
founded the mission. It appears that the father was rich and the boy
indulgently fostered, until at last he turned out to be a drunkard,
rake and what not--all the nouns usually applied to those who do evil.
His father had tried to retain a responsible position for him among
his affairs but was finally compelled to cut him off. He ordered him
out of his house, his business, had his will remade, cutting him off
without a dollar, and declared vehemently and determinedly that he
would never look upon him again.
[Illustration: The Bowery Mission]
The boy disappeared. Some five years later a thin, shabby, down-hearted
wastrel strolled into the mission and sat down, contenting himself with
occupying a far corner and listening wearily to what was being said.
After the services were over he came to the director in charge and
confessed that he was the son of the man who had founded the mission,
that he was actually at the end of his rope, hungry, and with no place
to sleep--your prodigal son. The director, of course, at once took him
in charge, gave him a meal and a bed, and set about considering whether
anything could be done for him.
It appears that the youth, like his prototype of the parable, had
actually had his fill of the husks, but in addition he was sick and
dispirited and willing to die. The director encouraged him to hope. He
was young yet. There was still a chance for him. He first gave him odd
jobs about the mission, then secured him a place as waiter in a small
restaurant, and finally, figuring out a notable idea, took him to the
foreman of the father’s own printing establishment and asked a place
for him as a printer’s devil. The character of the mission director was
sufficient guarantee and the place was given, though no one knew who
the rundown assistant really was. Finally, after over eleven months
of service, the director went to the owner of the business and said:
“Would you like to know where your boy is?”
“No,” the father replied sharply, “I would not.”
“If you knew he had reformed and had been working for at least a year
and a half steadily in one place--wouldn’t that make any difference?”
“Well,” he replied, looking at him quizzically, “it might. Where is he?”
“Right here in your own establishment.”
The old man got up. “What’s he doing? Let me look at him.”
The two traversed the halls of a great business establishment and
finally came to the department where the youth was working. The
father, eager but cautious, scanned the room and saw his son, himself
unnoticed. He was sticking type, a green shade over his eyes.
For a moment the parent hesitated, then went over.
“Harry,” he called.
The boy jumped.
“Father!” he cried.
It was described as a moment of intense emotion. The boy broke down and
wept and the father shed tears over him. Finally he sobered himself and
said: “Now you come with me. I guess you’re all right enough to be my
son again. You can set more type to-morrow.” And he led him away.
Truth? Or Romance? I do not know.
The final answer to this form of service, however, is in the mission
itself. Nightly you may see them rise and hear them testify. One night
the speaker, pouring forth a fiery description of God’s power, stopped
in the midst of his address and said: “Is that you, Tommy Wilson, up
there in the gallery?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tommy, I’m glad to see you. Won’t you get up and sing ‘My Lord and I’?
I know there isn’t any one here who wouldn’t rather hear you sing than
me preach any time. Will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Up in the gallery, three rows back, there arose a shabby little man,
his dusty suit showing the well-worn marks of age. He was clean and
docile, however, and seemed to be some one whom the mission had
reclaimed in times past. In fact, the speaker made it clear that Tommy
was a great card, for out of the gutter he had come to contribute a
beautiful voice to the mission, a voice that was now missing because he
had a job in a faraway part of the city.
Tommy sang. He put his hands in his coat pockets, stood perfectly
erect, and with his head thrown back gave vent to such a sweet, clear
melody that it moved every heart. It was not a strong voice, not showy,
but pure and lovely, like a limpid stream. The song he sang was this:
I have a Friend so precious,
So very dear to me;
He loves me with such tender love,
He loves me faithfully.
I could not live apart from Him,
I love to feel Him nigh;
And so we dwell together,
My Lord and I.
Sometimes I’m faint and weary,
He knows that I am weak,
And as He bids me lean on Him
His help I gladly seek;
He leads me in the paths of light,
Beneath a sunny sky;
And so we walk together,
My Lord and I.
I tell Him all my sorrows,
I tell Him all my joys,
I tell Him all that pleases me,
I tell Him what annoys;
He tells me what I ought to do,
He tells me how to try;
And so we walk together,
My Lord and I.
He knows how I’m longing
Some weary soul to win,
And so He bids me go and speak
The loving word for Him;
He bids me tell His wondrous love,
And why He came to die;
And so we work together
My Lord and I.
As he sang I could not help thinking of this imaginatively personified
Lord of the Universe in all His power and wisdom taking note of this
singing, shabby ant--of the faith that it required to believe that He
would. Then I thought of the vast forces that shift and turn in their
mighty inscrutability. I thought of suns and planets that die, not
knowing why they are born. Of the vast machinery, the vast chemistry,
of things dark, ruthless, brutal, and then of love, and mercy and
tenderness that is somehow present along with cruelty and savagery.
And then I thought of this little, shabby reclaimed water-rat, this
scraping of the mud crawled to the bank, who yet could stand there
in his shabby coat and sing! What if, after all, as the Christian
Scientists believe, the Lord was not distant from things but here, now,
everywhere, divine goodness speaking in and through matter and man.
What if evil and weakness and failure were dreams only, evil dreams,
from which we wake to something different, better--Omnipotence, to
essential unity with life and love? For a moment, so mysterious a thing
is emotion and romance, the thought carried me with the singer, and I
sang with him:
“And so we walk together,
My Lord and I.”
But outside in the cold, hard street, with its trucks and cars, I
knew the informing spirit is not quite like that, neither so kind nor
helpful--at least not to all.
THE WONDER OF THE WATER
I cross, each morning, a bridge that spans a river of running water. It
is not a wide river, but one populous with boats and teeming with all
the mercantile life of a great city. Its current is swift, its bottom
deep; it carries on its glassy bosom the freight of a thousand--of
ten thousand merchants. Only the conception of something supernally
wonderful haunts me as I cross it, and I gaze at the picture of its
boats and barges, its spars and sails, spellbound by their beauty.
The boats on this little river--the Harlem--traverse the seven seas.
You may stand and see them go by: vessels loaded with brick and stone,
with lumber and cement, with coal, iron, lime, oil--a great gamut of
serviceable things which the world needs and which is here forever
being delivered or carried away. These boats come from the Hudson
and the Chesapeake, from Maine, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Europe,
Asia, Africa and the rest of the world. They tie up to these small
docks in friendly rows and nose the banks in silence, while human
beings, honored only by being allowed to guide and direct their stately
proportions, clamber over them.
[Illustration: The Wonder of the Water]
It is not so much these boats, however, as it is the water which curls
under them, which sips and eddies about the docks and posts, and
circles away in spinning rings, which takes my fancy. This water, which
flows here so swiftly, comes from so far. It has been washing about
the world, lo, these many centuries--for how long the imagination of
man cannot conceive. And here it is running pleasantly at my feet, the
light of the morning sun warming it with amethystine beams and giving
it a luster which the deeps of the sea cannot have.
This water, as it comes before me now, gives me the impression of
having been a hundred and a thousand things, maybe--the torrent
from the height, bounding ecstatically downward into the depths of
some cavern, rolling in gloom under the immensity of the volume of
the sea, or a tiny cloudlet hanging like a little red island in the
sky, a dark thundercloud pouring its fury and wrath upon a luckless
multitude. It may have been a cup of water, a glass of wine, a tear,
a gush of blood--anything in the whole gamut of human experience, or
out of it--and yet here for this hour at least it lies darkling and
purling, murmuring cheerfully about these docks and piers. When you
think of the steam that is made of it by heat, floating over our whole
civilization like plumes; the frost of the windowpanes spread in such
tropical luxury of a winter morning; the snow, in its forms of stars
and flowers; the rich rains of summer, falling with such rhythmic
persistence; and then the ice, the fog, the very atmosphere we breathe,
infiltrated by this wonderful medium and were ourselves almost entirely
composed of it, you see how almost mystic it becomes. We owe all our
forms to it; the beauty of the flowers, the stateliness of the trees,
the shape and grandeur of the mountains, all, in fact--our minds and
bodies, so much water and so little substance.
And here it is under our bridge, hurrying away. It may be that it has
mind, that in its fluid depths lie all the religions and philosophies
of the world. Sweep us away, and out of it might rise new shapes and
forms, more glorious, more radiant. We may not even guess the alpha of
its powers.
I do not know what this green fluid is that runs between green banks
and past docks and factories and the habitations of men. It has a life
quality, and mayhap a soul quality, which I cannot fathom, but with
each turn of its ripples and each gurgle of its tide the heart of me
leaps like a voice in song. I can reason no more. It is too colorful,
too rhythmic, too silent, not to call forth that which is deemed
exaltation by the world, and I stand spellbound, longing for I know not
what, nor why.
THE MAN ON THE BENCH
It is nine o’clock of a summer’s night. The great city all about is
still astir, active, interested, apparently comfortable. Lights gleam
out from stores lazily. The cars go rumbling by only partially filled,
as is usual at this time of night. People stroll in parks in a score of
places throughout the city, enjoying the cool of the night, such as it
is.
In any one of these, as the evening wanes, may be witnessed one of the
characteristic spectacles of the town: the gathering of the “benchers.”
Here, while one strolls about for an hour’s amusement or sits on a
bench, may be seen the man whom the city has beaten, seeking a place to
sleep.
What a motley company! What a port of missing men! This young one who
slips by me in shabby, clay-colored clothes and a worn, dirty straw
hat, is only temporarily down on his luck, for he has youth. It may be
a puling youth, half-witted, with ill-conceived understanding of things
as they are, but it is youth, with some muscle and some activity, and
as such it is salable. Some one will buy it for something for a little
while.
But this other thing that comes shambling toward me, dirty, dust in its
ears, dust in its eyes, dust in its hair, a meager recollection of a
hat, dull, hopeless, doglike eyes--what has it to offer life? Nothing?
Practically so. An appetite which life will not satisfy, a racked and
thin-blooded body which life cannot use, a rusty, cracked and battered
piece of machinery which is fit only for the scrap-heap. And yet it
lingers on, clings on, hoping for what? And this third thing--a woman,
if you please, in rags and tatters, a gray cape for a shawl, a queer,
flat, shapeless thing which she wears on her head for a hat, shoes that
are not shoes but cracked strips of leather, a skirt that is a bag
only, hands, face, skin wrinkled and dirty, yet who seeks to rest or
sleep here the night through. And now she is stuffing old newspapers
between her dress and her breast to keep warm. And enveloping her hands
in her rag of a shawl!
Yet she and those others make but three of many, so grim, so strange,
so shabby a company. What, in God’s name, has life done to them that
they are so cracked and bruised and worthless?
No heart, or not a good one perhaps, in any of these bodies; no
stomach, or a mere bundle of distorted viscera; no liver or kidneys
worthy the name, but only botched or ill-working organs of these names
in their place; eyes poor; hearing possibly defective; hair fading;
skin clammy. Merciful God! is it to this condition that we come, you
and I, if life be not merciful?
I am not morbid. I know that men must make good. I know that to be
useful to the world they must have a spark of divine fire. But who
is to provide the fire? Who did, in the first place? Where is it
now? What blew it out? The individual himself? Not always. Man is
not really responsible for his actions. Society? Society is not
really responsible for itself or for its individuals. Nature? God?
Very likely, although there is room for much discussion and much
illumination here.
