Park, clear, cloudless, unfathomable. The afternoon sun was hot, and
high overhead. Now and then a wandering breeze came without warning and
lingered only for a moment, fluttering the broad leaves of the aquatic
plants in the fountain below the Terrace. At the Casino, on the hill
above the Mall, men and women were eating and drinking, some of them
inside the dingy and sprawling building, and some of them out-doors at
little tables set in curving lines under the gayly colored awnings,
which covered the broad walk bending away from the door of the
restaurant. From the bandstand in the thick of the throng below came the
brassy staccato of a cornet, rendering "The Last Rose of Summer." Even
the Ramble was full of people; and the young couples, seeking
sequestered nooks under the russet trees, were often forced to share
their benches with strangers. Beneath the reddening maples lonely men
lounged on the grass by themselves, or sat solitary and silent in the
midst of chattering family groups.
The crowd was cosmopolitan and unhurried. For the most part it was
good-natured and well-to-do. There was not a beggar to be seen; there
was no appealing poverty. Fathers of families there were in abundance,
well-fed and well-clad, with their wives and with their sons' wives and
with their sons' children. Maids in black dresses and white aprons
pushed baby-carriages. Young girls in groups of three and four giggled
and gossiped. Young men in couples leaned over the bridge of the Lake,
smoking and exchanging opinions. There was a general air of prosperity
gladly displaying itself in the sunshine; the misery and the want and
the despair of the great city were left behind and thrust out of mind.
[Illustration: "TWO SLIM JAPANESE GENTLEMEN"]
Two or three yards after a portly German with a little boy holding each
of his hands while a third son still younger rode ahead astride of his
father's solid cane, there came two slim Japanese gentlemen, small and
sallow, in their neatly cut coats and trousers. A knot of laughing
mulatto-girls followed, arm in arm; they, too, seemed ill-dressed in the
accepted costume of civilization, especially when contrasted with half a
dozen Italians who passed slowly, looking about them with curious
glances; the men in worn olive velveteens and with gold rings in their
ears, the women with bright colors in their skirts and with embroidery
on their neckerchiefs. Where the foot-path touched the carriage-drive
there stood a plain but comfortably plump Irishwoman, perhaps thirty
years of age; she had a baby in her arms, and a little girl of scant
three held fast to her patched calico dress; with her left hand she was
proffering a basket containing apples, bananas, and grapes; two other
children, both under six, played about her skirts; and two more, a boy
and a girl, kept within sight of her--the girl, about ten years old,
having a basket of her own filled with thin round brown cakes; and the
boy, certainly not yet thirteen, holding out a wooden box packed with
rolls of lozenges, put up in red and yellow and green papers. Now and
again the mother or one of the children made a sale to a pedestrian on
his way to the music. The younger children watched, with noisy glee, the
light leaps of a gray squirrel bounding along over the grass behind the
path and balancing himself with his horizontal tail.
The broad carriage-drive was as crowded as any of the foot-paths.
Bicyclists in white sweaters and black stockings toiled along in groups
of three and four, bent forward over the bars of their machines.
Politicians with cigars in the corners of their mouths held in impatient
trotters. Park omnibuses heavily laden with women and children drew up
for an instant before the Terrace, and then went on again to skirt the
Lake. Old-fashioned and shabby landaus lumbered along with strangers
from the hotels. Now and then there came in sight a hansom cab with a
young couple framed in the front of it, or a jolting dog-cart, on the
high seat of which a British-looking young man was driving tandem. Here
and there were other private carriages--coupes and phaetons, for the
most part, with once and again a four-in-hand coach rumbling heavily on
the firmly packed road.
A stylish victoria sped along, spick and span, with its glistening
harness and its jingling steel chains, with its stalwart pair of
iron-gray steppers and with two men on the box, correct and impassive.
Suddenly, as it passed close to the walk at the end of the Terrace, the
coachman drew up sharply, pulling his horses back on their haunches and
swearing inaudibly at the plump Irishwoman who had dropped her basket of
fruit just in time to rescue one of her children from being run over.
"It's more careful ye ought to be!" cried the mother, as she stood again
on the walk with her daughter clasped to her waist.
