XI

I could not make out whether Mr. Makely approved of his wife's philosophy

or not; I do not believe he thought much about it. The money probably

came easily with him, and he let it go easily, as an American likes to

do. There is nothing penurious or sordid about this curious people, so

fierce in the pursuit of riches. When these are once gained, they seem to

have no value to the man who has won them, and he has generally no object

in life but to see his womankind spend them.

This is the season of the famous Thanksgiving, which has now become the

national holiday, but has no longer any savor in it of the grim

Puritanism it sprang from. It is now appointed by the president and the

governors of the several states, in proclamations enjoining a pious

gratitude upon the people for their continued prosperity as a nation, and

a public acknowledgment of the divine blessings. The blessings are

supposed to be of the material sort, grouped in the popular imagination

as good times, and it is hard to see what they are when hordes of men and

women of every occupation are feeling the pinch of poverty in their

different degrees. It is not merely those who have always the wolf at

their doors who are now suffering, but those whom the wolf never

threatened before; those who amuse as well as those who serve the rich

are alike anxious and fearful, where they are not already in actual want;

thousands of poor players, as well as hundreds of thousands of poor

laborers, are out of employment, and the winter threatens to be one of

dire misery. Yet you would not imagine from the smiling face of things,

as you would see it in the better parts of this great city, that there

was a heavy heart or an empty stomach anywhere below it. In fact, people

here are so used to seeing other people in want that it no longer affects

them as reality; it is merely dramatic, or hardly so lifelike as that--it

is merely histrionic. It is rendered still more spectacular to the

imaginations of the fortunate by the melodrama of charity they are

invited to take part in by endless appeals, and their fancy is flattered

by the notion that they are curing the distress they are only slightly

relieving by a gift from their superfluity. The charity, of course, is

better than nothing, but it is a fleeting mockery of the trouble, at the

best. If it were proposed that the city should subsidize a theatre a

which the idle players could get employment in producing good plays at a

moderate cost to the people, the notion would not be considered more

ridiculous than that of founding municipal works for the different sorts

of idle workers; and it would not be thought half so nefarious, for the

proposition to give work by the collectivity is supposed to be in

contravention of the sacred principle of monopolistic competition so

dear to the American economist, and it would be denounced as an

approximation to the surrender of the city to anarchism and destruction

by dynamite.

But as I have so often said, the American life is in no wise logical, and

you will not be surprised, though you may be shocked or amused, to learn

that the festival of Thanksgiving is now so generally devoted to

witnessing a game of football between the elevens of two great

universities that the services at the churches are very scantily

attended. The Americans are practical, if they are not logical, and this

preference of football to prayer and praise on Thanksgiving-day has gone

so far that now a principal church in the city holds its services on

Thanksgiving-eve, so that the worshippers may not be tempted to keep away

from their favorite game.

There is always a heavy dinner at home after the game, to console the

friends of those who have lost and to heighten the joy of the winning

side, among the comfortable people. The poor recognize the day largely

as a sort of carnival. They go about in masquerade on the eastern

avenues, and the children of the foreign races who populate that quarter

penetrate the better streets, blowing horns and begging of the passers.

They have probably no more sense of its difference from the old carnival

of Catholic Europe than from the still older Saturnalia of pagan times.

Perhaps you will say that a masquerade is no more pagan than a football

game; and I confess that I have a pleasure in that innocent

misapprehension of the holiday on the East Side. I am not more censorious

of it than I am of the displays of festival cheer at the provision-stores

or green-groceries throughout the city at this time. They are almost as

numerous on the avenues as the drinking-saloons, and, thanks to them, the

tasteful housekeeping is at least convenient in a high degree. The waste

is inevitable with the system of separate kitchens, and it is not in

provisions alone, but in labor and in time, a hundred cooks doing the

work of one; but the Americans have no conception of our co-operative

housekeeping, and so the folly goes on.

Meantime the provision-stores add much to their effect of crazy gayety on

the avenues. The variety and harmony of colors is very great, and this

morning I stood so long admiring the arrangement in one of them that I am

afraid I rendered myself a little suspicious to the policeman guarding

the liquor-store on the nearest corner; there seems always to be a

policeman assigned to this duty. The display was on either side of the

provisioner's door, and began, on one hand, with a basal line of pumpkins

well out on the sidewalk. Then it was built up with the soft white and

cool green of cauliflowers and open boxes of red and white grapes, to the

window that flourished in banks of celery and rosy apples. On the other

side, gray-green squashes formed the foundation, and the wall was sloped

upward with the delicious salads you can find here, the dark red of

beets, the yellow of carrots, and the blue of cabbages. The association

of colors was very artistic, and even the line of mutton carcasses

overhead, with each a brace of grouse or half a dozen quail in its

embrace, and flanked with long sides of beef at the four ends of the

line, was picturesque, though the sight of the carnage at the

provision-stores here would always be dreadful to an Altrurian; in the

great markets it is intolerable. This sort of business is mostly in the

hands of the Germans, who have a good eye for such effects as may be

studied in it; but the fruiterers are nearly all Italians, and their

stalls are charming. I always like, too, the cheeriness of the chestnut

and peanut ovens of the Italians; the pleasant smell and friendly smoke

that rise from them suggest a simple and homelike life which there are so

any things in this great, weary, heedless city to make one forget.