[Illustration: The Man on the Bench]
But before we point the finger of scorn or shrug the shoulder of
indifference, one word: Life does provide the divine fire, and that
free and unasked, to many. It does provide a fine constitution, and
that free and unasked, to many. It does provide beauty--aye it pours
it into the lap of some. Life works in the clay of its interests,
fashioning, fashioning. With some handfuls it fashions lovingly,
joyously, radiantly. It gives one girl, for instance, a passion for
art, an ear for music, a throat for singing, a joy in humor and
beauty, which grows and becomes marvelous and is irresistible. Into
the seed of a boy it puts strength, suppleness, facility of thought,
facility of expression, desire. It not infrequently puts a wild surging
determination to do and be in his brain which carries him like powder a
bullet, straight to the mark.
But what or who provided the charge of powder behind that bullet? Who
fashioned the chorded throat? Who worked over this face of flowerlike
expression, until men burn with wild passion and lay kingdoms and
hierarchies and powers at its feet? We palaver so much of personal
effort. We say of this one and that: He did not try. I ask you this:
had he tried, what of it? How far would his little impulse have carried
him? What would it have overcome? Would it have placed him above the
level of a coal-stoker or a sand-hog? Would it have fitted him to
contend with even these? Would it have matched his ideas, or his ideas
have matched it? Who? What? How? Dark thoughts!
“Ah!” but I hear you say, “that is not the question. Effort is the
question, not where his effort will carry him.” True. Who gave him his
fitness for effort, or his unfitness? Who took away his courage? Why
could it be taken? Dark thought, and still more dark the deeps behind
it.
Here they are, though, pale anæmic weeds or broken flowers, slipping
about looking for a bench to sleep on in our park. They are wondering
where the next meal is coming from, the next job, the next bed. They
are wondering whither they are going to go, what they are going to
do, who is going to say something to them. Or maybe they are past
wondering, past dreaming, past thinking over lost battles and lost
life. Oh, nature! where now in your laboratory of dark forces, you plan
and weave, be merciful. For these, after all, are of you, your clay;
they need not be destroyed.
Yet meantime the city sings of its happiness, the lights burn, the
autos honk; there are great restaurants agleam with lights and
merriment. See, that is where strength is!
I like this fact of the man on the bench, as sad as it is. It is the
evidence of the grimness of life, its subtlety, its indifference. Men
pass them by. The world is elsewhere. And yet I know that below all
this awaits after all the unescapable chemistry of things. They are
not out of nature. They cannot escape it really. They are of it--an
integral part of the great mystery and beauty--even they. They fare ill
here, now, perhaps--very. Yet it is entirely possible that they need
only wait, and life will eventually come round to them. They cannot
escape it; it must use them. The potter has but so much clay. He cannot
but mold it again and again. And as for the fire, He cannot ultimately
prevent it. It goes, somewhat wild or mild, into all He does.
THE MEN IN THE DARK
It is not really dark in the accepted sense of the word, for a great,
yellow, electric lamp sputtering overhead casts a wide circle of gold,
but it is one-fifteen of a cold January morning, and this light is
all the immediate light there is. The offices of the great newspaper
center, the sidewalk in front of one of which constitutes the stage of
this scene, are dark and silent. The great presses in every newspaper
building hereabouts are getting ready to whir mightily, and if only
the passers-by would cease their shuffling you could hear the noises
of preparation. A little later, when they are actually in motion, you
can hear them, a sound of rushing, dim and muffled, but audible--the
cataract of news which the world waits for, its daily mental stimulus,
not unlike the bread that is left at your door for your body.
But who are these peculiar individuals who seem to be gathering here
at this time in the morning? You did not notice any one a few minutes
ago, but now there are three or four over there discussing the reasons
for the present hard times, and here in the shadow of this great arch
of a door are three or four more. And now you look about you and they
are coming from all directions, slipping in out of the shadow toward
this light, where sits a fat old Irish woman beside an empty news-stand
waiting to tend it, for as yet there is nothing on it. They all seem
at first to be men of one type, small and underweight and gaunt. But a
little later you realize that they are not so much alike in height and
weight as you first thought, and of differing nationalities. But they
are all cold, though, that is certain, and a little impatient. They are
constantly shifting and turning and looking at the City Hall clock,
where its yellow face shows the hour, or looking down the street, and
sometimes murmuring, but not much. There is very little said.
“What is all the trouble?” you ask of some available bystander, who
ought to be fairly _en rapport_ with the situation, since he has been
standing here for some time.
“Nothin’,” he retorts. “They’re waitin’ for the mornin’ papers. They’re
lookin’ to see which can git to a job first.”
“Oh!” you exclaim, a great light breaking. “So they’re here to get a
good start. They wait all night, eh? That’s pretty tough, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re mostly Swedes and Germans.” This last as
though these two nationalities, and no doubt some others, were beyond
the need of human consideration. “They’re waiters and cooks and order
men and dishwashers. There’s some other kinds, too, but they’re mostly
waiters.”
“Would you say that that old man over there--that fellow with a white
beard--was a waiter?”
“Aw, naw! He ain’t no waiter. I don’t know what he is--pan-handler,
maybe. They wouldn’t have the likes of him. It’s these other fellows
that are waiters, these young ones.”
You look, and they are young in a way, lean, with thin lips and narrow
chests and sallow faces, a little shabby, all of them, and each has a
roll of something wrapped up in a newspaper or a brown paper and tucked
under his arm--an apron, maybe.
You begin speculating for yourself, and, with the aid of your friend
to supply occasional points, you piece the whole thing together. This
is really a very great, hard, cold city, and these men are creatures
at the bottom of the ladder, temporarily, anyhow. And these columns
of ads in the successful morning papers attract them as a chance. And
they come here thus early in the cold in order to get a good start on a
given job before any one else can get ahead of them. First come, first
served.
And while you are waiting, speculating, another creature edges near
you. He is not quite so prosperous looking as the last one you talked
to; he seems thinner, more emaciated.
“Take a look at that, boss,” he says, opening his palm and shoving
something bright toward you. It looks like gold.
“No,” you answer nervously. (You have been held up before.) “No, I
don’t want to look at it.”
“Take a look at it,” he insists.
“No,” you retort irritably, but you do it in a half-hearted, objecting
way and see that it is a gold ring with an initial carved in the seal
plate.
[Illustration: The Men in the Dark]
He closes his thin hand and puts it back in his pocket. He is
inclined to go away, and then another idea strikes him.
“Are you lookin’ fer a job?” he asks.
“No.”
“Ain’t you a cook?”
“No.”
“Gee! I thought you was some swell chef--they come here now and then.”
It is a doubtful compliment but better than nothing. You soften a
little.
“I’m a waiter,” he confides, now that he has your momentary interest.
“I am, I mean, when I’m in good health. I’m run down some now. The best
I can get is dishwashing now. But I am a waiter, and I’ve been an order
clerk. There’s nothin’ much to say of this bunch, though. They all work
for the cheap joints. Saturday nights they gits drunk mostly, and if
they’re not there on the dot Sunday they’re gone. The boss gits a new
one. Then they come here Sunday night or Monday.”
You are inclined to agree that this description fits in pretty well
with your observation of a number of them, but what of these others who
look like family men, who look worried and harried?
“Sure, there’s lots others,” prompts your adviser. “There’s three
columns every day callin’ for painters. There’s a column most every day
of printers. People paints houses all the year round. There’s general
help wanted. There’s carpenters. It gits some. Cooks and waiters and
dishwashers in the big pull, though.”
You have been wondering if this is really true, but it sounds
plausible enough. These men are obviously, in a great many cases, cooks
and waiters. Their search calls for an early start, for the restaurants
and hotels usually keep open all night. It may be.
And all the time you have been wondering why the papers do not come.
It seems a shame that these men should have to stand here so long.
There’s a great crowd now, between two and three hundred. A policeman
is tramping up and down, keeping an open passageway. He is not in any
friendly mood.
“Stand back,” he orders angrily. “I’m tellin’ ye fer the last time,
now!”
A great passageway opens.
Now of a sudden comes a boy running with a great bundle of the most
successful morning paper, a most staggering load. Actually the crowd
looks as though it would seize him and tear his bundle away from him,
but instead it only closes in quickly behind. When he reaches the Irish
woman’s stand there is a great struggling, grabbing circle formed. “The
----,” is the cry. “Gimme a ----,” and for the space of a half-dozen
minutes a thriving, exciting business is done in morning papers. Then
these men run with their papers like dogs run with a bone. They hurry,
each to some neighboring light, and glance up and down the columns.
Sometimes they mark something, and then you see them hurry on again.
They have picked their prospect.
It is a pitiful spectacle from one point of view, a decidedly grim
one from another. Your dishwasher (or ex-waiter) confides that most
of these positions, apart from tips, pay only five dollars a week and
board. And he admits that the board is vile. While you are talking you
recognize some gentlemanly newspaper man, well-salaried, taking his
belated way home. What a contrast! What a far cry!
“And say,” says your dishwasher friend, “I thought I’d git a job
to-night. I thought somebody’d buy this ring. It’ll bring $1.75 in the
pawnshop in the mornin’. I ain’t got carfare or I wouldn’t mention it.
I usually soaks it early in the week and gits it out Saturday. I’ll
soak it to-morrow, and git another chance to-morrow night.”
What a story! What a predicament!
You go down in your pocket and produce a quarter. You buy him a paper.
“On your way,” you say cheerily--but the misery! The depths! To think
that any one of us should come to this!
As he goes you watch the others going, and then the silence settles
down and the night. There is no sense of traffic here now, no great
need of light. The old Irish woman sinks to the dismal task of waiting,
for morning, I presume. Now and then some passing pedestrian will buy a
paper, but not often. But these others--they have gone in the direction
of the four winds of heaven; they are applying at the shabby doors of
restaurants, in Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Hoboken, Staten Island;
they are sitting on stoops, holding their own at shop doors. They
have the right to ask first, the right to be first, because they are
first--noble privilege.
And you and I--well, we turn in our dreams and rest. The great world
wags on. Our allotted portion is not this. We are not of these men in
the dark.
THE MEN IN THE STORM
It is a winter evening. Already, at four o’clock, the somber hues of
night are over all. A heavy snow is falling, a fine, picking, whipping
snow, borne forward by a swift wind in long, thin lines. The street is
bedded with it, six inches of cold, soft carpet, churned brown by the
crush of teams and the feet of men. Along the Bowery men slouch through
it with collars up and hats pulled over their ears.
Before a dirty, four-story building gathers a crowd of men. It begins
with the approach of two or three, who hang about the closed wooden
door and beat their feet to keep them warm. They make no effort to go
in, but shift ruefully about, digging their hands deep in their pockets
and leering at the crowd and the increasing lamps. There are old men
with grizzled beards and sunken eyes; men who are comparatively young
but shrunken by disease; men who are middle-aged.
With the growth of the crowd about the door comes a murmur. It is not
conversation, but a running comment directed at any one. It contains
oaths and slang phrases.
“I wisht they’d hurry up.”
“Look at the cop watchin’.”
“Maybe it ain’t winter, nuther.”
“I wisht I was with Peary.”
[Illustration: The Men in the Storm]
Now a sharper lash of wind cuts down, and they huddle closer.
There is no anger, no threatening words. It is all sullen endurance,
unlightened by either wit or good fellowship.
An automobile goes jingling by with some reclining figure in it. One of
the members nearest the door sees it.
“Look at the bloke ridin’!”
“He ain’t so cold.”
“Eh! eh! eh!” yells another, the automobile having long since passed
out of hearing.
Little by little the night creeps on. Along the walk a crowd hurries on
its way home. Still the men hang around the door, unwavering.
