Well, now let us see in what respect we are richer to-day than we
were yesterday.
Coming down Fifth Avenue on top of a bus, we saw a man absorbed in a
book. Ha, we thought, here is our chance to see how bus reading
compares to subway reading! After some manoeuvering, we managed to
get the seat behind the victim. The volume was "Every Man a King,"
by Orison Swett Marden, and the uncrowned monarch reading it was
busy with the thirteenth chapter, to wit: "Thoughts Radiate as
Influence." We did a little radiating of our own, and it seemed to
reach him, for presently he grew uneasy, put the volume carefully
away in a brief-case, and (as far as we could see) struck out toward
his kingdom, which apparently lay on the north shore of Forty-second
Street.
We felt then that we would recuperate by glancing at a little
literature. So we made our way toward the newly enlarged shrine of
James F. Drake on Fortieth Street. Here we encountered our friends
the two Messrs. Drake, junior, and complimented them on their thews
and sinews, these two gentlemen having recently, unaided, succeeded
in moving a half-ton safe, filled with the treasures of Elizabethan
literature, into the new sanctum. Here, where formerly sped the
nimble fingers of M. Tappe's young ladies, busy with the compilation
of engaging bonnets for the fair, now stand upon wine-dark shelves
the rich gold and amber of fine bindings. We were moved by this
sight. We said in our heart, we will erect a small madrigal upon
this theme, entitled: "Song Upon Certain Songbirds of the
Elizabethan Age Now Garnishing the Chamber Erstwhile Bright With the
Stuffed Plumage of the Milliner." To the Messrs. Drake we mentioned
the interesting letter of Mr. J. Acton Lomax in yesterday's
_Tribune_, which called attention to the fact that the poem at the
end of "Through the Looking Glass" is an acrostic giving the name of
the original Alice--viz., Alice Pleasance Liddell. In return for
which we were shown a copy of the first edition of "Alice in
Wonderland." Here, too, we dallied for some time over a first
edition of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and were pleased to learn that
the great doctor was no more infallible in proofreading than the
rest of us, one of our hosts pointing out to us a curious error by
which some words beginning in COV had slipped in ahead of words
beginning in COU.
* * * * *
At noon to-day we climbed on a Riverside Drive bus at Seventy-ninth
Street and rode in the mellow gold of autumn up to Broadway and
168th. Serene, gilded weather; sunshine as soft and tawny as
candlelight, genial at midday as the glow of an open fire in spite
of the sharpness of the early morning. Battleships lay in the river
with rippling flags. Men in flannels were playing tennis on the
courts below Grant's Tomb; everywhere was a convincing appearance of
comfort and prosperity. The beauty of the children, the good
clothing of everybody, canes swinging on the pavements, cheerful
faces untroubled by thought, the warm benevolence of sunlight,
bronzing trees along Riverside Park, a man reading a book on the
summit of that rounded knoll of rock near Eighty-fourth Street which
children call "Mount Tom"--everything was so bright in life and
vigour that the sentence seems to need no verb. Joan of Arc, poised
on horseback against her screen of dark cedars, held her sword
clearly against the pale sky. Amazingly sure and strong and
established seem the rich façades of Riverside Drive apartment
houses, and the landlords were rolling in limousines up to Claremont
to have lunch. One small apartment house, near Eighty-third or
thereabouts, has been renamed the Château-Thierry.
