am going to call your attention to things less material--to things which
do not cling to our remembrance as they ought. Secure in our material
prosperity, we New-Yorkers do not always recall those incidents in the
history of the city which deserve to be forever memorable. We are not
often accused of modesty--but we are over-modest, are we not?--when we
allow our children to be taught that the first bloodshed of the
Revolution was in the Boston Massacre, forgetting that the Liberty Pole
fight took place in New York six weeks earlier. It was here in New York
that the Stamp Act Congress met, the forerunner of the federation of the
American colonies which cast off the British yoke. And in the long and
weary war of the Revolution only one of the thirteen colonies furnished
its full quota of men, money, and supplies--and that colony was the
colony of New York!"
Once more was the speaker interrupted by a tumult of approval; and once
more he went on again as soon as he could make himself heard.
"When the critical period in the history of this country came--that is,
when the need of a new constitution was felt by all--no men had a larger
share in the making of that constitution than two New-Yorkers, Alexander
Hamilton and John Jay, while the nervous English of that great
instrument was due to a third New-Yorker, Gouverneur Morris. It was in
New York that the foundations of American literature were laid, by the
publication of _Knickerbocker's History_, the earliest book to be
printed in America which keeps its popularity to-day--and more than
fourscore years have not yet tarnished its humor. To the author of this
immortal book, to Washington Irving, was due the first work of American
authorship which won acceptance outside of the boundaries of the United
States. And as it was the _Sketch-Book_ of Washington Irving which was
the first American book to win its way in England, so it was the _Spy_
of another citizen of New York, Fenimore Cooper, which was the first
American book to achieve fame outside of the English language. It was
here in New York that our American literature was first fostered, as it
is here in New York that our American authors are most abundant, most
highly honored, and most richly rewarded."
The speaker paused again, but only for a moment.
"As in letters, so in the arts. Here in New York the National Academy of
Design was founded, and later the Society of American Artists; and to
two painters of New York, to Robert Fulton and to Samuel F. B. Morse, we
owe the steamboat and the telegraph. Here in New York was founded the
Children's Aid Society--than which no city in the world has a nobler
charity--the first of the kind and the most successful. Here in New
York, also, Peter Cooper established the first institution intended to
provide instruction to all ambitious youth--an institution that has
been imitated in almost every city of the Union, although no city of the
Union has ever had a citizen more esteemed or better beloved than was
Peter Cooper here in New York. It is not in 'a city of kites and crows'
that men of Peter Cooper's character choose to dwell; it is not in 'a
city of kites and crows' that men of Peter Cooper's character are
cherished and revered."
Here the speech was again broken into by prolonged applause. Men rose to
their feet and cheered, waving their napkins over their heads.
When there was quiet once more the speaker went on:
"After years of peace and of prosperity, the people of the United States
suddenly found themselves face to face with armed rebellion, and war
loomed before us inevitable. New York was ready then as always. The
first regiment to reach the capital of the country--to secure it against
traitors--was a regiment of New York City militia. Nor was there ever
after any lack of men here in this city who despised the snares of death
and defied the pains of hell, and who went into battle bravely, and
gayly, and glad that--in the words of one of them--glad that 'there is
lots of good fighting along the whole line.' I have been told--I confess
I have not been able to verify the figures--but I have been told, that
the number of men who enlisted into the army and the navy of the United
States from this city of ours during those four long years of doubt and
anxiety exceeded the number of the male inhabitants of fighting age in
the year when the rebellion broke out. And not content with furnishing
men to fight, the city of New York saw to it that the wounded were duly
attended to and their anguish lightened as far as might be--for it was
here that the United States Sanitary Commission was organized."
There were cheers once more and yet again, and it was not for a full
minute that the speaker was enabled to continue.
"Your applause tells me that I need say no more," he began. "A
successful city is the spoiled child of fortune, and perhaps, like other
spoiled children, it is all the better for a sound thrashing now and
then. But what has New York done amiss now, that she should be scourged
with scorpions? In the welter of politics it may be considered adroit to
suggest that your opponent is either a wolf in sheep's clothing or an
ass in a lion's skin; but it is more adroit still, it seems to me, to
avoid personality altogether. The louder the report of the gun, the more
violent the kick is. When a New-Yorker hears his beloved town called 'a
city of kites and crows' his first impulse is to laugh; his second is to
inquire as to the man who said it; and his third is to laugh again and
louder when he discovers that the author of this assertion is from
Nevada, a state where even Santa Claus on Christmas Eve does not dare
go his rounds for fear of being held up by road-agents!"
