On Sunday morning New York puts on its holiday dress. The stores are
closed, the streets have a deserted aspect, for the crowds of vehicles,
animals and human beings that fill them on other days are absent. There
are no signs of trade anywhere except in the Bowery and Chatham street.
The city has an appearance of cleanliness and quietness pleasant to
behold. The wharves are hushed and still, and the river and bay lie calm
and bright in the light of the Sabbath sun. One misses the stages from
Broadway, and a stranger at once credits the coachmen with a greater
regard for the day than their brothers of the street cars. The fact is,
however, that Jehu of the stagecoach rests on the Sabbath because his
business would be unprofitable on that day. The people who patronize him
in the week have no use for him on Sunday. The horse-cars make their
trips as in the week. They are a necessity in so large a city. The
distances one is compelled to pass over here, even on Sunday, are too
great to be traversed on foot.
Towards ten o'clock the streets begin to fill up with churchgoers. The
cars are crowded, and handsome carriages dash by conveying their owners
to their places of worship. The uptown churches are the most
fashionable, and are the best attended, but all the sacred edifices are
well filled on Sunday morning. New York compromises with its conscience
by a scrupulous attendance upon morning worship, and reserves the rest of
the day for its own convenience. The up-town churches all strive to get
in, or as near as possible to, the Fifth avenue. One reason for this is,
doubtless, the desire that all well-to-do New Yorkers have to participate
in the after-church promenade. The churches close their services near
about the same hour, and then each pours its throng of fashionably
dressed people into the avenue. The congregations of distant churches
all find their way to the avenue, and for about an hour after church the
splendid street presents a very attractive spectacle. The toilettes of
the ladies show well here, and it is a pleasant place to meet one's
acquaintances.
The majority of New Yorkers dine at one o'clock on Sunday, the object
being to allow the servants the afternoon for themselves. After dinner
your New Yorker, male or female, thinks of enjoyment. If the weather is
fair the fashionables promenade the Fifth and Madison avenues, or drive
in the park. The working classes fill the street-cars, and throng the
Central Park. In the summer whole families of laboring people go to the
park early in the morning, taking a lunch with them, and there spend the
entire day. In the skating season the lakes are thronged with skaters.
The church bells ring out mournfully towards three o'clock, but few
persons answer the call. The afternoon congregations are wofully thin.
In the mild season, the adjacent rivers and the harbor are thronged with
pleasure boats filled with excursionists, and the various horse and steam
railway lines leading from the city to the sea-shore are well patronized.
Broadway wears a silent and deserted aspect all day long, but towards
sunset the Bowery brightens up wonderfully, and after nightfall the
street is ablaze with a thousand gaslights. The low class theatres and
places of amusement in that thoroughfare are opened towards dark, and
then vice reigns triumphant in the Bowery. The Bowery beer-gardens do a
good business. The most of them are provided with orchestras or huge
orchestrions, and these play music from the ritual of the Roman Catholic
Church.
Until very recently the bar-rooms were closed from midnight on Saturday
until midnight on Sunday, and during that period the sale of intoxicating
liquors was prohibited. Now all this is changed. The bar-rooms do a
good business on Sunday, and especially on Sunday night. The Monday
morning papers tell a fearful tale of crimes committed on the holy day.
Assaults, fights, murders, robberies, and minor offences are reported in
considerable numbers. Drunkenness is very common, and the Monday Police
Courts have plenty of work to do.
At night the churches are better attended than in the afternoon, but not
as well as in the morning.
Sunday concerts, given at first-class places of amusement, are now quite
common. The music consists of masses, and other sacred airs, varied with
selections from popular operas. The performers are famous throughout the
country for their musical skill, and the audiences are large and
fashionable. No one seems to think it sinful thus to desecrate the
Lord's Day; and it must be confessed that these concerts are the least
objectionable Sunday amusements known to our people.
It must not be supposed that the dissipation of which we have spoken is
confined exclusively to the rougher class. Old and young men of
respectable position participate in it as well. Some are never called on
to answer for it, others get into trouble with the police authorities.
One reason for this dissipation is plain. People are so much engrossed
in the pursuit of wealth that they really have no leisure time in the
week. They must take Sunday for relaxation and recreation, and they
grudge the few hours in the morning that decency requires them to pass in
church.