After crossing the long bridge above Claremont and the deep ravine
where ships and ferryboats and coal stations abound, the bus crosses
on 135th Street to Broadway. At 153d, the beautiful cemetery of
Trinity Parish, leafy paths lying peaceful in the strong glow. At
166th Street is an open area now called Mitchel Square, with an
outcrop of rock polished by the rearward breeks of many sliding
urchins. Some children were playing on that small summit with a toy
parachute made of light paper and a pebble attached by threads. On
168th Street alongside the big armoury of the Twenty-second
Engineers boys were playing baseball, with a rubber ball, pitching
it so that the batter received it on the bounce and struck it with
his fist. According to the score chalked on the pavement the "Bronx
Browns" and the "Haven Athletics" were just finishing a rousing
contest, in which the former were victors, 1-0. Haven Avenue, near
by, is a happy little street perched high above the river. A small
terraced garden with fading flowers looks across the Hudson to the
woody Palisades. Modest apartment houses are built high on enormous
buttresses, over the steep scarp of the hillside. Through cellar
windows coal was visible, piled high in the bins; children were
trooping home for dinner; a fine taint of frying onions hung in the
shining air. Everywhere in that open, half-suburban, comfortable
region was a feeling of sane, established life. An old man with a
white beard was greeted by two urchins, who ran up and kissed him
heartily as he beamed upon them. Grandpa, one supposes! Plenty of
signs indicating small apartments to rent, four and five rooms. And
down that upper slant of Broadway, as the bus bumbles past rows of
neat prosperous-seeming shops, one feels the great tug and pulling
current of life that flows down the channel, the strange energy of
the huge city lying below. The tide was momentarily stilled, but
soon to resume action. There was a magic touch apparent, like the
stillness of a palace in a fairy tale, bewitched into waiting
silence.
* * * * *
Sometimes on our way to the office in the morning we stop in front
of a jeweller's window near Maiden Lane and watch a neat little
elderly gentleman daintily setting out his employer's gauds and
trinkets for the day. We like to see him brood cheerfully over the
disposition of his small amber-coloured velvet mats, and the
arrangement of the rings, vanity cases, necklaces, and precious
stones. They twinkle in the morning light, and he leans downward in
the window, innocently displaying the widening parting on his pink
scalp. He purses his lips in a silent whistle as he cons his shining
trifles and varies his plan of display every day.
Now a modern realist (we have a painful suspicion) if he were
describing this pleasant man would deal rather roughly with him. You
know exactly how it would be done. He would be a weary, saddened,
shabby figure: his conscientious attention to the jewels in his care
would be construed as the painful and creaking routine of a victim
of commercial greed; a bitter irony would be distilled from the
contrast of his own modest station in life and the huge value of the
lucid crystals and carbons under his hands. His hands--ah, the
realist would angrily see some brutal pathos or unconscious
naughtiness in the crook of the old mottled fingers. How that
widening parting in the gray head would be gloated upon. It would be
very easy to do, and it would be (if we are any judge) wholly false.
For we have watched the little old gentleman many times, and we
have quite an affection for him. We see him as one perfectly happy
in the tidy and careful round of his tasks; and when his tenderly
brushed gray poll leans above his treasures, and he gently devises
new patterns by which the emeralds or the gold cigarette cases will
catch the slant of 9 o'clock sunlight, we seem to see one who is
enjoying his own placid conception of beauty, and who is not a
figure of pity or reproach, but one of decent honour and excellent
fidelity.
* * * * *
One of our colleagues, a lusty genial in respect of tobacco, has
told us of a magnificent way to remove an evil and noisome taste
from an old pipe that hath been smoked overlong. He says, clean the
bowl carefully (not removing the cake) and wash tenderly in fair,
warm water. Then, he says, take a teaspoonful of the finest vatted
Scotch whiskey (or, if the pipe be of exceeding size, a
tablespoonful of the same) and pour it delicately into the bowl.
Apply a lighted match, and let the liquor burn itself out. It will
do so, he avouches, with a gentle blue flame of great beauty and
serenity. The action of this burning elixir, he maintains, operates
to sizzle and purge away all impurity from the antique incrustation
in the bowl. After letting the pipe cool, and then filling it with a
favourite blend of mingled Virginia, Perique, and Latakia, our
friend asserts that he is blessed with a cool, saporous, and
enchanting fumigation which is so fragrant that even his wife has
remarked upon it in terms complimentary. Our friend says (but we
fear he draws the longbow nigh unto fracture) that the success of
this method may be tested so: if one lives, as he does, in the
upward stories of a tall apartment house, one should take the pipe
so cleansed to the window-sill, and, smoking it heartily, lean
outward over the sill. On a clear, still, blue evening, the air
being not too gusty, the vapours will disperse and eddy over the
street; and he maintains with great zeal that passersby ten tiers
below will very soon look upward from the pavement, sniffingly, to
discern the source of such admirable fumes. He has even known them,
he announces, to hail him from the street, in tones of eager
inquiry, to learn what kind of tobacco he is smoking.