This time a burst of hearty laughter mingled with the abundant applause
as the speaker sat down.
"That's a very good speech," the young man who seemed to be a stranger
said to his left-hand neighbor.
"Good speech?" echoed the other enthusiastically; "I should think so.
It's the speech of the evening, sure! There's not one of them can beat
that."
"I've been in Japan for the past five years, and I seem to have lost
track of people here in the city," said the young man. "What is the name
of the gentleman who made the speech?"
"Horace Chauncy," was the answer. "I thought everybody knew him. His
father was United States Senator from West Virginia, and his mother was
a famous Kentucky belle in her day. He himself used to be the leader of
the California bar before he moved here a few years ago. He caught on at
once in New York; he's one of the most popular speakers we have now;
some fellows call him 'Our Horace.' Haven't you ever heard about him,
really?"
"Well," the young man retorted, "you mustn't expect me to know all these
people. You see, I was born in New York."
(1894.)
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER
Thanksgiving Day had dawned clear and cold, an ideal day for the
foot-ball game. Soon after breakfast the side-streets had been made
hideous by small bands of boys, strangely disguised as girls some of
them, or as Indians and as negroes, with improvised costumes and with
staring masks; they blew fish-horns, and besought coppers. A little
later in the day groups of fantasticals paraded on horseback or in
carriages; and straggling target companies--some of them in the uniforms
worn during the political campaign which had culminated in the election
three weeks earlier--marched irregularly up the avenues under the
elevated railroads, preceded by thin lines of pioneers, and by slim
bands of music that played spasmodically before the many adjacent
saloons, at the doors of which the companies came to a halt willingly.
The sun shone out and warmed one side of the street as people came from
church; and the wind blew gently down the avenues, and fluttered the
petals of the yellow chrysanthemums which expanded themselves in many
button-holes. Little groups of young people passed, the girls with
knots of blue at their throats or with mufflers of orange and black, the
young men with college-buttons or with protruding handkerchiefs of the
college colors. The fashionable dealers in men's goods had arranged
their windows with impartial regard for future custom--one with blue
flannels and scarfs, shirts and socks, and the other all orange and
black. Coaches began to go by, draped with one set of colors or the
other, and filled with young men who split the air with explosive
cheers, while waving blue pennants with white letters, or yellow
pennants with black. The sun shone brightly, and the brisk breeze
shivered the bare branches of the trees. It rippled the flags which
projected from the vehicles gathering at Madison Square and streaming up
the avenue in thick succession--coaches, private carriages, omnibuses,
road-wagons of one kind or another.
Towards nightfall the tide turned and the coaches began to come back,
the young men hoarse with incessant shouting of their staccato college
cries. Some of them, wild with joy at the victory of their own team, had
voice still for exulting yells. Others were saddened into silence by the
defeat of their side. Most of those who had gone out to see the game
belonged neither to the college of the blue nor to the college of the
black and orange, but they were all stimulated by the struggle they had
just seen--a struggle of strength and of skill, of gumption and of grit.
The sun had gone down at last, and the bracing breeze of noon had now a
touch of dampness which chilled the flesh. But the hearty young fellows
paid no heed to it; they cheered and they sang and they cried aloud one
to the other as though the season were spring, and they were alone on
the sea-shore.
Robert White caught the fever like the rest, and as he walked down the
avenue to the College Club he was conscious of an excitement he had not
felt for years. He was alone in the city for a week, as it happened, his
wife having taken the children into the country for a long-promised
visit; and he had been spending his evenings at the College Club. So it
was that he had joined in chartering a coach, and for the first time in
a dozen years he had seen the foot-ball game. He had been made happy by
the success of his own college, and by meeting classmates whom he had
not laid eyes on since their Commencement in the heat of the Centennial
summer. One of them was now the young governor of a new Western State,
and another was likely to be a member of the new President's cabinet.