“Ain’t they ever goin’ to open up?” queries a hoarse voice suggestively.
This seems to renew general interest in the closed door, and many gaze
in that direction. They look at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs paw and
whine and study the knob. They shift and blink and mutter, now a curse,
now a comment. Still they wait, and still the snow whirls and cuts them.
A glimmer appears through the transom overhead, where some one is
lighting the light. It sends a thrill of possibility through the
watchers. On the old hats and peaked shoulders snow is piling. It
gathers in little heaps and curves, and no one brushes it off. In the
center of the crowd the warmth and steam melt it and water trickles off
hat-rims and down noses, which the owners cannot reach to scratch. On
the outer rim the piles remain unmelted. Those who cannot get in the
center, lower their heads to the weather and bend their forms.
At last the bars grate inside, and the crowd pricks up its ears. There
is some one who calls: “Slow up there, now!” and then the door opens.
It is push and jam for a minute, with grim, beast silence to prove
its quality, and then the crowd lessens. It melts inward, like logs
floating, and disappears. There are wet hats and shoulders, a cold,
shrunken, disgruntled mass pouring in between bleak walls. It is just
six o’clock, and there is supper in every hurrying pedestrian’s face.
“Do you sell anything to eat here?” one questions of the grizzled old
carpet-slippers who opens the door.
“No, nuthin but beds.”
The waiting throng had been housed for the night.
THE MEN IN THE SNOW
Winter days in a great city bring some peculiar sights. If it snows,
the streets are at once a slushy mess, and the transaction of
business is, to a certain extent, a hardship. In its first flakes it
is picturesque; the air is filled with flying feathers and the sky
lowery with somber clouds. Later comes the slush and dirt, and not
infrequently bitter cold. The city rings with the grind and squeak of
cold-bitten vehicles, and men and women, the vast tide of humanity
which fills its streets, hurry to and fro so as to be through with the
work or need that keeps them out of doors.
In certain sections of the city at a period like this may be found
groups of men who are constituted by nature and conditions to be an
integral part of every storm. They are like the gulls that follow
the schools of fish at sea. Poverty is the bond which makes them kin
and gives them, after a fashion, a class distinction. They are not
only always poor in body, but poor in mind also, and as for earthly
belongings, of course they have not any.
These men, like the gulls and their fish, pick a little something
from the storm. They follow the fortunes of the contractors who make
arrangements with the city for the removal of the snow, and about the
wagon-barns where the implements of snow removal are kept, and where
daily cards of employment are issued they may be seen waiting by
hundreds, and not at such hours and under such conditions as are at all
pleasant to contemplate, either. In the early hours of the morning,
when the work of the day is first being doled out, they may be seen,
cold, overcoatless, often with bare hands and necks, no collar, or, if
so, only a rag of a thing, and hats too battered and timeworn to be
honestly dignified by the name of hat at all.
The city usually pays at the rate of two dollars a day for what
shoveling these men can do. They are not wanted even at that rate by
the contractors, for stray, healthy laborers are usually preferred;
but the pressure under which the contractors are put by the city and
the public makes a showing necessary. So thousands are admitted to
temporary labor who would not otherwise be considered, and these are
they.
So in this cold, raw, strenuous weather they stand like so many sheep
waiting at the entrance to a fold. There is no particular zeal in this
effort which they are making to live. Hunger for life they have, but
it is a rundown hunger, dispirited by lack of encouragement. They have
been kicked and pushed about the world in an effort to live until, as
a rule, they are comparatively heartbroken and courage-broken. This
storm, which spells comfort and indoor seclusion and amusement for
many, spells a rough opportunity for them--a gutter crust, to be sure,
but a crust.
[Illustration: The Men in the Snow]
And so they are here early in the morning, in the dark. They stand in
a long file outside the contractors’ stable door, waiting for that
consideration which his present need may show. A man at a little glass
window cut in a door receives them. He is a hearty, material,
practical soul who has very little to suggest in the way of mentality
but much in the spirit of acquisitiveness. He is not interested in the
condition of the individuals before him. It does not concern him that
in most cases this is a last despairing grasp at a straw. Will this
fellow work? Will he be satisfied to take $1.75 in place of the $2.00
which the city pays? He does not ask them that so clearly; it is done
in another way.
“Got a shovel?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, it’ll cost you a quarter to get one.”
“I ain’t got no quarter.”
“Well, that’s all right. We’ll take it out o’ your pay.”
Not for to-day only, mind you, but for every day in which work is done,
the quarter comes out for the shovel. It is suggested in some sections
that the shovel is sometimes stolen, but there are gang foremen, and no
money is paid without a foreman’s O. K., and he is responsible for the
shovels.... Hence----
But these men are a bit of dramatic color in the city’s life, whatever
their sufferings. To see them following in droves through the
bitter winter streets the great wagons which haul the snow away is
fascinating, at times pitiful. I have seen old men with white beards
and uncut snowy hair shoveling snow into a truck. I have seen lean,
unfed strips of boys without overcoats and with long, lean, red hands
protruding from undersized coat sleeves, doing the same thing. I have
seen anæmic benchers and consumptives following along illy clad but
shoveling weakly in the snow and cold.
It is a sad mix-up at best, this business of living. Fortune deals so
haphazardly at birth and at death that it is hard to criticize. It so
indifferently smashes the dreams of kings and beggars, dealing the
golden sequins to the sleeping man, taking from the earnest plodder the
little which he has gained, that one becomes, at last, confused. It
is easy for many to criticize, for one reason and another, and justly
mayhap, but at the same time it is so easy to see how it all may have
come about. Wit has not always been present, but sickness, a perverted
moral point of view, an error in honesty, and the climbing of years is
over; the struggling toad has fallen back into the well. There is now
nothing but struggle and crumb-picking at the bottom. And these are
they.
And so these storms, like the bread-line, like the Bowery Lodging,
offer them something; not much. A few days, and the snow will be over.
A few days, and the sun of a warm day will end all opportunity for
work. They will go back again into the gloomy adventuring whence they
emerged. Only now they are visible collectively, here in the cold and
the snow, shoveling.
I like to think of them best and worst, though, as I have seen them
time and time again waiting outside the wagon barns at night, the
labor of the day over. It is something even to be a “down-and-out” and
stand waiting for a pittance which one has really earned. You can see
something of the satisfaction of this even in this gloomy line. In the
early dark of a winter evening, the street’s lamps lighted, these men
are shuffling their feet to keep warm. They are waiting to be paid, as
they are at the end of each work day, but in their hearts is a faint
response to the thought of gain--one dollar and seventy-five cents for
the long day in the cold. The quarter is yielded gladly. The contractor
finds a fat profit in the many quarters he can so easily garner. But
these? To them it is a satisfaction to get the wherewithal to face
another day. It is something to have the money wherewith to obtain
a lodging and a meal for a night. That one-seventy-five--how really
large it must look, like fifty or a hundred or a thousand to some.
Satisfactions and joys are all so relative. But they have really earned
one dollar and seventy-five cents and can hurry away to that marvelous
table of satisfaction which one dollar and seventy-five cents will
provide.
THE FRESHNESS OF THE UNIVERSE
The freshness of the world’s original forces is one of the wonders
which binds me in perpetual fascination. My own strength is a little
thing. I am sometimes sick and sometimes well; some days I am bounding
with enthusiastic life, at other times I am drooping with weariness and
ill feeling. But these things, the great currents of original power
which make the world, are fresh and forever renewing themselves.
Every morning I rise from my sleep restored and go out of doors, and
there they are. At the foot of my garden is a river which has been
running all night long, a swift and never-resting stream. It has been
running so every day and every night for centuries and centuries--and
thousands of centuries, for all I know--and yet here it runs. People
have come and gone; nations have risen and fallen; all sorts of puny
strengths have had their day and have perished; but this thing has
never weakened nor modified itself nor changed,--at least not very
much. Its life is so long and so strong.
[Illustration: The Freshness of the Universe]
And another thing that strikes me is the force and persistency of the
winds. How sweet they are, how refreshing to the wearied body! I rise
with sluggishness, and a sense of disgust with the world, mayhap, and
yet here are the winds, fresh as in the beginning, to run me through
and cool my face and hands and fill my breast with pure air and make me
think the world is good again. I step out of my doorway, and here
they are, blowing across the garden, shaking the leaves of the trees,
rustling in the grass, fluttering at my coat-sleeves and my hair; and
I am no whit the wiser as to what they are. Only I know that they are
old, old, and yet as strong and invigorating as they ever were, and
will be when my little strength is wasted and I am no more.
And here is the sun, bright, golden thing of the sky, which I may not
even look at directly but which makes my day just the same. It is so
invigorating, so healing, so beautiful. I know it is a commonplace,
the thing that must have been before I could be, and yet it is so
novel and fresh and new, even now. I rise, and this old sunlight is
the newest thing in the world. Beside this day, which it makes, all
things are old--my little house, which after all has stood only a few
years; my possessions, dusty with standing a little while, and fading;
myself, who am less young and strong by a day, getting older. And yet
here it is, new after a million years--and a billion years, for aught
I know--pouring this golden flood into my garden and making it what I
wish it to be, new. The wonder of this force is appealing to me. It
touches the innermost strangeness of my being.
And then there is the earth upon which I stand, strange chemic dust,
here covered with grass but elsewhere covered with trees and flowers
and hard habitations of men, yielding its perennial toll of beauty.
We cannot understand the ground, but its newness, the perennial force
with which it produces our food and beauty, this is so patent to all.
I look at the ground beneath my feet, and lo, the agedness of it does
not occur to me, only its freshness. The good ground! The new earth!
This thing which is old, old--old as Time itself--must always have been
and must always be. Where was it before it was here? What stars did it
make, and moons? What ancient lives have trod this earth, this ground
beneath my feet, and now make it? And yet how comes it that I who am
so young find it so new to me and myself old as compared with its
tremendous age! That is the wonder of this original force to me.
And in my yard are trees and little things such as vines and stone
walls, which, for all their newness and briefness, have so much more
enduring power than have I. This tree near my door is fully a hundred
years old, and yet it will be young, comparatively speaking, and
strong, when I am no longer in existence. Its trunk is straight, its
head is high, and here am I who, looking upon it now as old, will soon
be older in spirit, unable to bear the too-heavy burden of a short
existence and tottering wearily about when it will still be strong and
straight, good for another life the length of mine--a strange contrast
of forces. That is but one of the wonders of the forces of life: their
persistence.
Yet it is this morning waking that impresses the marvel of their
greatness upon me. It is this new day, this new-old river, this new-old
tree, the new earth, so old and yet so new, which point the frailty of
my physical and mental existence and make me wonder what the riddle of
the universe may be.
[Illustration: The Cradle of Tears]
THE CRADLE OF TEARS
There is a cradle within the door of one of the great institutions of
New York before which a constant recurring tragedy is being enacted. It
is a plain cradle, quite simply draped in white, but with such a look
of cozy comfort about it that one would scarcely suspect it to be a
cradle of sorrow.
A little white bed, with a neatly turned-back coverlet, is made up
within it. A long strip of white muslin, tied in a tasteful bow at
the top, drapes its rounded sides. About it, but within the precincts
of warmth and comfort of which it is a part, spreads a chamber of
silence--a quiet, small, plainly furnished room, the appearance of
which emphasizes the peculiarity of the cradle itself.