All this we have duly meditated and find ourselves considerably
stirred. Now there is only one thing that stands between ourself and
such an experiment.
* * * * *
There are some who hold by the theory that on visiting a restaurant
it is well to pick out a table that is already cleared rather than
one still bearing the debris of a previous patron's meal. We offer
convincing proof to the contrary.
Rambling, vacant of mind and guileless of intent, in a certain quiet
portion of the city--and it is no use for you, O client, to ask
where, for our secrecy is firm as granite--we came upon an eating
house and turned inward. There were tables spread with snowy cloths,
immaculate; there were also tables littered with dishes. We chose
one of the latter, for a waiter was removing the plates, and we
thought that by sitting there we would get prompter service. We sat
down and our eye fell upon a large china cup that had been used by
the preceding luncher. In the bottom of that cup was a little pool
of dark dregs, a rich purple colour, most agreeable to gaze upon.
Happy possibilities were opened to our mind. Like the fabled Captain
X, we had a Big Idea. We made no outcry, nor did we show our
emotion, but when the waiter asked for our order we said, calmly:
"Sausages and some of the red wine." He was equally calm and uttered
no comment.
Soon he came back (having conferred, as we could see out of the wing
of our eye) with his boss. "What was it you ordered?" he said.
"Sausages," we replied, urbanely, "and some of the red wine."
"I don't remember having served you before," he said. "I can't give
you anything like that."
We saw that we must win his confidence and we thought rapidly. "It's
perfectly all right," we said. "Mr. Bennett" (we said, seizing the
first name that came into our head), "who comes here every day, told
me about it. You know Mr. Bennett; he works over on Forty-second
Street and comes here right along."
Again he departed, but returned anon with smiling visage. "If you're
a friend of Mr. Bennett's," he said, "it's all right. You know, we
have to be careful."
"Quite right," we said; "be wary." And we laid hand firmly on the
fine hemorrhage of the grape.
A little later in the adventure, when we were asked what dessert we
would have, we found stewed rhubarb on the menu, and very fine
stewed rhubarb it was; wherefore we say that our time was not
ill-spent and we shall keep the secret to ourself.
But we can't help feeling grateful to Mr. Bennett, whoever he is.
* * * * *
Occasionally (but not often) in the exciting plexus of our affairs
(conducted, as we try to persuade ourself, with so judicious a
jointure of caution and hilarity) we find it necessary to remain in
town for dinner. Then, and particularly in spring evenings, we are
moved and exhilarated by that spectacle that never loses its
enchantment, the golden beauty and glamour of downtown New York
after the homeward ebb has left the streets quiet and lonely. By six
o'clock in a May sunset the office is a cloister of delicious peace
and solitude. Let us suppose (oh, a case merely hypothetic) that you
have got to attend a dinner somewhere in the Forties, say at
half-past seven; and it is requisite that evening clothes should be
worn. You have brought them to the office, modestly hidden, in a
bag; and in that almost unbelievable privacy, toward half-past six,
you have an enjoyable half hour of luxurious amusement and
contemplation. The office, one repeats, is completely stripped of
tenants--save perhaps an occasional grumbling sortie by the veteran
janitor. So all its resources are open for you to use as boudoir.