On the way out to the game White had sat beside a third classmate, now a
professor in the old college, and they had talked over their four years
and their fellow-students. They recalled the young men of promise who
had failed to sustain the hopes of the class; the steady, hard-working
fellows, who were steady and hard-working still; the quiet, shy man who
had known little Latin and less Greek, but was fond of science, and who
was now developing into one of the foremost novelists of the country;
the best base-ball player of the class, now the pastor of one of the
leading churches of Chicago; and others who had done well for themselves
in the different walks of life. They talked over the black sheep of the
class--some dead, some worse than dead, some dropped out of sight.
"What has become of Johnny Carroll?" asked the professor.
"I have not seen him since class-day. There was some wretched scandal
before Commencement, you know, and I doubt if Johnny ever got his
degree," White answered.
"I know he didn't," the professor returned. "He never dared to apply for
it."
"They managed to keep the trouble very quiet, whatever it was," White
went on. "I never knew just what the facts were."
"I didn't know then," responded the professor; "I have been told since.
But there is no need to go into that now. The girl is dead long ago, and
Johnny too, for all I have heard."
"Poor Johnny Carroll," White said; "I can remember how handsome he
looked that last night, the night of class-day. But he was always
handsome and always well dressed. He was not very clever or very
anything, was he? Yet we all liked him."
[Illustration: COMING FROM CHURCH]
"I remember that he tried to get on the Freshman crew," the professor
remarked, after a pause, "but the temptations of high living were too
much for him. He wouldn't train."
"Training was just what he needed most," White added; "moral and mental
as well as physical. Fact is, he always had more money than was good for
him. His father was in Wall Street then, and making money hand over
fist."
"It wasn't till the year after we were graduated that old Carroll
committed suicide, was it?" the professor inquired. "Blew out his brains
in the bath-tub, didn't he?"
"And didn't leave enough money to pay for his funeral," White answered.
"Johnny was in hard luck always: he had too much money at first, and
none at all when he needed it most."
"His great misfortune," said the professor, "was that his father was
'one of the boys.'"
"Yes," White agreed, "that is pretty rough on a fellow. I wonder where
Johnny is, if he is alive? Out West, perhaps, prospecting on a grub
stake, or else stoker on an ocean steamer, or perhaps he's a member of
the Broadway squad, earning a living by elbowing ladies over the
crossing."
"I hope he has as good a berth as that," the professor answered; "but I
don't believe that Johnny Carroll would stay on the force long, even if
he got the appointment. Do you remember how well he sang 'The Son of a
Gamboleer'?"
It was this question of the professor's which Robert White remembered
after he had got off the coach and was walking towards Madison Square.
Three young fellows, mere boys two of them, were staggering on just in
front of him. They were arm in arm, in hope of a triplicate stability
quite unattainable without more ballast than they carried, and they were
singing the song Johnny Carroll had made his own in college. The wind
was still sharpening, and the wooden signs which projected across the
sidewalk here and there swung heavily as they felt its force. There were
knots of eager young men and boys going to and fro before the
brilliantly lighted porticos of the hotels.
As White stepped aside to get out of the way of one of these groups,
rather more hilarious than the others, he knocked into a man who was
standing up against the glaring window of a restaurant. The man was thin
and pinched; his face was clean-shaven and blue; his clothes were
threadbare; his attitude was as though he were pressing close to the
glass in the hope of a reflected warmth.
"I beg your pardon," cried White.
The man turned stiffly. "It's of no con--" he began, then he saw White's
face in the bright light which streamed across the sidewalk. He stopped,
hesitated for a moment, and then turned away.
The moment had been enough for White to recognize him. "Johnny Carroll!"
he called.
The man continued to move away.
White overtook him in two strides, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Johnny!" he said again.
The man faced about and answered doubtfully, "Well, what do you want?"
"Is this really you, Johnny Carroll?" asked White, as he held out his
hand.
"Oh yes," said the other, "it's Johnny Carroll--and you are Bob White."
White's hand was still extended. After a long pause his classmate took
it. White was shocked at the chill of Carroll's fingers. "Why, man," he
cried, "you are cold."
"Well," the other answered, simply, "why not? It isn't the first time."