If the mind were not familiar with the details with which it is so
startlingly associated, the question would naturally arise as to
what it was doing there, why it should be standing there alone. No
one seems to be watching it. It has not the slightest appearance of
usefulness. And yet there it stands day after day, and year after year,
a ready-prepared cradle, and no infant to live in it.
And yet this cradle is the most useful, and, in a way, the most
inhabited cradle in the world. Day after day and year after year it is
a recipient of more small wayfaring souls than any other cradle in the
world. In it the real children of sorrow are placed, and over it more
tears are shed than if it were an open grave.
It is a place where annually twelve hundred foundlings are placed, many
of them by mothers who are too helpless or too unfortunately environed
to be further able to care for their children; and the misery which
compels it makes of the little open crib a cradle of tears.
The interest of this cradle is that it has been the silent witness
of more truly heartbreaking scenes than any other cradle since the
world began. For nearly sixty years it has stood where it does to-day,
ready-draped, open, while almost as many thousand mothers have stolen
shamefacedly in and after looking hopelessly about have laid their
helpless offspring within its depths.
For sixty years, winter and summer, in the bitterest cold and the
most stifling heat, it has seen them come, the poor, the rich, the
humble, the proud, the beautiful, the homely; and one by one they have
laid their children down and brooded over them, wondering if it were
possible for human love to make so great a sacrifice and yet not die.
And then, when the child has been actually sacrificed, when by the
simple act of releasing their hold upon it and turning away, they have
allowed it to pass out from their loving tenderness into the world
unknown, this silent cradle has seen them smite their hands in anguish
and yield to such voiceless tempests of grief as only those know who
have loved much and lost all.
The circumstances under which this peculiar charity comes to be a part
of the life of the great metropolis need not be rehearsed here. The
heartlessness of men, the frailty of women, the brutality of all those
who sit in judgment in spite of the fact that they do not wish to be
judged themselves, is so old and so commonplace that its repetition is
almost wearisome.
Still, the tragedy repeats itself, and year after year and day after
day the unlocked door is opened and dethroned virtue enters--the victim
of ignorance and passion and affection--and a child is robbed of a home.
I think there is a significant though concealed thought here, for
nature in thus repeating a fact day after day and year after year
raises a significant question. We are so dull. Sometimes it requires
ten thousand or ten million repetitions to make us understand. “Here is
a condition. What will you do about it? Here is a condition. What will
you do about it? Here is a condition. What will you do about it?” That
is the question each tragedy propounds, and finally we wake and listen.
Then slowly some better way is discovered, some theory developed. We
find often that there is an answer to some questions, at least if we
have to remake ourselves, society, the face of the world, to get it.
WHEN THE SAILS ARE FURLED
The waters of the open sea as they rush past Sandy Hook strike upon the
northeasterly shore of Staten Island, a low-lying beach overshadowed by
abruptly terminating cliffs. Northeastward, separated by this channel
known as The Narrows, lies Long Island. As the waters flow onward,
following the trend of the shoreline of Staten Island, they become less
and less exposed to the winds of the sea, and soon, as they pass the
northernmost end of the island, they make a sharp bend to the west,
passing between it and Liberty Statue, where the tranquil Kill von Kull
separates the island from New Jersey.
Long ere they reach this region the sea winds have spent their force,
and the billows, which in clear weather are still visible far out, have
sunk to ripples so diminutive that the water is not even disturbed.
And here, in Staten Island, facing the Kill von Kull, still stands in
almost rural quiet and beauty Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Long ago this was
truly a harbor, snug and undisturbed, a place where the storm-harried
mariner, escaping the moods and dangers of the seven seas, found a
still and safe retreat. To-day they come here, weary from a long
life voyage, to find a quiet home. And truly it is restful in its
arrangements. The grounds are kempt and green, the buildings pleasingly
solemn, and the view altogether lovely, a mixture of land and sea.
In the early days this pleasantly quiet harbor was a long distance
from New York proper. Staten Island was but thinly settled, and the
Kill von Kull a passageway seldom used. To-day craft speed in endless
procession like glorious birds over the great expanse of water. On a
clear day the long narrow skyline of New York is visible, and when fogs
make the way of the pilot uncertain the harbor resounds with endless
monotony of fog-horns, of vessels feeling an indefinite way.
Though the surroundings are pastoral, the appearance of the inmates
of this retreat, as well as their conversation, is of the sea, salty.
Housed though they are for the remainder of their days on land, they
are still sailors, vain of their service upon the great waters of
the world and but little tolerant of landlubbers in general. To the
passer-by without the walls they are visible lounging under the trees,
their loose-fitting blue suits fluttering light with every breeze
and their slouch hats pulled rakishly over their eyes, an abandon
characteristic of men whose lives have been spent more or less in
direct contact with wind and rain. You may see them in fair weather
pacing about the paths of the grounds, or standing in groups under the
trees. Upon a long bench, immediately in front of the buildings, others
are sitting side by side, smoking and chatting. Many were captains, not
a few common sailors. But all are now so aged that they can scarcely
totter about, and hair of white is more often seen than that of any
other shade.
For a period of nearly a year--a spring, summer and fall--I lived in
the immediate vicinity of this retreat and was always interested by
the types of men finally islanded here. They came, so I was told, from
nearly all lands, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland,
Spain, Austria, Russia, and elsewhere, though the majority chanced
to be of English and American extraction. Also, I was told and can
well believe they are, a restless if not exactly a troublesome lot,
and take their final exile from the sea, due to increasing years and
in most instances poverty, with no very great equanimity. Yet the
surroundings and the provision made for them by the founder of this
institution, who, though not a sea-faring man himself, acquired his
fortune through the sea over a century ago, are charming and ample; but
the curse, or at least the burden of age and the ending of their vigor
and activities, rests heavily upon them, I am sure. I have watched them
about the very few saloons of the region as well as the coffee-houses,
the small lunch counters and the moving picture theaters, and have
noted a kind of preferred solitude and spiritual irritability which
spells all too plainly intense dissatisfaction at times with their
state. Among the quondam rovers are rovers still, men who pine to be
out and away and who chafe at old age and the few necessary restraints
put upon them. They would rather travel, would rather have the money
it costs to maintain them annually as a pension, outside, than be in
the institution. Not many but feel a sort of weariness with days and
with each other, and I am quite convinced that they would be happier if
pensioned modestly and set free. Yet this is a great institution and
indeed a splendid benefaction, but it insists upon what is the bane
and destruction of heart and mind: conformity to routine, a monotonous
system which wears as the drifting of water and eats as a worm at the
heart.
And yet I doubt if a better conducted institution than this could
be found, or one more suited to the needs and crotchets of so many
men. They have ample liberty, excellent food, clothing and shelter,
charming scenery, and all the leisure there is. They are not called
upon to do any labor of any kind other than that of looking after their
rooms and clothes. The grounds are so ample and the buildings so large
that the attention of every one is instantly taken. As you enter at
the north, where is the main entrance, there is a monument to Robert
Richard Randall, the founder of the institution. This marks his final
resting-place; the remains of the philanthropist were brought here from
St. Mark’s Church in New York, where they had lain since 1825.
The facts concerning the founding of this institution have always
interested me. It seems that the father of “Captain” Robert Randall,
the founder of the Harbor, was a Scotchman, who came to America in
1776 and settled in New Orleans. The Spanish Governor and Intendant of
that city, Don Bernardo de Galvez, having declared the port open for
the sale of prizes of Yankee privateers, Mr. Randall took an active
interest in that great fleet of private-armed vessels whose exploits
on the high seas, and even upon the coast of Great Britain itself, did
much to contradict the modest assertion of the “British Naval Register”
that:
“The winds and the seas are Britain’s wide domain,
And not a sail but by permission spreads.”
At his death his son Robert inherited the estate. Accustomed to come
north to pass the summer months, Robert made, on one of his trips to
New York, the acquaintance of a Mr. Farquhar, a man possessed of means
but broken down by ill health. The mild climate of Louisiana agreed
with the invalid, and a proposition to exchange estates was considered.
After a bonus of five hundred guineas had been sent to Farquhar, this
was effected. Mr. Randall then became a suburban resident of what was
then the little city of New York. His property consisted of real estate
fronting both sides of Broadway and adjacent streets, and extending
from Eighth to Tenth Streets. At a distance of one-half mile to the
westward, namely, near the site of the old Presbyterian Church on
what is now Fifth Avenue, stood the dwelling of the Captain. Upon the
piazza of this house, it is recorded, shaded by a luxuriant growth of
ivy and clematis, the old gentleman was wont to sit in fine weather,
with his dog by his side. Before the door were three rows of gladioli,
which he carefully nurtured. He was a bachelor, and on the first day
of June, 1801, being very ill and feeble but of “sound, disposing mind
and memory,” made his will. Alexander Hamilton and Daniel D. Tompkins
drew up the papers. In this document he directed that his just debts be
paid; that an annuity of forty pounds a year be given to each of the
children of his half-brother until they were fifteen years old; a sum
of one thousand pounds to each of his nephews upon their twenty-first
birthday, and a like sum to his nieces on their marriage. He bequeathed
to his housekeeper his sleeve-buttons and forty pounds, and to another
servant his shoe and knee buckles and twenty pounds. When this had been
recorded he looked up with an expression of anxiety.
“I am thinking,” he said, “how I can dispose of the remainder of my
property most wisely. What do you think, General?” turning to Hamilton.
“How did you accumulate the fortune you possess?”
“It was made for me by my father, and at his death became his sole
heir.”
“How did he acquire it?” asked Hamilton.
“By honest privateering,” responded Randall.
“Then it might appropriately be left for the benefit of unfortunate
and disabled seamen,” volunteered Hamilton, and thereupon it was so
bequeathed.
The early history of Snug Harbor is clouded with legal contests which
covered a period of thirty years. Though at the time of the bequest
Randall’s property was of little value, being mostly farming land,
situated on the outskirts of the populated parts of the city, the
heirs foresaw something of its future value. In the National and State
Courts they long waged a vigorous war to test the validity of the will.
Their surmises as to the future value of the property were correct.
For, although the income of the bequest was not more than a thousand a
year at first, as the population of the city increased the rental rose
by degrees, until in the present year it has reached a sum bordering
$1,500,000, and the rise, even yet, is continuous.
However, the suits were eventually decided against the heirs, the court
holding the will valid. As an institution the Harbor was incorporated
in 1806, and the first building erected in 1831 and dedicated in 1833.
So thirty years passed before the desire of a very plain-speaking
document was carried into effect.
In the beginning there were but three buildings, which are to-day the
central ones in a main group of nine. In toto, however, there are over
sixty, situated in a park.
In a line, in the center of an eighteen hundred-foot lawn, stand the
five main buildings, truly substantial and artistic. The view to
the right and left is superb, tall trees shading walks and dividing
stretches of lawn, with rows of benches scattered here and there. A
statue by St. Gaudens beautifies the grounds between the main building
and the governor’s residence, while in another direction a fountain
fills to the brim a flower-lined marble basin. Everywhere about the
grounds and buildings are seen nautical signs and many interesting
reminders of the man who willed the refuge.
The first little chapel that was built has long since been succeeded
by an imposing edifice, rich in marbles and windows of stained glass.
A music hall of stately dimensions, seating over a thousand people,
graces a once vacant lawn. A hospital with beds for three hundred is
but another addition, and still others are residences for the governor
of the institution, the chaplain, physician, engineer, matron, steward,
farmer, baker, and the buildings for each branch of labor required in
the management of what is now a small city. In short, it has risen to
the dignity of an immense institution, where a thousand old sailors are
quietly anchored for the remainder of their days.