Now, in an office situated like this there is, at sunset time, a
variety of scenic richness to be contemplated. From the President's
office (putting on one's hard-boiled shirt) one can look down upon
St. Paul's churchyard, lying a pool of pale blue shadow in the
rising dusk. From the City Room (inserting studs) one sees the river
sheeted with light. From the office of the Literary Editor (lacing
up one's shoes) one may study the wild pinnacle of Woolworth,
faintly superfused with a brightness of gold and pink. From the
office of one of our dramatic critics the view is negligible (being
but a hardy brick wall), but the critic, debonair creature, has a
small mirror of his own, so there one manages the ticklish business
of the cravat. And from our own kennel, where are transacted the
last touches (transfer of pipe, tobacco, matches, Long Island
railroad timetable, commutation ticket, etc., to the other pockets)
there is a heavenly purview of those tall cliffs of lower Broadway,
nobly terraced into the soft, translucent sky. In that exquisite
clarity and sharpness of New York's evening light are a loveliness
and a gallantry hardly to be endured. At seven o'clock of a May
evening it is poetry unspeakable. O magnificent city (one says),
there will come a day when others will worship and celebrate your
mystery; and when not one of them will know or care how much I loved
you. But these words, obscure and perishable, I leave you as a
testimony that I also understood.
She cannot be merely the cruel Babel they like to describe her: the
sunset light would not gild her so tenderly.
* * * * *
It was a great relief to us yesterday evening to see a man reading a
book in the subway. We have undergone so many embarrassments trying
to make out the titles of the books the ladies read, without running
afoul of the Traveller's Aid Society, that we heaved a sigh of
relief and proceeded to stalk our quarry with a light heart. Let us
explain that on a crowded train it is not such an easy task. You see
your victim at the other end of the car. First you have to buffet
your way until you get next to him. Then, just as you think you are
in a position to do a little careful snooping, he innocently shifts
the book to the other hand. This means you have got to navigate,
somehow, toward the hang-handle on the other side of him. Very well.
By the time the train gets to Bowling Green we have seen that it is
a fattish book, bound in green cloth, and the author's name begins
with FRAN. That doesn't help much. As the train roars under the
river you manage, by leanings and twistings, to see the publisher's
name--in this case, Longmans. At Borough Hall a number of passengers
get out, and the hunted reader sits down. Ten to one he will hold
the book in such a way that you cannot see the title. At Nevins
Street you get a seat beside him. At Atlantic Avenue, as he is
getting off, you propose your head over his shoulder in the jam on
the stairs and see what you are after. "Lychgate Hall," by M.E.
Francis. And in this case, success left us none the wiser.
Atlantic Avenue, by the way, always seems to us an ideal place for
the beginning of a detective story. (Speaking of that, a very jolly
article in this month's _Bookman_, called "How Old Is Sherlock
Holmes?" has revived our old ambition to own a complete set of all
the Sherlock Holmes tales, and we are going to set about scouring
the town for them). Every time we pass through the Atlantic Avenue
maelstrom, which is twelve times a week, we see, as plain as print,
the beginning of two magazine tales.
One begins as the passengers are streaming through the gate toward
the 5:27 train. There is a very beautiful damsel who always sits on
the left-hand side of the next to last car, by an open window. On
her plump and comely white hand, which holds the latest issue of a
motion picture magazine, is a sparkling diamond ring. Suddenly all
the lights in the train go out. Through the open window comes a
brutal grasp which wrenches the bauble from her finger. There are
screams, etc., etc. When the lights go on again, of course there is
no sign of the criminal. Five minutes later, Mr. Geoffrey Dartmouth,
enjoying a chocolate ice cream soda in the little soft-drink alcove
at the corner of the station, is astonished to find a gold ring, the
stone missing, at the bottom of his paper soda container.
The second story begins on the Atlantic Avenue platform of the
Lexington Avenue subway. It is 9 A.M., and a crowded train is
pulling out. Just before the train leaves a young man steps off one
of the cars, leaving behind him (though not at once noticed) a
rattan suitcase. This young man disappears in the usual fashion,
viz., by mingling with the crowd. When the train gets to the
end of the run the unclaimed suitcase is opened, and found to
contain--_continued on page_ 186.
* * * * *
Every now and then we take a stroll up Irving Place. It is changing
slowly, but it still has much of the flavour that Arthur Maurice had
in mind when he christened It "the heart of O. Henry land." Number
55, the solid, bleached brownstone house where O. Henry once lived,
is still there: it seems to be some sort of ecclesiastical
rendezvous, if one may judge by the letters C.H.A. on the screen and
the pointed carving of the doorway. Number 53, next door, always
interests us greatly: the windows give a glimpse of the most
extraordinary number of cages of canaries.