"We are very sorry, indeed," said the lady in the victoria, leaning
forward. "It was an accident."
"An accident, was it?" returned the Irishwoman. "An' it's an accident,
then, ye wouldn't like if it was yer own children ye were runnin' over
like that."
The childless couple in the carriage looked at each other for a moment
only; and then the husband said, swiftly, "Drive on, John!"
He was a man of fifty, spare in frame and round-shouldered; he had a
keen glance, and a weary smile came and went on his lips, not hidden by
his sparse gray moustache. His wife was a woman of perhaps thirty, tall,
dark, with passionate eyes and a full figure.
She was still leaning forward, clinching the side of the carriage as it
turned northward and rolled along by the side of the Lake. Her voice
showed that her excitement had not subsided, as she faced her husband
again and said: "John is getting very careless. That is the third time
this week he has nearly run over a child!"
"He has not quite run over one yet. It will be time enough to discharge
him when he does," her husband answered, calmly. "That little girl there
is none the worse for her fright. She seemed a pretty little thing, and
she has been saved to grow up in a tenement-house and to go to the devil
ten years from now. So her mother has cause to be thankful."
His wife looked at him indignantly. "I suppose," she said, "you mean
that it is a pity that John didn't run over the child and kill her."
"I didn't mean that exactly," he responded. "But perhaps it is true
enough. Death is not the worst thing in this world, you know."
"You are always talking of dying," returned his young wife, impatiently.
"I wonder you don't commit suicide."
"I have thought of it," he answered, looking at her with a tolerant
smile. "But life amuses me still--I have so much curiosity, you know.
But I might do it, if I were sure I could have the privilege of coming
back to see what you will be up to when I'm gone."
She looked straight before her and made no answer, keeping her lips
firmly compressed.
There was a touch of tenderness in his tone as he went on, a curious
cynical tenderness, quite characteristic of him. "Don't let some rascal
marry you for my money. That would annoy me, I confess. And yet, I don't
know why I should suggest the possibility of such a thing, for you will
be a most fascinating widow."
She gazed ahead steadily and said nothing, but she had joined her hands
together, and her fingers kept moving.
"Still," he continued, "I'm afraid I'm good for ten years more. We're a
hardy stock, you know. My father lived to be eighty, and he was fifty
when I was born. Besides, you take such good care of me always."
He held out his hand to her, and she took it and clasped it tight in
both of hers, while the tears brimmed her eyes.
"But perhaps you are letting me stay out too long this afternoon," he
said. "It is balmy, I know, but I'm getting tired already."
"John," she cried, hastily, "you may turn now, and go home."
"I don't want you to lose this lovely September afternoon," her husband
declared. "Take me home, and come back to the Park here for an hour,
while I have a nap, if I can."
Just then there was a break in the stream of vehicles, and the coachman
took advantage of it and turned the horses' heads southward. In five
minutes the victoria swerved to the westward, leaving the Lake behind,
and making for the Riverside Drive.
The Lake was gay with boats. Black gondolas with white canopies and
brilliant American flags were propelled adroitly by their standing
boat-men. Light canoes were paddled briskly in and out of the bays and
channels, where the ducks and swans swam lazily about. Young fellows in
their shirt-sleeves tugged inexpertly at the oars of row-boats laden
down with young women. By regular and easy strokes the Park watermen
rowed the capacious barges, with their striped awnings, in the
prescribed course around the Lake. The oars flashed in the flickering
sunlight, and the sunshine gilded the prows of the distant canoes as
they shot across the vista. The yellow leaves of the maples high on the
bank over the opposite shore fluttered loosely away on the doubtful
breeze, and at last fell languidly into the water. To the west a
towering apartment-house lifted itself aloft over the edge of the Park,
and seemed to shorten the space between. To the east the gilded dome of
a new synagogue rose over the tree-tops. Above all was the blue concave
of the calm and illimitable sky.
When the victoria, with its two men on the box and with its pair of
high-stepping horses, returned to the Park, and skirted the Lake again,
and approached the Terrace, the lady sat in it alone. As she came in
sight of the Mall she bent forward, eagerly looking for the little girl
whom they had almost run over half an hour earlier.