[Illustration: Sailor’s Snug Harbor]
Some idea of the lavishness of the architecture can be had by
entering the comparatively new church, where marble and stained glass
are harmoniously combined. The outer walls are pure white marble, the
interior a soothing sanctuary of many colors. Underfoot is a rich brown
marble from the shores of Lake Champlain. The wainscoting is of green
rep and red Numidian marble. Eight immense pillars supporting the dome
are in two shades of yellow Etrurian marble, delicate and unmarked.
The altar is of the same shade, but exquisitely veined with a darker
coloring. Both chancel and choir floors are richly mosaiced, the
chancel steps being of the same delightful coloring as the piers. To
the left of the chancel is the pulpit, an octagonal structure of Alps
green, with bands and cornices of Etrurian and Sienna marble supported
on eight columns of alternate Alps green and red Numidian, finished
with a brass railing and Etrurian marble steps. The magnificent organ,
with its two thousand three hundred or more pipes, is entirely worthy
its charming setting. Over all falls the rich, warm-tinted light from
numerous memorial windows, each a gem in design and coloring. On one of
these the worshiper is admonished to “Be of good cheer, for there shall
be no loss of life among ye, but only of the ship.”
Admonish as one may, however, the majority of the old seamen are
but little moved by such graven beauty; being hardened in simple,
unorthodox ways. Not a few of them are given to swearing loudly,
drinking frequently, snoring heavily on Sundays and otherwise
disporting themselves in droll and unsanctified ways. To many of them
this institution appears to be even a wasteful affair, intended more
to irritate than to aid them. Not a few of them, as you may guess,
resent routine, duty, and the very necessary officials, and each other.
Although they possess comfortable and even superior living apartments,
wholesome and abundant food, good clothing, abundant clean linen, a
library of eight thousand volumes, newspapers, periodicals, time and
opportunity for the pursuit of any fad or fancy, and no restrictions at
which a reasonable man could demur, still they are not entirely happy.
Life itself is passing, and that is the great sorrow.
And so occasionally there is to be found in that portion of the
basement room from which the light is debarred, looking out from behind
an iron door upon a company of blind mariners who occupy this section,
working and telling stories, a mariner or two in jail. And if you
venture to inquire, his mates will volunteer the information that he
is neither ill nor demented but troubled with that complaint which is
common to landsmen and sailors, “pure cussedness.” In some the symptom
of this, I am told, will take the form of an unconquerable desire to
go from room to room in the early morning and pull aged and irate
mariners from their comfortable beds. In others it has broken out as a
spell of silence, no word for any one, old or young, official or fellow
resident. In another drunkenness is the refuge, a protracted spell,
resulting in dismissal, with an occasional reinstatement. Another will
fight with his roommate or his neighbor, sometimes drawing a chalk line
between the two halves of a double room and defying the other to cross
it at peril of his life. There have been many public quarrels and
fights. Yet, all things considered, and age and temperament being taken
into consideration, they do well enough. And not a few have sufficient
acumen and industry to enter upon profitable employments. For there are
many visitors, to whom useful or ornamental things can be sold. And a
few of these salts will even buy from or trade with each other.
In consequence one meets with an odd type of merchant here and there.
There is one old seaman, for instance, a relic of Federal service in
“’61,” whose chamber is ornamented to the degree of confusion with
things nautical, most of which are for sale. To enter upon him one must
pass through a whole fleet of small craft, barks, brigs, schooners and
sloops--the result of his jacknife leisure--arranged upon chests of
drawers. Still another, at the time I visited the place, delighted in
painting marine views on shells, and a third was fair at photography,
having acquired his skill after arriving at the Harbor. He photographed
and sold pictures of other inmates and some local scenes. Many can and
do weave rugs and mats, others cane chairs or hammocks or fish-nets.
Still others have a turn for executing small ornaments which they
produce in great numbers and sell for their own profit. No one is
compelled to work, and the result is that nearly all desire to. The
perversity of human nature expresses itself there. In the long, light
basement corridors, where it is warm and cozy, there are to be found
hundreds of old sailors, all hard at work defying monotony with rapid
and skilful finger movements.
All of these are not friendly, however, and many are vastly
argumentative. No subject is too small nor any too large for their
discussion in this sunlit forum. Especially are they inclined to
belittle each other’s experiences when comparing them with their own
important past, and so many a word is passed in wrath.
“I hain’t a-goin’ to hear sich rubbish,” remarked one seaman, who had
taken offense at another’s detailed account of his terrible experience
in some sea fight of the Civil War. “Sich things ain’t a-happenin’ to
common seamen.”
“Yuh don’t need to, yuh know,” sarcastically replied the other. “This
here’s a free country, I guess, ’cept for criminals,--and they hain’t
all locked up, as they should be.”
“So I thought when I first seed yuh,” came the sneering reply, and then
followed a hoarse chuckle which was only silenced by the stamping away
of an irate salt with cheeks puffed out in rage.
Nearly all are irritatingly independent, resenting the least suggestion
of superiority with stubborn sarcasm or indifference. Thus one, who
owned his own ship once and had carefully refrained from whistling in
deference to the superstitious line: “If you whistle aloud you’ll call
up a blow; if noisy you’ll bring on a calm,” met another strolling
about the grounds exuberantly indulging a long-restrained propensity to
“pipe the merry lay.”
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t whistle aboard my ship,” said he insinuatingly.
“Yeh! But I ain’t aboard yer ship, thankee--I’m on my own deck.” And
“Haul in the bow lines; Jenny, you’re my darling!” triumphantly swelled
out on the evening breeze.
Down on the unplaned planks of the Snug Harbor wharf a score of old
salts, regardless of slivers, sit the livelong day and watch the
white-winged craft passing up and down. Being “square-riggers”--that
is, having served all their lives aboard ship, barks and brigs--they
look with silent contempt upon the fore and aft vessels of the harbor
as they sail by. Presently comes, “Hello, Jim! Goin’ to launch her?”
from one who is contemplating with a quizzical eye a little weazened
old man who comes clambering down the side of the dock with a miniature
ship under his arm and a broad smile of satisfaction on his face.
“Ay, that’s it,” answers the newcomer. He has spent many weeks in
building the little ship and now will be decided whether or not his
skill has been wasted on a bad model. At once the critical faculty of
the tars on the dock is engaged, and he of the boat becomes the subject
of a brisk discussion. Sapient admonitions, along with long squirts of
tobacco juice, are vouchsafed, the latter most accurately aimed at some
neighboring target. Sarcasm is not wanting, the ability of the builder
as well as the merit of his craft coming in for comment. The launching
of such a craft has even engendered bitter hatreds and not a few fights.
We will say, however, that the craft is successfully launched and with
sails full spread runs proudly before a light wind. In such a case
invariably all the old sailors will look on with a keen squint and a
certain tremor of satisfaction at seeing her behave so gallantly. Such
being the case, the builder is at liberty to make a few sententious
remarks anent the art of shipbuilding--not otherwise. And he may then
retire after a time, proud in his knowledge and his very certain
triumph over those who would have scoffed had they had the slightest
opportunity.
I troubled to ask a number of these worthies from time to time whether,
assuming they were young again, they would choose a sea-faring life.
“Indeed I would, my boy,” one answered me one morning. And another:
“Not I. If I were to sail four thousand times I’d be as seasick the
last trip as on the first day out. Every blessed trip I made for the
first five years I nearly died of seasickness.”
“Why did you keep it up, then?” I asked.
“Well, when I’d get into port everybody would ask: ‘Well, how did you
like it? Are you going again?’ ‘Of course I am,’ I would answer, and
went from pure shamefacedness and not to be outdone. After a while I
didn’t mind it so much, and finally kept to it ’cause I couldn’t do
anything else.”
One of the old basket makers at the Harbor had occupied a rolling chair
in the hospital and made baskets for nearly thirty-nine years. There
was still another, ninety-three years of age, who would have been
there forty years the summer I was there. And withal he was a most
ingenious basket maker. One of the old salts kept an eating-stand where
appetizing lunches were served, and he bore the distinction of having
rounded the Horn forty-nine times in a sailing vessel. He was one of
the few who possessed his soul in patience, resting content with his
lot and turning to fate a gentle and smiling face.
“Will you tell me of an adventure at sea?” I once asked him.
“I could,” he answered, “but I would rather tell you of thirteen
peaceful years here. I came here when I was seventy, though at sixty,
when I was weathering a terrible storm around the Cape with little hope
of ever seeing the rising sun, I promised myself that if ever I reached
home again I would stay there. But I didn’t know myself even then. My
destiny was to remain on the sea for ten years more, with this Harbor
for my few remaining years. At that, if I were young I would go to sea
again, I believe. It’s the only life for me.”
Back of all this company of a thousand or more, playing their last
parts upon this little Harbor stage, is an interesting mechanism,
the system with which the institution is run. There is a clothing
department, where the sailors get their new outfits twice a year. I
warrant that the quizzical old salt who keeps it knows every rent and
tear in every garment of the Harbor. There is a laundry and sewing
department, of which the matron has charge. There is a great kitchen,
absolutely clean, where is space enough to set up a score of little
kitchens. At four p.m. there are visible only two dignitaries in this
savory realm. At that time one slices tomatoes and the other “puts on
tea” for a thousand, the number who regularly dine here. The labor of
cutting great stacks of bread is done by a machine. Broiling steaks or
frying fish for a thousand creates neither excitement nor hurry. The
entire kitchen staff numbers thirty all told, and the thousand sailors
are served with less noise and confusion than an ordinary housewife
makes in cooking for a small family.
There are separate buildings devoted to baking, vegetable storing and
so forth, and the steward, farmer, baker and engineer, that important
quartette, has each his private residence upon the grounds. The
hospital, too, is a well-kept building, carefully arranged and bright
and cleanly as such institutions can be made.
Passing this place, I have often thought what a really interesting and
unique and beautiful charity it is, the orderly and palatial buildings,
the beautiful lawns and flowers, and then the thousand and one
characters who after so many earthly vicissitudes have found their way
here and who, if left to their own devices, would certainly find the
world outside a stormy and desperate affair. So old and so crotchety,
most of them are. Where would they go? Who would endure them? Wherewith
would they be clothed and fed? And again, after having sailed so many
seas and seen so much and been so independent and done heaven only
knows what, how odd to find them here, berthed into so peaceful a
realm and making out after any fashion at all. How quaint, how naïve
and unbelievable, almost. The blue waters of the bay before them,
the smooth even lawn in which the great buildings rest, the flowers,
the calm, the order, the security. And yet I know, too, that to the
hearts of all of these, as to the hearts of each and every one of us,
come such terrific storms of restlessness, such lightnings of anger
or temper, such torturing hours of ennui, beside which the windless
lifelessness of Sargasso is as activity. How fierce their resentment
of that onward shift and push of life that eventually loosens each and
every barque from its moorings and sets it adrift, rudderless, upon the
great, uncharted sea, their eyes and their mood all too plainly show.
And yet here they are, and here they will remain until their barque is
at last adrift, the last stay worn to a frazzle, the last chain rusted
to dust. And betimes they wait, the sirenic call of older and better
days ever in their ears--those days that can never, never, never be
again.