The old German theatre seems to have changed its language: the
boards speak now in Yiddish. The chiropractor and psycho-analyst has
invaded the Place, as may be seen by a sign on the eastern side. O.
Henry would surely have told a yarn about him if he had been there
fifteen years ago. There are still quite a number of the old brown
houses, with their iron railings and little patches of grass. The
chocolate factory still diffuses its pleasant candied whiff. At
noontime the street is full of the high-spirited pupils of the
Washington Irving High School. As for the Irving house itself, it is
getting a new coat of paint. The big corset works, we dare say, has
come since O. Henry's time. We had quite an adventure there once. We
can't remember how it came about, but for some reason or other we
went to that building to see the chief engineer. All we can remember
about it was that he had been at sea at one time, and we went to see
him on some maritime errand. We found that he and his family lived
in a comfortable apartment on the roof of the factory, and we
remember making our way, with a good many blushes, through several
hundred or thousand young ladies who were industriously working away
at their employer's business and who seemed to us to be giggling
more than necessary. After a good deal of hunting we found our way
to a secret stair and reached our seafaring engineer of the corset
factory in his eyrie, where (we remember) there were oil paintings
of ships on the walls and his children played about on the roof as
though on the deck of a vessel.
Irving Place is also very rich in interesting little
shops--laundries, tailors, carpenters, stationers, and a pleasant
bookshop. It is a haunt of hand-organ men. The cool tavern at the
corner of Eighteenth, where Con Delaney tended the bar in the days
when O. Henry visited it, is there still. All along the little byway
is a calm, genteel, domestic mood, in spite of the encroachments of
factories and apartment houses. There are window boxes with flowers,
and a sort of dim suffusion of conscious literary feeling. One has a
suspicion that in all those upper rooms are people writing short
stories. "Want to see a freak?" asks the young man in the bookshop
as we are looking over his counters. We do, of course, and follow
his animated gesture. Across the street comes a plump young woman,
in a very short skirt of a violent blue, with a thick mane of bobbed
hair, carrying her hat in her hand. She looks rather comfortable and
seemly to us, but something about her infuriates the bookseller. He
is quite Freudian in his indignation that any young woman should
habit herself so. We wonder what the psycho-analyst a few blocks
below would say about it. And walking a few paces further, one comes
upon the green twitter, the tended walks and pink geranium beds of
Gramercy Park.
* * * * *
There is no time when we need spiritual support so much as when we
are having our hair cut, for indeed it is the only time when we are
ever thoroughly and entirely Bored. But having found a good-natured
barber who said he would not mind our reading a book while he was
shearing, we went through with it. The ideal book to read at such a
time (we offer you this advice, brave friends) is the "Tao" of
Lao-Tse, that ancient and admirable Chinese sage. (Dwight Goddard's
translation is very agreeable.) "The Tao," as of course you know, is
generally translated The Way, i.e., the Way of Life of the
Reasonable Man.
Lao-Tse, we assert, is the ideal author to read while the barber is
at his business. He answers every inquiry that will be made, and all
you have to do is hold the book up and point to your favourite
marked passages.