Near the Terrace she saw the pleasant-faced Irishwoman, with her basket
of fruit in one hand and the baby in the other arm; the three little
children were playing about their mother's feet, while the elder boy and
girl were only a few yards away.
The lonely woman in the victoria bade the coachman draw up.
Seeing the carriage stop at the side of the road the Irishwoman came
forward, proffering her fruit. Then she recognized the lady and checked
her approach, hesitating.
The handsome woman in the carriage smiled, and said, "Which is the
little girl we almost ran over?"
"That's the one," answered the mother, indicating the slip of a child
who was now clasping the edge of the fruit-basket while staring at the
strange lady with wide-open eyes.
"What a pretty child she is!" said the lady. "I hope she is none the
worse for her fright?"
"Ye didn't break any bones, if that's what ye mean," the mother
responded.
"And how old is she?" was the next question.
"She'll be three years old come Christmas," was the answer.
The lady in the carriage felt in her pocket, and brought out her purse
and looked through it.
"Here," she said at last, as she took out a five-dollar gold-piece;
"here is something I wish you would give her on Christmas morning as a
present from me. Will you?"
"I will that," the mother replied, taking the money, "and gladly too.
It's richer than her sisters she'll be now."
"How many children have you?" the lady inquired.
"Six; thank ye, ma'am, for askin'," was the response, "an' all well and
hearty."
"Six?" echoed the woman in the victoria, with a hungry gleam in her
eyes. "You have six children?"
"It's six I have," the mother answered; "and it's a fine lot they are
altogether, though I say it that shouldn't."
The lady put her hand in her purse again.
"Buy something with this for the others," she said, placing a bank-note
in the Irishwoman's hands. Then she raised her voice and added, "You may
drive on, John!"
As the victoria rolled away to the westward the fruit-vender courtesied,
and the children all looked after the carriage with interest.
"That lady must be very rich," said the eldest boy, the one who had the
lozenges for sale. "I shouldn't wonder if she had two millions of
dollars!"
"She must be very happy," the eldest girl added. "I suppose she can have
ice-cream every day, and go to the Seaside Home for two weeks whenever
she wants."
"It's a kind heart she has anyway, for all her money," was the mother's
comment, as she unfolded the bank-note and saw the X in the corner of
it.
Meanwhile the lady in the victoria was eaten with bitter thoughts as the
carriage rattled along in the brilliant sunshine beneath the unclouded
sky.
"Six children!" she was saying to herself. "That Irishwoman has six
children! Why is it that some women have so much luck?"
(1893.)
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING
The more immaterial part of the banquet was about to begin. The guests
had made an end of eating, and the waiters were filling the small cups
with black coffee, and passing boxes of cigars and cigarettes. At the
five long tables which gridironed the great room the hum of conversation
rose higher and higher; while at the shorter table, raised on the
platform at the western end of the hall, there was almost silence, as
the men who were to make speeches saw the oratorical moment approaching.
The musicians, hidden behind a screen of greenery, were playing a medley
of the latest popular airs; and here and there, at the tables below, a
little group of the diners now and again took up a chorus, with
intermittent energy, to the amusement of the ladies who were arriving
and filling rapidly the broad boxes in the galleries.
The organizers of the dinner had felt that it was a great occasion, and
they had sought to make it memorable artistically. The severe white of
the beautifully proportioned concert-hall was relieved by foliage
plants, massed and scattered with a delicate understanding of decorative
effect; against the absolutely colorless walls, with their carved
caryatides, were palms in pots; gayly colored silken banners floated
down from the ceiling; and everywhere, on the ceiling and the walls and
the balconies and the platforms, the electric lights glowed and
twinkled, illuminating the lofty hall with steady brilliancy.
Near the eastern end of one of the long tables there sat a young man--at
least, he was barely thirty. He was so placed that he had before him the
whole scene. He had an uninterrupted view of the raised table, where the
speakers were absorbed in self-communion. He commanded the entrance to
the gallery opposite, and he could see the ladies as they arrived in
little groups, eager for the unwonted pleasure of attendance at a great
public dinner. He could hear the feminine chatter rising shrill above
the masculine babble below. He gazed at the boxes curiously, as though
he did not know any of the ladies in them; and he remained quiet while
the diners about him at that end of the table exchanged salutations with
the occupants of one box or another. Apparently he had few if any
acquaintances even on the floor of the hall, the men on each side of him
being generally engaged in conversation with their neighbors.