Who would not be ill at ease at times? Who not crotchety, weary,
contemptuous, however much he might choose to possess himself in
serenity? There is this material Snug Harbor for their bodies, to be
sure. But where is the peaceful haven of the heart--on what shore, by
what sea--a Snug Harbor for the soul?
THE SANDWICH MAN
I would not feel myself justified mentally if at some time or other I
had not paused in thought over the picture of the sandwich man. These
shabby figures of decayed or broken manhood, how they have always
appealed to me. I know what they stand for. I have felt with them. I
am sure I have felt beyond them, over and over again, the misery and
pathos of their state.
And yet, what a bit of color they add to the life of any city, what
a foil to its prosperity, its ease--what a fillip to the imagination
of those who have any! Against carriages and autos and showy bursts
of enthusiastic life, if there be such, they stand out at times with
a vividness which makes the antithesis of their state seem many times
more important than it really is. In the face of sickness, health is
wonderful. In the face of cold, warmth is immensely significant. In
the face of poverty, wealth is truly grandeur and may well strut and
stride. And who is so obviously, so notoriously poor as this creature
of the two signs, this perambulating pack-horse of an advertisement,
this hopeless, decayed creature who, if he have but life enough to
walk, will do very well as an invitation to buy.
He is such a biting commentary on life, in one sense, such a coarse,
shabby jest in another, that we cannot help but think on him and the
conditions which produce him. To send forth an anæmic, hollow-eyed,
gaunt-bodied man carrying an announcement of a good dinner, for
instance. Imagine. Or a cure-all. Or a beauty powder. Or a good suit
of clothes. Or a sound pair of shoes. And these with their toes or
their naked bodies all but exposed to the world. An overcoatless man
advertising a warm overcoat in winter. One from whom all and even the
possibility of joy had fled, displaying a notice of joy in the shape
of a sign for a dance-hall, a theater, a moving picture even. The
thick-witted thoughtlessness of the trade-vulgarian who could permit
this!
But the eyes of them! The cold, red, and often wet hands! The torn hats
with snow on them, the thin shoes that are soppy with snow or water.
Is it not a biting commentary on the importance of the individual, _as
such_, that in life he may be used in such a way as this, in a single
short life, as a post upon which to hang things! And that in the face
of all the wealth of the world--over-production! And that in the face
of all the blather and pother anent the poor, and Christ, and mercy,
and I know not what else!
I once protested to an artist friend who chanced to be sketching a line
of these, carrying signs, that it was a pity from the individual’s
point of view, as well as from that of society itself, that such things
must be. But he did not agree with me. “Not at all,” he replied.
“They are mentally and physically pointless, anyhow, aren’t they?
They have no imagination, no strength any more, or they wouldn’t be
carrying signs. Don’t you think that you are applying your noble
emotions to their state? Why shouldn’t they be used? They haven’t
your emotions--they haven’t any emotions, as a matter of fact, or very
rudimentary ones, and such as they have they are applying to simpler,
cheaper things than you do yours. Mostly they’re dirty and indifferent,
believe me.”
I could not say that I wholly disagreed with him. At the same time, I
could not say that I violently agreed with him. It is true that life
does queer tricks with our emotions and quondam passions at times.
The ones that are so very powerful this year, where are they next?
At one time we are racked and torn and flayed and blown by emotions
that at another find us quite dead, incapable of any response. All the
nervous ambitions, as well as the circumstances by which fine emotions
and moods are at one time generated, at another have been entirely
dissipated. Betimes there is nothing left save a disjointed and weary
frame or a wornout brain or nervous system incapable of emotions and
disturbing moods.
Yet, granting the truth of this, what a way to use the image of the
human race, I thought, the image of our old-time selves! Why degrade
the likeness of the thing we once were and by which once we set so
much store and then expect to raise man’s estimate of man? It is
written: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in
vain.” Why take the body of man in so shabby, so degrading a fashion?
Why make a mockery of the body and mind of the human race, and then
expect something superior of life? We talk of elevating the human
race. Can we use ourselves as signs and then do that? It is entirely
probable, of course, that the human race cannot be elevated. Very
good. But if we dream of any such thing, what must such a sight do
to the imagination of the world? What conception of the beauty and
sweetness and dignity of life does it not aid to destroy? What lessons
of hardness and self-preservation and indifference does it not teach?
Does it not glorify health and strength and prosperity at the expense
of every other quality? I think so. To be strong, to be well, to be
prosperous in the face of the sandwich man--is there anywhere more of
an anachronism?
I sometimes think that in our general life-classifications we neglect
the individual, the exceptional individual, who is always sure to be
everywhere, as readily at the bottom of society as at the top, as
readily sandwiched between two glaring signs as anywhere else. It is
quite all right to admit, for argument’s sake or our own peace of mind,
that most of these men are dirty and worn and indifferent, and hence
negligible; though it always seems silly to me to assume that a man
is indifferent or negligible when he will pack a sign in the cold and
snow in order to preserve himself. It is so easy for those of us who
are comfortable to assume that the other man does not care, does not
feel. Here he comes, though, carrying a sign. Why? To be carrying it
because it makes no difference to him? Because he has no emotions? I
don’t believe it. I could not believe it. And all the evidence I have
personally taken has been to the contrary, decidedly so.
I remember seeing once, in the rush of the Christmas trade in New
York City a few years ago, a score of these decidedly shabby and
broken brethren carrying signs for the edification, allurement and
information of the Christmas trade. They were strung out along Sixth
Avenue from Twenty-third to Fourteenth Streets, and the messages which
their billboards carried were various. I noticed that in the budding
gayety of the time these men alone were practically hopeless, dull and
gray. The air was fairly crackling with the suggestion of interest
and happiness for some. People were hurrying hither and thither,
eager about their purchases. There were great van-loads of toys and
fineries constantly being moved and transferred. Life seemed to say:
“This is the season of gifts and affection,” but it obviously meant
nothing to these men. I took a five-dollar bill and had it changed
into half-dollars. I stopped before the first old wizened loiterer
I met, his sign hanging like a cross from his gaunt shoulder, and
before his unsuspecting eyes lifted the half-dollar. Who could be
offering him a half-dollar? his eyes seemed indifferently to ask at
first. Then a perfect eagle’s gleam flashed into them, old and dull
as they were, and a claw-like hand reached for it. No thanks, no
acknowledgment, no polite recognition--just grim realization that
money, a whole half-dollar, was being given, and a physical, wholly
animal determination to get it. What possibilities that half-dollar
seemed to hold to that indifferent, unimaginative mind at that moment!
What it suggested, apparently, of possible comfort! Why? Because there
was no imagination there? because life meant nothing? Not in that
case, surely. A whole epic of failure and desire was written in that
gleam--and we speak of them as emotionless.
[Illustration: The Sandwich Man]
I went further with my half-dollars. I learned what a half-dollar means
to a man in a sandwich sign in the cold in winter. There was no case in
which the eagerness, the surprise, the astonishment was not interesting
if not pathetic. They were not expecting the Christmas holidays to
offer them any suggestion of remembrance. It did not seem real that any
one should stop and give them anything. Yet here was I, and apparently
their wildest anticipations were outreached.
I cannot help thinking, as I close, of an old gray-haired Irish
gentleman--for that he was, by every mark of refinement of feature and
intelligence of eye--who had come so low as to be the perambulating
representative of a restaurant, with a double sign strapped over
his shoulders. His hair was thin, his face pale, his body obviously
undernourished, but he carried himself with dignity and undisturbed
resignation, though he must have been deeply conscious of his state.
I saw him for a number of days during the winter season, walking up
and down the west side of Sixth Avenue, and then I saw him no more.
But during that time a sense of what it means to accept the slings and
arrows of fortune with fortitude and equanimity burned itself deeply
into my mind. He was so much better than that which he was compelled
to do. He walked so patiently to and fro, his eyes sometimes closed,
his lips repeating something. I wondered, what? Whether in the depths
of this slough of his despond this man had not risen superior to his
state, his mind on those high cold verities which after all are above
the pointless little existence that we lead here, this existence with
its petty gauds and its pretty and petty vanities. I hope so. But I do
know that a stinging sense of the slings and arrows of fortune overcame
me, never to be eradicated, and I quoted to myself that arresting,
forceful inquiry of one William Shakespeare:
“For who would bear the whip and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life?”
Not you, you think? Boast not. For after all, who shall say what a day
or a year or a lifetime may not bring forth? And with Whatley cannot
we all say: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”--a beggar, an
outcast of fortune, a sandwich man, no less, to whom the meaning of
life is that he shall be a foil to comfort, a contrast to prosperity, a
commentary on health.
To be the antithesis of what life would prefer to be--what could be
more degraded than that?
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITTLE ITALY
One of the things that has always interested me about the several
Italian sections of New York City is their love feuds. Every day and
every hour, in all these sections, is being enacted those peculiarly
temperamental and emotional things which we attribute more to
dispositions that sensate rather than think. How often have I myself
been an eye-witness to some climacteric conclusion, to some dreadful
blood feud or opposition or contention--a swarthy Italian stabbing a
lone woman in a dark street at night, a seemingly placid diner in some
purely Italian restaurant rising to an amazing state of rage because
of a look, a fancied insult, some old forgotten grudge, maybe, renewed
by the sight of another. At one time, when I had personal charge of
the Butterick publications, I was an immediate and personal witness
to stabbings and shootings that took place under my very eye, some
bleeding and fleeing adversary brushing me as he ran, to fall exhausted
a little farther on. And mobs of Americans, not understanding these
peculiarly deep-seated and emotional feuds, and resenting always the
use of the knife or the stiletto, seeking to wreak summary vengeance
upon those who, beyond peradventure, are in nowise governed by our
theories or our conventions, but hark by other and more devious paths
back into the Italy of the Middle Ages, and even beyond that.
The warmth of passion and tenderness that lies wrapped up in these
wonderful southern quarters of our colder northern clime. The
peculiarly romantic and marvelously involved series of dramatic
episodes, feuds or fancies, loves or hates, politics or passion, such
as would do honor to a mediæval love tale--the kind of episodes that
have made the history of Italy as intricate as any in the world!
The section that has always interested me most is the one that lies
between Ninety-sixth Street and One Hundred and Sixteenth on the East
Side of Manhattan Island, and incloses all the territory that lies
between Second Avenue and the East River. It is a wonderful section.
Here, regardless of the presence of the modern tenement building and
the New York policeman, you may see such a picture of Italian life and
manners as only a visit to Naples and the vine-clad hills of southern
Italy would otherwise afford.
Vigorous and often attractive maidens in orange and green skirts,
with a wealth of black hair fluffed back from their foreheads, and
yellow shawls and coral necklaces fastened about their necks; dark,
somber-faced Italian men, a world of moods and passions sleeping in
their shadowy eyes, decked out in bright Garibaldian shirts and soft
slouch hats, their tight-fitting corduroy trousers drawn closely about
their waists with a leather belt; quaint, cameo-like old men with
earrings in their ears and hands like claws and faces seamed with the
strongest and most sinister lines, and yet with eyes that flash with
feeling or beam with tenderness; and old women, in all forms of color
and clothing, who chatter and gesticulate and make the pavements
resound with the excitement of their everyday bargaining.
This, truly, in so far as New York is concerned, is the region of
the love feud and the balcony. If you will stand at any of the
cross-streets that lead east from Second Avenue you will obtain
a splendid panorama of the latter feature, window after window
ornamented with a red or green or orange iron balcony and hung, in the
summertime, with an array of green vines and bright flower-pots that
invariably suggests the love scene of Shakespeare’s famous play and
the romantic love feeling of the south. Dark, poetic-looking Italians
lean against doorjambs and open gateways and survey the surrounding
neighborhood with an indolent and romantic eye. Plump Italian mothers
gaze comfortably out of open windows, before which they sit and sew
and watch their chubby little children romp and play in the streets.