When the barber says, genially, "Well, have you done your Christmas
shopping yet?" we raise the book and point to this maxim:
_Taciturnity is natural to man._
When he says, "How about a nice little shampoo this morning?" we are
prompt to indicate:
_The wise man attends to the inner significance of things and
does not concern himself with outward appearances._
When, as we sit in the chair, we see (in the mirror before us) the
lovely reflection of the beautiful manicure lady, and she arches her
eyebrows at us to convey the intimation that we ought to have our
hands attended to, old Lao-Tse is ready with the answer. We reassure
ourself with his remark:
_Though he be surrounded with sights that are magnificent, the
wise man will remain calm and unconcerned._
When the shine boy offers to burnish our shoes, we call his
attention to:
_He who closes his mouth and shuts his sense gates will be free
from trouble to the end of life._
When the barber suggests that if we were now to have a liberal
douche of bay rum sprayed over our poll it would be a glittering
consummation of his task, we show him the words:
_If one tries to improve a thing, he mars it._
And when (finally) the irritated tonsor suggests that if we don't
wait so long next time before getting our hair cut we will not be
humiliated by our condition, we exhibit Lao-Tse's aphorism:
_The wise man is inaccessible to favour or hate; he cannot be
reached by profit or injury; he cannot be honoured or
humiliated._
"It's very easy," says the barber as we pay our check; "just drop in
here once a month and we'll fix you up." And we point to:
_The wise man lives in the world, but he lives cautiously,
dealing with the world cautiously. Many things that appear easy
are full of difficulties._
* * * * *
To a lot of people who are in a mortal scurry and excitement what is
so maddening as the calm and unruffled serenity of a dignified
philosopher who gazes unperturbed upon their pangs? So did we
meditate when facing the deliberate and mild tranquillity of the
priestly person presiding over the bulletin board announcing the
arrival of trains at the Pennsylvania Station. It was in that
desperate and curious limbo known as the "exit concourse," where
baffled creatures wait to meet others arriving on trains and
maledict the architect who so planned matters that the passengers
arrive on two sides at once, so that one stands grievously in the
middle slewing his eyes to one side and another in a kind of
vertigo, attempting to con both exits. We cannot go into this matter
in full (when, indeed, will we find enough white paper and enough
energy to discuss _anything_ in full, in the way, perhaps, Henry
James would have blanketed it?), but we will explain that we were
waiting to meet someone, someone we had never seen, someone of the
opposite sex and colour, in short, that rare and desirable creature
a cook, imported from another city, and she had missed her train,
and all we knew was her first name and that she would wear a "brown
turban." After prowling distraitly round the station (and a large
station it is) and asking every likely person if her name was
Amanda, and being frowned upon and suspected as a black slaver, and
thinking we felt on our neck the heated breath and handcuffs of the
Travellers' Aid Society, we decided that Amanda must have missed her
train and concluded to wait for the next. Then it was, to return to
our thesis, that we had occasion to observe and feel in our own
person the wretched pangs of one in despair facing the gentle--shall
we say hesychastic?--peace and benevolent quietness of the man at
the bulletin board. Bombarded with questions by the impatient and
anxious crowd, with what pacific good nature he answered our doubts
and querulities. And yet how irritating was his calmness, his
deliberation, the very placidity of his mien as he surveyed his
clacking telautograph and leisurely took out his schoolroom eraser,
rubbed off an inscription, then polished the board with a cloth,
then looked for a piece of chalk and wrote in a fine curly hand some
notation about a train from Cincinnati in which we were not at all
interested. Ah, here we are at last! Train from Philadelphia!
Arriving on track Number--; no, wrong again! He only change _5
minutes late_ to _10 minutes late_. The crowd mutters and fumes. The
telautograph begins to stutter and we gaze at it feverishly. It
stops again and our dominie looks at it calmly. He taps it gently
with his finger. We wonder, is it out of order? Perhaps that train
is already coming in and he doesn't know it, and Amanda may be
wandering lost somewhere in the vast vistas of the station looking
for us. Shall we dash up to the waiting room and have another look?
But Amanda does not know the station, and there are so many places
where benches are put, and she might think one of those was the
waiting room that had been mentioned. And then there is this
Daylight Saving time mix-up. In a sudden panic we cannot figure out
whether Philadelphia time is an hour ahead of New York time or an
hour behind. We told Amanda to take the one o'clock from
Philadelphia. Well, should she arrive here at two o'clock or at
four? It being now 5:10 by our time, what are we to do? The
telautograph clicks. The priestly person slowly and gravely writes
down that the Philadelphia train is arriving on Track 6. There is a
mad rush: everyone dashes to the gate. And here, coming up the
stairs, is a coloured lady whose anxiously speculating eye must be
the one we seek. In the mutuality of our worry we recognize each
other at once. We seize her in triumph; in fact, we could have
embraced her. All our anguish is past. Amanda is ours!
[Illustration]