Seemingly his solitude was lightly borne, and he found solace for it in
amused observation of the gathering. He lighted his own cigar, and was
soon helping to make the blue haze which hung over the tables, rising
in time almost to the level of the boxes in the long balconies.
Yet he was not averse to conversation, and when his right-hand neighbor
turned back to pick up a fresh cigarette, he took occasion to say, "It
isn't usual to let ladies in at dinners here in New York, is it?"
"No," his right-hand neighbor responded, with a slight but obvious
German accent, "I don't think it is. I've been lifing in New York for a
long vile now--'most eleven years--and I never saw it before."
Then the right-hand neighbor, having lighted his cigarette, sat back in
his chair again and resumed his interrupted talk with the man on the
other side of him.
The young man who was apparently a stranger was allowed to keep silence
only for a minute or two, however, as his left-hand neighbor, to whom he
had hardly spoken during the dinner, now engaged him in conversation.
"I thought it was about time they did that," said the neighbor,
indicating the waiters who were removing the potted orange-trees and the
sugar-trophies from the upper table. "Now we can see who's who."
"I suppose those are the more distinguished guests?" the young man
suggested.
"Most of the men who are going to make speeches are up there," the
neighbor responded. "Hello, hello! there's Alexander Macgregor down at
that end there, the one with the full red beard. He's the President of
the St. Andrew's Society. He's a first-rate American, too, for all he
was born in Edinburgh. You know, he's the man they call the
'Star-spangled Scotchman.'"
"And who is that clean-shaved, clean-looking, fair-haired man next to
him?" asked the young man.
"That?" the neighbor replied, "that's--oh, I forget his name--but he's
the President of the St. George's Society, I think. He's an
Englishman--that is, he was; I suppose he's been naturalized--but then
you can never tell about Englishmen, can you? They will live in a place
for years, and they will be Britons to the backbone all the time."
"Who is the presiding officer?" was the next question.
"Don't you know _him_?" the neighbor retorted. "Why, that's
Crowninshield Eliot, the lawyer. He used to be President of the New
England Society. He's a clever man and he makes a rattling good speech
sometimes, but then he's mighty uncertain. He may speak well or he may
make a bad break. A speech from him is a regular grab-bag--you never
know what you are going to have. But things don't get rusty when he is
around, I tell you. You can rely on him to wake all the other speakers
up. And I guess we shall have some fun before we get through; it isn't
often you see so many representative New-Yorkers together; it's really
a typical gathering."
The young man made no response to this, being for the moment busy with
his own ironic thoughts.
"Now there's a man who will make the fur fly if he gets a chance,"
continued the loquacious neighbor, "that tall, thin, dignified-looking
man, with the black goatee and mustache; that's Colonel Fairfax. He's
Secretary of the Southern Society--all rebels, you know, but
reconstructed by this time, most of them. He's District Attorney for the
second term now, and you ought to hear him talk to a jury. He could get
a verdict against the angel Gabriel for stealing the silver trumpet.
When I was on the grand jury last year he--"
Here the young man's neighbor interrupted himself to say, "Hello, hello!
that is odd, isn't it? Right next to Colonel Fairfax is the man who was
foreman of our grand jury; I didn't catch sight of him till that waiter
took away that candy Statue of Liberty. See him? The bald one with the
scar on his jaw; it's a bullet wound he got at Shiloh. That's S. Colfax
Morrison; he was major of the 200th Ohio, but he's been living in New
York for ten years now at least. That's 'the Ohio idea' they talk about:
to come to New York to live as soon as they can. I was born in Ohio
myself."
And the talker let his loquacity taper off into a laugh, in which the
young man joined courteously.
There was a sudden diminution of the roar of talk as the gentleman
sitting in the middle of the raised table rose to his feet and rapped
for silence. Even in the boxes, now filled to overflowing with ladies,
the chatter ceased as the man who had been selected to preside over the
dinner began his remarks by recalling the event they had met to
commemorate. In felicitous phrases and with neatly turned strokes of
humor he declared the reason why they were assembled together. And when
he had made an end of this, he announced that the first toast of the
evening would be "New York, the Empire City, sitting at the gates of
commerce, and holding the highways of trade."