Fat, soft-voiced merchants, and active, graceful, song-singing Italian
street venders ply their various vocations, the latter turning a
wistful eye to every window, the former lolling contentedly in wooden
chairs, the blessings of warmth and a little trade now and again being
all that they require.
And from out these windows and within these doors hang or lounge those
same maidens, over whom many a bloody feud has been waged and for whom
(for a glance of the eyes or the shrug of the shoulder) many of these
moody-faced, somber-eyed, love-brooding Romeos have whipped out their
glistening steel and buried it in the heart of a hated rival. Girls
have been stabbed here, been followed and shot (I have seen it myself);
petty love-conversations upon a street corner or in the adjacent
park between two ardent lovers have been interrupted by the sudden
appearance of a love frenzied Othello, who could see nothing for it but
to end the misery of his unrequited affection by plunging his knife
into the heart of his rival and into that of his fair but unresponsive
sweetheart. They love and hate; and death is the solution of their
difficulties--death and the silence of the grave.
“She will not love me! Then she must die!”
The wonder of the colony is the frankness and freedom with which its
members take to this solution. Actually, it would seem as if this to
them were the only or normal way out of a love tangle. And if you can
ever contrive an intelligent conversation with any of them you will
find it so. Lounge in their theaters, the _teatro marionette_, their
cafés, about the open doorways and the street corners, and hear the
frankness with which they discuss the latest difficulty. Then you will
see for yourself how simple it all seems to them.
Vincenzo is enamored of his Elvina. So is Nicola. They give each other
black looks, and when Elvina is seen by Vincenzo to walk openly with
Nicola he broods in silence, meditating his revenge.
One night, when the moon is high and the noisy thoroughfare is
pulsating with that suppressed enthusiasm which is a part of youth and
passion and all the fervid freshness of a warm July night, Vincenzo
meets them at the street corner. He is despondent, desperate. Out comes
his knife--click!--and the thing is done. On the pavement lies Nicola
bleeding. Elvina may be seen running and screaming. She too is wounded,
mayhap to the death. Vincenzo runs and throws his hands dramatically
over his head as he falls, mayhap shot or stabbed--by himself or
another. Or Elvina kneels in the open street beside her lover and
cries. Or Vincenzo, white-faced and calm, surrenders himself into the
hands of the rough, loud swearing American policeman--and there you
have it.
[Illustration: A Love Affair in Little Italy]
But ask of the natives, and see what it is they think. They will not
have it that Vincenzo should not have done so, nor Elvina, nor Nicola.
Love is love! Youth is youth! What would you? May not a man settle the
affairs of his heart in his own way? _Perdi!_
And these crimes (as the law considers them), so common are they
that it would be quite impossible to give more than a brief mention
to any of a hundred or more that have occurred within as many as ten
or fifteen years. Sometimes, as in the case of Tomasso Ceralli and
Vincenzo Matti, it is a question of a married woman and an illegal
passion. Sometimes, as in the case of Biegio Refino and Alessandro
Scia, it is some poor cigarette-factory girl who, being used as a tool
by one or more, has fallen into others’ hands and so incensed all and
brought into being a feud. Sometimes, as in the case of Mollinero and
Pagnani, it is a bold, bad Carmen who is not sorry to see her lovers
fight.
But these stories are truly legion and in some instances the police
would never have been the wiser save for a man or a woman whom the
neighbors could not get out of the way in time. Once caught, however,
they come bustling into the nearest station house, these strange groups
of wild, fantastic, disheveled men and women, and behind them, or
before, the brawny officers of our colder clime, with their clubs and
oaths and hoarse comments on the folly and the murderous indecency
of it all--and all in an effort to inspire awe and a preventive fear
that, somehow, can never be inspired. “These damned dagos, with their
stilettos! These crazy wops!” But the melancholy Italian does not care
for these commands or our laws. They are not for him. Let the cold,
chilly American threaten; he will carry his stiletto anyhow. It is
reserved as a last resource in the face of injustice or cruelty or the
too great indifference of this world and of fate.
One of the most interesting of these love affairs that ever came to
my personal attention was that of Vincenzo Cordi, street musician
and, in a way, a ne’er-do-well, who became unduly enraged because
Antonio Fellicitti, vegetable merchant, paid too marked attention to
his sweetheart. These men, typical Italians of the quarter, knew each
other, but there was no feeling until the affections of both were
aroused by the charms of Maria Maresco, the pretty daughter of one of
the laborers of the street.
According to the best information that could be obtained at the time,
Cordi had been first in the affections of the girl, but Fellicitti
arrived on the scene and won her away from him. Idling about the
vicinity of her house in One Hundred and Fourteenth Street he had seen
her and had fallen desperately in love.
Then there was trouble, for Cordi soon became aware of the defection
which Fellicitti had caused, and told him so. “You keep away,” was his
threat. “Go, and come near her no more. If you do, I will kill you.”
You can imagine the feeling which this conversation engendered. You
can see the gallant Antonio, eyeing his jealous rival through the
long, thin slits of his shadowy, southern eyes. He keep away? Ha! Ha!
Vincenzo keep him away? Ha! Ha! If Maria but loved him, let Vincenzo
rage. When the time came he would answer.
And of course the time came. It was of a Sunday evening in March, the
first day on which the long cold winter broke and the sun came out and
made the city summer-like. Thousands in this section filled the little
park, with its array of green benches, to overflowing. Thousands more
lounged in the streets and sunned themselves, or swarmed the cafés
where was music and red wine and lights and conversation. Still other
thousands sat by open windows or on the steps in front of open doors
and gossiped with their neighbors--a true forerunner of the glorious
summer to follow.
Then came the night, that glorious time of affection and good humor,
when every Italian of this neighborhood is at his best. The moon was on
high, a new moon, shining with all the thin delicacy of a pearl. Soft
airs were blowing, clear voices singing; from every window streamed
lamplight and laughter. It seemed as if all the beauty of spring had
been crowded into a single hour.
On this occasion the fair Maria was lounging in front of her own
doorstep when the lovesick Antonio came along. He was dressed in his
best. A new red handkerchief was fastened about his neck, a soft crush
hat set jauntily upon his forehead. Upon his hand was a ring, in
the handkerchief a bright pin, and he was in his most cavalier mood.
Together they talked, and as they observed the beauty of the night they
decided to stroll to the little park a block away.
Somewhere in this thoroughfare, however, stood the jealous Vincenzo
brooding. It was evident that he must have been concealed somewhere,
watching, for when the two strolled toward the corner he was seen
to appear and follow. At the corner, where the evening crowd was
the thickest and the merriest--summer pleasure at its height, as it
were--he suddenly confronted Antonio and drew his revolver.
“Ha!”
The astonished Antonio had no time to defend himself. He drew his
knife, of course, but before he could act Vincenzo had fired a bullet
into his breast and sent him reeling on his last journey.
Maria screamed. The crowd gathered. Friends of Antonio and Vincenzo
drew knives and revolvers, and for a few moments it looked as if a feud
were on. Then came the police, and with them the prosaic ambulance and
patrol wagon--and another tragedy was recorded. Antonio was dead and
Vincenzo severely cut and bruised.
And so it goes. They love desperately. They quarrel dramatically,
and in the end they often fight and die, as we have seen. The brief,
practical accounts of the newspapers give no least suggestion of the
color, the emotion, the sorrow, the rage--in a way, the dramatic
beauty--that attends them, nearly all.
CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS
They are infatuated with the rush and roar of a great metropolis. They
are fascinated by the illusion of pleasure. Broadway, Fifth Avenue, the
mansions, the lights, the beauty. A fever of living is in their blood.
An unnatural hunger and thirst for excitement is burning them up. For
this they labor. For this they endure a hard, unnatural existence. For
this they crowd themselves in stifling, inhuman quarters, and for this
they die.
The joys of the Christmas tide are no illusion with most of us, the
strange exhibition of fancy, of which it is the name, no mockery
of our dreams. Far over the wide land the waves of expectation and
sympathetic appreciation constantly oscillate one with the other in
the human breast, and in the closing season of the year are at last
given definite expression. Rings and pins, the art of the jeweler
and the skill of the dress-maker, pictures, books, ornaments and
knickknacks--these with one great purpose are consecrated, and in the
material lavishness of the season is seen the dreams of the world come
true.
There is one region, however, where, in the terrific drag of the
struggle for existence, the softer phases of this halcyon mood are
at first glance obscure. It is a region of tall tenements and narrow
streets where, crowded into an area of a few square miles, live and
labor a million and a half of people. It is the old-time tenement area,
leading almost unbrokenly north from Franklin Square to Fourteenth
Street. Here, during these late December evenings, the holiday
atmosphere is beginning to make itself felt. It is a region of narrow
streets with tall five-story, even seven-story, tenements lining either
side of the way and running thick as a river with a busy and toilsome
throng.
The ways are already lined with carts of special Christmas goods, such
as toys, candies, Christmas tree ornaments, feathers, ribbons, jewelry,
purses, fruit, and in a few wagons small Christmas greens such as holly
and hemlock wreaths, crosses of fir, balsam, tamarack pine and sprigs
of mistletoe. Work has not stopped in the factories or stores, and yet
these streets are literally packed with people, of all ages, sizes and
nationalities, and the buying is lively. One man, who looks as though
he might be a Bowery tough rather than a denizen of this particular
neighborhood, is offering little three-, five- and ten-inch dolls which
he announces as “genuine American beauties here. Three, five and ten.”
Another, a pale, full-bearded Jew, is selling little Christmas tree
ornaments of paste or glass for a penny each, and in the glare of the
newly-turned-on electric lights, it is not difficult to perceive that
they are the broken or imperfect lots of the toy manufacturers who are
having them hawked about during the eleventh hour before Christmas as
the best way of getting rid of them. Other dusty, grim and raucous
denizens are offering candy, mixed nuts, and other forms of special
confections, at ten cents a pound, a price at which those who are used
to the more expensive brands may instructively ponder.
Meats are selling in some of the cheaper butcher shops for ten, fifteen
and twenty cents a pound, picked chickens in barrels at fifteen and
twenty. A whole section of Elizabeth Street is given up to the sale of
stale fish at ten and fifteen cents a pound, and the crowd of Italians,
Jews and Bohemians who are taking advantage of these modest prices is
swarming over the sidewalk and into the gutters. A four- or five-pound
fish at fifteen cents a pound will make an excellent Christmas dinner
for four, five or six. A thin, ice-packed and chemically-preserved
chicken at fifteen or twenty cents a pound will do as much for another
family. Onions, garlic, old cast-off preserves, pickles and condiments
that the wholesale houses uptown have seen grow stale and musty on
their shelves, can be had here for five, ten and fifteen cents a
bottle, and although the combination is unwholesome it will be worked
over as Christmas dinners for the morrow. Cheap, unsalable, stale,
adulterated--these are the words that should be stamped on every
bottle, basket and barrel that is here being scrambled over. And yet
the purchasers would not be benefited any thereby. They must buy what
they can afford. What they can afford is this.