Then, after a swift glance at White's face, he turned his own away and
said, "I'm hungry, too, if you want to know."
"So am I," said White, cordially. "I was going to have my Thanksgiving
dinner alone. Will you join me, Johnny?"
"Do you mean it?" asked the other.
"Why shouldn't we dine together?" White responded, setting off briskly
and putting his arm through his classmate's. "Our team has won to-day,
you know--eighteen to nothing; we'll celebrate the victory."
"Where are you taking me?" inquired Johnny, uneasily.
"To the College Club, of course," answered White. "We'll--"
"I mustn't go there," said Johnny, stopping short. "I couldn't face them
now. I--oh, I couldn't!"
"Very well, then," White agreed. "Where shall we go? What do you say to
Delmonico's?"
Again Johnny asked: "Do you mean it? Honest?"
"Of course I mean it, Johnny," he replied.
"I haven't been in Delmonico's for ten years and more," said the other.
"I'd like to have just another dinner there. But you can't take me
there. Look at me!"
White looked at him. The thin coat was buttoned tight; it was very worn,
and yet it was not ragged; it was in better condition than the hat or
the boots.
As the two men stood there facing each other on the corner of the street
there was a foretaste of winter in the wind which smote them and ate
into their marrow.
White linked his arm again in his classmate's. "I've seen you look
sweller, Johnny, I confess," he said; "but I haven't dressed for dinner
myself to-night."
"So it's Delmonico's?" Johnny asked.
"It's Delmonico's," White responded.
"Then take me into the cafe," said the other. "I can stand the men, I
think, but I'm not in shape to go into the restaurant where the women
are."
"Very well," agreed White. "We'll try the cafe."
When they entered the cafe it was crowded with young men. There was
already a blue haze of smoke over the heads of the noisy throng. Boys
drinking champagne at adjacent tables were calling across to each other
with boisterous merriment.
White was able to secure a small table near the corner on the Broadway
side. As he walked over to it he nodded to half a score of
acquaintances, some of whom looked askant at his companion, and
exchanged whispered comments after he had passed.
Apparently Johnny neither saw the looks nor heard the whispers. He
followed White as if in a dream; and White had noticed that when they
had entered the heated room Carroll had drawn a long breath as though to
warm himself.
"I don't need an overcoat in here," he said, as he took the chair
opposite White's with the little marble-topped table between them.
When the waiter had deftly laid the cloth, Johnny fingered its fair
softness, as with a cat-like enjoyment of its cleanness.
"Now, what shall we have?" asked White, as the waiter handed him the
bill of fare in its narrow frame. "What would you like?"
"I?" the guest responded; "oh, anything--whatever you want--some roast
beef."
"Then your taste has changed since you left college," White declared. "I
asked you what you would _like_."
"What _I'd_ like?" echoed Johnny. "Do you mean it? Honest?"
White smiled as the old college phrase dropped again from the lips of
his classmate.
"Of course I mean it," he said; "honest. There's the bill of fare. Order
what you please. And remember that it is Thanksgiving, and that I'm
hungry, and that I want a good dinner."
"Very well, then," said Johnny, as he took the bill of fare. He was
already warmer, and now he seemed to expand a little with the unwonted
luxury of the occasion.
He looked over the bill of fare carefully.
"Blue Points on the half-shell, of course," he began, adding to the
waiter, "be sure that they are on the deep shell. Green turtle soup--the
green turtle here used to be very good fifteen years ago. _Filet de
sole, a la Mornay_--the sole is flounder, I suppose, but _a la Mornay_ a
man could eat a Hebrew manuscript. Then a canvas-back apiece--two
canvas-back, you understand, real canvas-back, not red-head or
mallard--with samp, of course, and a mayonnaise of celery. Then a bit of
Chedder cheese and a cup of coffee. How will that suit you, White?"
"That will suit me," White responded. "And now what wine?"
"Wine, too?" Johnny queried.
White smiled and nodded.
"Well, I'll go you," the guest went on. "I might as well see the thing
through, if you are bound to do it in style." He turned over the bill of
fare and scanned the wine list on the under side. "Yquem '74 with the
oysters; and they tell me there is a Silver Seal Special '84 _brut_ that
is better than anything one has tasted before. Give us a quart of that
with the duck. And let us have it as soon as you can."