There was a burst of applause and a pushing back of chairs as all the
guests rose with their glasses in their hands.
Then the presiding officer prepared to introduce the speaker who was to
make the response to this important toast.
"I saw only this morning," he began again, "the report of some remarks
made by a Senator from Nevada, in which New York was called a 'city of
kites and crows.' There are Congressmen who cannot open their mouths
without disseminating miscellaneous misinformation; and the only
appropriate retort would be with the plain-spoken bowie of the
mining-camp or with the unambiguous derringer of Nevada. No adequate
answer is possible in the sterilized vocabulary permitted to us by the
conventions of modern society. And yet it is well that once in a while
New York should assert herself--that she should celebrate herself--that
she should rest from her mighty labors, if only for a moment, to
contemplate her own great work. We are fortunate in having with us here
to-night a man who can do justice to this imposing theme, a man who
loves New York as we all love her, who is proud of New York as we are
all proud of her--a man whom there is no need for me to introduce to an
assembly of New-Yorkers. Works of supererogation are discountenanced,
and who is there here who does not know Horace Chauncy?"
As the chairman ceased the gentleman who had been sitting at his right
rose, and immediately there was great applause from all parts of the
hall. Men clapped their hands and rapped upon the table with the handles
of their fruit-knives. Even the ladies in the boxes waved their
handkerchiefs.
Then, as the chairman, having done his duty, took his seat, there was
the customary hum of anticipated enjoyment, dying away swiftly as Mr.
Chauncy prepared to speak.
The left-hand neighbor of the young man down at the far end of the long
table turned to him again, and said, "Now you keep your eyes open. I
shouldn't wonder if this was the speech of the evening."
The young man looked at the new speaker and liked his face, at once
masterful and intelligent. Mr. Chauncy's attitude was one of conscious
strength and of perfect ease. He was a man of fifty, perhaps, with gray
hair and a curling gray mustache.
"Upon a mellow October night like this," the speaker began, and his
voice was rich and firm, while his delivery was as clear as a line
engraving--"upon a mellow October night like this, possible in no other
city in this country or in Europe, I think, and illustrative of the fact
that here in New York we have really a climate, while most of the other
great towns of the world have only weather--upon a night like this, and
under this graceful tower, uplifting its loveliness into the azure air
and topped by a Diana fairer than that of the Ephesians smiling down
upon gardens more beautiful than any ever hanging in Babylon, there is
no need for me to present any defence of the Empire City, or to proffer
any apology for her. If you seek for proof of her superiority, look
about you here to-night, and remember that nowhere else in the United
States could any such company as this be gathered together; nowhere else
in the United States is there a banquet-hall so beautiful; nowhere else
in the United States would a feast like this be graced by the presence
of so many lovely women. Yet I feel that I should be derelict to my
duty--that I should let slip a precious occasion--if I did not dwell for
a while upon a few of the many things in the history of this city which
give her proud pre-eminence; which make her what she is--the mighty and
magnificent metropolis of a great people."
Again the applause broke forth. After a pause the speaker continued,
having the attention of every man and woman in the hall. Even as he
warmed to his subject he preserved the perfection of his delivery, and
he poured forth facts, figures, illustrations, one after the other, with
never a broken accent or a blurred syllable.
"I will not detain you by detailing the many natural advantages of New
York--the noble river which sweeps by on one side and the arm of the
ocean which embraces the other, and the spacious and beautiful bay, with
its harborage ample for all the fleets of all the nations of the earth.
It is not my purpose to-night to linger long over the works of art which
make this island of ours distinguished as the works of nature have made
possible her prosperity; and therefore I shall say nothing of the Statue
of Liberty, of the Brooklyn Bridge, of the Riverside Drive, of the
libraries and the museums and the colleges and the churches; I shall
even say nothing of Central Park, truly the finest single work of art
yet produced by any American, and, simply as a work of art, unequalled
by any pleasure-ground of Europe."
There was another burst of applause, but the speaker scarcely waited for
it to die down before he began again.