The street, with its mass of life, lingers in this condition until six
o’clock, when the great shops and factories turn loose their horde
of workers. Then into the glare of these electric-lighted streets
the army of shop girls and boys begins to pour. Here is a spectacle
interesting and provocative of thought at all seasons, but trebly so
on this particular evening. It is a shabby throng at best, commonplace
in garb and physical appearance, but rich in the qualities of youth and
enthusiasm, than which the world holds nothing more valuable.
Youth in all the glory of its illusions and its ambitions. Youth, in
whom the cold insistence of life’s physical limitations and the law
have not as yet worked any permanent depression. Thousands are hurrying
in every direction. The street cars which ply this area are packed as
only the New York street car companies can pack their patrons, and that
in cold, old, dirty and even vile cars. There are girls with black
hair, and girls with brown. Some have even, white teeth, some shapely
figures, some a touch of that persuasive charm which is indicated by
the flash of an eye. There are poor dresses, poor taste, and poor
manners mingled with good dresses, good taste and good manners. In the
glow of the many lights and shadows of the evening they are hurrying
away, with that lightness of spirit and movement which is the evidence
of a long strain of labor suddenly relaxed.
“Do you think Santa Claus will have enough to fill that?” asks an
officer, who is standing in the glare of a balsam- and pine-trimmed
cigar store window, to a smartly dressed political heeler or detective
who is looking on with him at the mass of shop-girls hurrying past. A
shop-girl had gone by with her skirt cut to an inch or two below her
knee, revealing a trim little calf and ankle.
“Eee yo! I hope so! Isn’t she the candy?”
[Illustration: Christmas in the Tenements]
“Don’t get fresh,” comes quickly from the hurrying figure as she
disappears in the throng with a toss of her head. She has enjoyed the
comment well enough, and the rebuke is more mischievous than angry.
“A goldfish! A goldfish! Only one cent!” cries a pushcart vendor, who
is one of a thousand lining the pavements to-night, and at his behest
another shop-girl, equally budding and youthful, stops to extract a
penny from her small purse and carries away a thin, transparent prize
of golden paste, for a younger brother, probably.
Others like her are being pushed and jostled the whole length of this
crowded section. They are being nudged and admired as well as sought
and schemed for. Whatever affections or attachments they have will
be manifesting themselves to-night, as may be seen by the little
expenditures they themselves are making. A goldfish of transparent
paste or a half pound of candy, a cheap gold-plated stickpin, brooch or
ring, or a handkerchief, collar or necktie bought of one of the many
pushcart men, tell the story plainly enough. Sympathy, love, affection
and passion are running their errant ways among this vast unspoken
horde no less than among the more pretentious and well-remembered of
the world.
And the homes to which they are hurrying, the places which are
dignified by that title, but which here should have another name!
Thousands upon thousands of them are turning into entry ways, the gloom
or dirtiness or poverty of which should bar them from the steps of any
human being. Up the dark stairways they are pouring into tier upon tier
of human hives, in some instances not less than seven stories high
and, of course, without an elevator, and by grimy landings they are
sorted out and at last distributed each into his own cranny. Small,
dark one-, two- and three-room apartments, where yet on this Christmas
evening, one, and sometimes three, four and five are still at work
sewing pants, making flowers, curling feathers, or doing any other of
a hundred tenement tasks to help out the income supplied by the one or
two who work out. Miserable one- and two-room spaces where ignorance
and poverty and sickness, rather than greed or immorality, have made
veritable pens out of what would ordinarily be bad enough. Many
hundreds or thousands of others there are where thrift and shrewdness
are making the best of very unfortunate conditions, and a hundred or
two where actual abundance prevails. These are the homes. Let us enter.
Zorg is a Bohemian, and has a little two-room apartment. The windows
of the only one which has windows looks into Elizabeth Street. It is a
dingy apartment, unswept and unwhitewashed at present, where on this
hearty Christmas Eve, himself, his wife, his wife’s mother, and his
little twelve-year-old son are laboring at a fair-sized deal table
curling feathers. The latter is a simple task, once you understand
it, dull, tedious, unprofitable. It consists in taking a feather in
one hand, a knife in the other, and drawing the fronds quickly over
the knife’s edge. This gives them a very sprightly curl and can be
administered, if the worker be an expert, by a single movement of the
hand. It is paid for by the dozen, as such work is usually paid for
in this region, and the ability to earn much more than sixty cents a
day is not within the range of human possibility. Forty cents would
be a much more probable average, and this is approximately the wages
which these several individuals earn. Rent uses up three of the twelve
dollars weekly income; food, dress, coal and light six more. Three
dollars, when work is steady, is the sum laid aside for all other
purposes and pleasures, and this sum, if no amusements were indulged
in and no sickness or slackness of work befell, might annually grow to
the tidy sum of one hundred and fifty-six dollars; but it has never
done so. Illness invariably takes one part, lack of work a greater part
still. In the long drag of weary labor the pleasure-loving instincts of
man cannot be wholly restrained, and so it comes about that the present
Christmas season finds the funds of the family treasury low.
It is in such a family as this that the merry Christmas time comes with
a peculiar emphasis, and although the conditions may be discouraging,
the efforts to meet it are almost always commensurate with the means.
However, on this Christmas Eve it has been deemed a duty to have some
diversion, and so, although the round of weary labor may not be thus
easily relaxed, the wife has been deputed to do the Christmas shopping
and has gone forth into the crowded East Side street, from which
she has returned with a meat bone, a cut from a butcher’s at twelve
cents a pound, green pickles, three turnips, a carrot, a half-dozen
small candles, and two or three toys, which, together with a small
three-foot branch of hemlock, purchased earlier in the day, completes
the Christmas preparation for the morrow. Arba, the youngest, although
like the others she will work until ten this Christmas Eve, is to have
a pair of new shoes; Zicka, the next older, a belt for her dress. Mrs.
Zorg, although she may not suspect, will receive a new market basket
with a lid on it. Zorg--grim, silent, weary of soul and body--is to
have a new fifteen-cent tie. There will be a tree, a small sprig of
a tree, upon which will hang colored glass or paste balls of red and
blue and green, with threads of popcorn and sprays of flitter-gold, all
saved from the years before. In the light of early dawn to-morrow the
youngest of the children will dance about these, and the richness of
their beauty will be enjoyed as if they had not been so presented for
the seventh and eighth time.
Thus it runs, mostly, throughout the entire region on this joyous
occasion, a wealth of feeling and desire expressing itself through
the thinnest and most meager material forms. About the shops and
stores where the windows are filled with cheap displays of all
that is considered luxury, are hosts of other children scarcely
so satisfactorily supplied, peering earnestly into the world of
make-believe and illusion, the wonder of it not yet eradicated from
their unsophisticated hearts. Joy, joy--not a tithe of all that is
represented by the expenditures of the wealthy, but only such as may be
encompassed in a paper puff-ball or a tinsel fish, is here sought for
and dreamed over, an earnest, child-heart-longing which may never again
be gratified if not now. Horses, wagons, fire engines, dolls--these are
what the thousands upon thousands of children whose faces are pressed
closely against the commonplace window panes are dreaming about, and
the longing that is thereby expressed is the strongest evidence of the
indissoluble link which binds these weakest and most wretched elements
of society to the best and most successful.
THE RIVERS OF THE NAMELESS DEAD
The body of a man was found yesterday in the North River at
Twenty-fifth Street. A brass check, No. 21,600, of the New York
Registry Company, was found on the body.--N. Y. Daily Paper.
There is an island surrounded by rivers, and about it the tide scurries
fast and deep. It is a beautiful island, long, narrow, magnificently
populated, and with such a wealth of life and interest as no island in
the whole world before has ever possessed. Long lines of vessels of
every description nose its banks. Enormous buildings and many splendid
mansions line its streets.
It is filled with a vast population, millions coming and going, and is
the scene of so much life and enthusiasm and ambition that its fame is,
as the sound of a bell, heard afar.
And the interest which this island has for the world is that it is
seemingly a place of opportunity and happiness. If you were to listen
to the tales of its glory carried the land over and see the picture
which it presents to the incoming eye, you would assume that it was
all that it seemed. Glory for those who enter its walls seeking glory.
Happiness for those who come seeking happiness. A world of comfort and
satisfaction for all who take up their abode within it--an island of
beauty and delight.
The sad part of it is, however, that the island and its beauty are, to
a certain extent, a snare. Its seeming loveliness, which promises so
much to the innocent eye, is not always easy of realization. Thousands
come, it is true; thousands venture to reconnoiter its mysterious
shores. From the villages and hamlets of the land is streaming a
constant procession of pilgrims who feel that here is the place where
their dreams are to be realized; here is the spot where they are to be
at peace. That their hopes are not, in so many cases, to be realized,
is the thing which gives a poignant tang to their coming. The beautiful
island is not compact of happiness for all.
And the exceptional tragedy of it is that the waters which surround the
beautiful island are forever giving evidence of the futility of the
dreams of so many. If you were to stand upon any of its shores, where
the tide scurries past in its never-ending hurry, or were to idle for a
time upon its many docks and piers, which reach far out into the water
and give lovely views of the sky and the gulls and the boats, you might
see drifting past upon the bosom of the current some member of all
the ambitious throng who, in time past, set his face toward the city,
and who entered only to find that there was more of sorrow than of
joy. Sad, white-faced maidens; grim, bearded, time-worn men; strange,
strife-worn, grief-stricken women; and, saddest of all, children--soft,
wan, tender children--floating in the waters which wash the shores of
the island city.
And such waters! How green they look, how graceful, how mysterious!
From far seas they come--strange, errant, peculiar waters--prying
along the shores of the magnificent island; sucking and sipping at the
rocks which form its walls; whispering and gurgling about the docks and
piers, and flowing, flowing, flowing. Such waters seem to be kind, and
yet they are not so. They seem to be cruel, and yet they are not so;
merely indifferent these waters are--dark, strong, deep, indifferent.
And curiously the children of men who come to seek the joys of the city
realize the indifference and the impartiality of the waters. When the
vast and beautiful island has been reconnoitered, when its palaces have
been viewed, its streets disentangled, its joys and its difficulties
discovered, then the waters, which are neither for nor against, seem
inviting. Here, when the great struggle has been ended, when the years
have slipped by and the hopes of youth have not been realized; when
the dreams of fortune, the delights of tenderness, the bliss of love
and the hopes of peace have all been abandoned--the weary heart may
come and find surcease. Peace in the waters, rest in the depths and the
silence of the hurrying tide; surcease and an end in the chalice of the
waters which wash the shores of the beautiful island.
And they do come, these defeated ones? Not one, nor a dozen, nor a
score every year, but hundreds and hundreds. Scarcely a day passes but
one, and sometimes many, go down from the light and the show and the
merriment of the island to the shores of the waters where peace may
be found. They stop on its banks; they reflect, perhaps, on the joys
which they somehow have missed; they give a last, despairing glance at
the wonderful scene which once seemed so joyous and full of promise,
and then yield themselves unresistingly to the unswerving strength of
the powerful current and are borne away. Out past the docks and the
piers of the wonderful city. Out past its streets, its palaces, its
great institutions. Out past its lights, its colors, the sound of its
merriment and its seeking, and then the sea has them and they are no
more. They have accomplished their journey, the island its tragedy.
They have come down to the rivers of the nameless dead. They have
yielded themselves as a sacrifice to the variety of life. They have
proved the uncharitableness of the island of beauty.
[Illustration]
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs. In
versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in
the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.
Transcriber removed duplicate book title on page before first chapter.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Color of a Great City" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.