He handed the bill of fare to the waiter, and then, for the first time,
he ventured to glance about the room.
The oysters were brought very soon, and when Johnny had eaten them and
part of a roll, and when he had drunk two glasses of the Yquem, White
said to him: "Tell me something about yourself. What have you been doing
all these years?"
Johnny's face fell a little. "I've done pretty nearly everything," he
answered, "from driving a Fifth Avenue stage to keeping books for a
Third Avenue pawnbroker. I've been a waiter at a Coney Island chowder
saloon. Two summers ago I waited on the man who has just taken our
order--I waited on him more than once. I've dealt faro, too."
The waiter brought the soup and served them.
When he left them alone again, White asked: "Can't some of your old
friends help you out of this--give you a start and set you up again?"
"It's no good trying," Johnny replied. "You can't pull me up now. It's
too late. I guess it was too late from the start."
"Why don't you drop this place?" White queried, "and go out West,
and--"
"What's the use of talking about that?" Johnny interrupted. "I can't
live away from New York. If I got out of sight of that tower over there
I'd die."
"You will die here soon enough at this rate," White answered.
"That's so, too," admitted Johnny; "but it can't be helped now." He was
eating steadily, sturdily, but not ravenously.
After the waiter had served the fish, White asked again, "What can we do
for you?"
"Nothing," Johnny answered--"nothing at all. Yes, you can give me a
five, if you like, or a ten; but don't give me your address, or the
first time I'm down again I'd look you up and strike you for ten more."
A band of undergraduates, twenty of them or more, four abreast, arm in
arm, went tramping down Broadway, yelling forth the chorus of a college
song.
"You used to sing that song, Johnny," said White.
"I used to do lots of things," he answered, as the waiter opened the
champagne.
"I never heard anybody get as much out of 'The Son of a Gamboleer' as
you did," White continued.
"I joined a negro-minstrel troupe as second tenor twelve years ago, but
we got stranded in Hartford, and I had to walk home. I've tried to do a
song and dance in the Bowery dime museums since then, more than once.
But it's no use."
When they had made an end of the canvas-backs and the _brut_ '84, Johnny
sat back in his chair and smiled, and said, "Well, this was worth
while."
Then the coffee came, and White said, "You forgot to order the liqueur,
Johnny."
"You see what it is to be out of practice," he replied. "I'd like some
orange curacoa."
"And I will take a little green mint," said White to the waiter. "And
bring some cigars--Henry Clays."
"That's right," Johnny declared. "My father was always a Henry Clay man,
and I suppose that's why I like those cigars."
After the cigars were lighted White looked his companion square in the
face. "Are you sure," he asked, "that we can do nothing for you?"
"Dead sure," was the answer.
"Nothing?"
"You have given me a good dinner," said Johnny. "That's enough. That's
more than most of my old friends would give me. And there's nothing more
to be done."
White held his peace for the moment.
Johnny took a long sip of his coffee, and drew three or four times at
his cigar. "That's a first-rate cigar," he said. "I haven't smoked a
Henry Clay for nearly two years, and then I picked up one a man had
lighted, between the acts, outside of Daly's."
He puffed at it again with voluptuous appreciation, and then leaned
across the table to White and remarked, confidentially, "Do you know,
Bob, 'most everything I've cared for in this world has been immoral, or
expensive, or indigestible."
"Yes," White admitted; "I suppose that's the cause of your bad luck."
"I've had lots of luck in my life," was the response, "good and
bad--better than I deserved, most of it--this dinner, for example; I
should remember it even without to-morrow's dyspepsia. But what's the
use of anticipating evil? I'll let the next day take care of itself, and
make the best of this one. There are several hours of it left--where
shall we go now?"
(1892.)
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
It was late in the afternoon when John Suydam turned into Twenty-third
Street, and he remarked the absence of the gleam of color generally
visible far away to the westward beyond the end of the street and across
the river. There was no red vista that Christmas Eve, for the sky was
overcast and lowering, and there was a damp chill in the air, a
premonition of approaching snow. It was about the edge of dusk as he
skirted Madison Square and saw the electric-lights twinkle out suddenly
up and down Fifth Avenue, and in the square here and there.