BALTIMORE street is the Broadway of the Monumental City. It also
suggests Chestnut street in Philadelphia, more particularly in the
matter of signboards. A city of stores and offices, it proclaims its
various businesses in signs of every conceivable shape. They swing
from ornamental brackets over door-ways, and hang right across the
sidewalk. They are of many shapes, but as to color are invariably
black and gold. The inscriptions upon them are characteristic; some
of them are strange to the non-travelled Englishmen. I note a few of
them: “Gent’s Neck Wear,” “Fine Jewelry,” “Men’s Furnishing.” This
latter is the general sign of American hosiers and shirt-makers.
“Diamonds,” “Fine Shoes,” “Dry Goods,” “Imported Goods,” “Books,”
“Cheap Railroad Tickets,” “Cheap Tickets for Chicago,” “Saddlery,”
“Adams’ Express.” To these are added the names of the dealers. The
“Cheap Railroad Tickets” is a branch of the speculative operations in
theatrical admissions. “Adams’ Express” is a familiar sign everywhere.
It represents the great and universal system of baggage distribution.
Adams and other firms will take charge of a traveller’s luggage, or
any other kind of goods, and “check” it through to any part of the
United States, possibly to any corner of the world. To-day, in honor
of Christmas, the ordinary signs have been supplemented by such
attractive proclamations as “Holiday Presents,” “Toys for the Season,”
“For Christmas and New Year’s,” “Home-made Christmas Puddings.” At
the doors of tobacco stores the figure of a North American Indian,
in complete war-paint, offers you a bundle of the finest cigars, and
his tomahawk is poised for action in case you decline his invitation
to “Try them.” In New York this colored commercial statuary is varied
with an occasional “Punch,” and by many buxom ballet-girls in short
dresses and chignons. But the taste of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston,
and Chicago runs in the direction of the Indian. Nowhere do you see
the blackamoor, once popular at the door of English tobacconists; nor,
except at Brooklyn, have I seen on the American side of the Atlantic
the kilted Highlander, with his “mull” as a sign for the information
or temptation of snuff-takers. At Chicago there is a Scotch sculptor,
who has ornamented the exterior of more than one store with life-size
realizations of the heroes of some of Burns’s most popular poems.
Several of these are represented as snuff-takers; but the collection
includes a few really admirable studies. The city architect, by the
way, at Chicago, is a Scotchman, and he is responsible for the fine
designs of the chief public buildings. Baltimore is not singular in its
habit of pictorial signs, the origin of which may possibly be traced to
old English custom. The saddler exhibits the gilded head of a horse;
the watchmaker hangs out a clock; the glover a hand; the dry-goods
stores display bright rugs and carpets. Now and then the cabinet-makers
show their goods on the sidewalks. Many stores erect handsome outside
glass-case stands for exhibiting knick-knacks at their door-ways. The
fruit shops open their windows on the street. Itinerant dealers in
oranges, bananas, and grapes rig up tent-like houses of business under
the windows of established traders (for which heavy rents are paid,
notably “down-town” in New York), and all this gives a pleasant variety
of life and color to the street. One is everywhere reminded of the
excellence of English Manufactures, “English Tanned Gloves,” “English
Storm-coats,” “English Cloth”; and many other commercial compliments
are paid to “Imported Goods.”
It is three o’clock in the day, and while Irving, his lieutenant,
Loveday, and his able subalterns, Arnot and Allen, are getting
the stage of the Academy of Music into some kind of shape for the
Christmas-eve performance, I plod through the rain and slush to make
my first acquaintance with this chief street of Baltimore. It is
curiously picturesque, in spite of the weather and the dirty snow,
which is melting and freezing almost simultaneously. Here and there
the sidewalks are slabs of ice; here and there they are sloppy
snow-drifts. But a surging crowd covers every foot of them. The roadway
presents a continual block of tram-cars, buggies, wagons, carts, and
carriages. Women leaving and getting upon the cars plunge in and out
of snow-heaps and watery gutters. It is a very democratic institution,
the American car. The people crowd it as they please. There is no limit
to its capacity. It may carry as many persons as can get into it or
stand upon its platforms. This afternoon the cars are human hives on
wheels. One notices that the crowd chiefly consists of women. They fill
the sidewalks. All of them are shopping. They are all talking, and all
at the same time. This is a peculiarity of our charming cousins. Their
costume on this wet afternoon is a very sensible one. It might almost
be called a uniform. A black water-proof cloak and hood is all the
costume you can see. Often it is a pretty, bright face that the hood
encases. Now and then some woman, a trifle more vain or reckless than
her sisters, wears a hat and feathers with her water-proof cloak. This
incongruous arrangement, however, helps to give color to the crowd,—a
desirable point on so dull, grey, and cloudy a day as this. The men who
move about here are mostly smoking. They do not appear to have any hand
in the shopping. The ladies are evidently doing all that, and they are
very much in earnest. Not one of them but deigns to carry a parcel. The
children are evidently coming in for precious gifts. In one shop window
“Father Christmas” himself is busy showing his toys to a numerous
audience. He is made up with white flowing locks and beard, and ruddy,
though aged, features. His dress is an ermine tippet, scarlet frock
trimmed with gold, and top-boots of patent leather,—quite the nursery
ideal of his genial majesty. Another store has filled its window with a
skating scene. A company of gay dolls are sliding for their very lives.
They go through their lively work without any change of expression, and
their gyrations never alter; but the spectators change, and the store
within is full of bustle. I look around for the poor people we would
see in a London group of this character. I seek in vain for the Smikes
and Twists who would be feasting their sunken eyes on such a free show
in London. I try to find the slipshod women, with infants huddled to
their cold bosoms. They are not here. A boy of twelve, with a cigarette
in his hand, asks me for a light. Another “guesses” his “papa” will buy
“the whole concern” for him if he wants it. No poor people. The Irish
are a small community here. How one’s mind goes wandering to the West
End of London and to the Strand and Fleet street, to the Seven Dials
and to Ratcliffe highway, where (it is five hours later there than
here) Christmas eve is being celebrated with such contrasts of fortune
and variations of wealth and poverty, of joy and sorrow, as make the
heart ache to think upon! Not a single poor-looking person do I note
in this long, busy street of Baltimore. Nobody begs from me; and the
hawkers on the sidewalk offer me their wares with an air of almost
aggressive independence. “Japanese silk, ten cents,” one cries, with
a bundle of small handkerchiefs in his hand. “The magic mouse,” says
another, vending a mechanical toy. “Now, then, one dime a packet,” is
the proposal of a third, offering material for decorating Christmas
trees. “Try ‘em!” almost commands a fourth, as I pause opposite his
stand of peanuts. If you buy nobody thanks you, and if you thank
the vendor he is surprised, and will probably stammer out, “You’re
welcome.” Yet “this is the Cavalier city,” a friend reminds me, “and
aristocratic to the core.”
The fruit-stores are bright with tropical fruits; but not with the
roses, carnations, pinks, and smilax creeper, so plentiful in New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia. I pause to scan the faces of the crowd. It is
a popular fiction in England that the women of the South are brunettes.
The truth is, the further South you go, the fairer the women, and the
more delicate their complexions. On Baltimore street I observe quite
a number of ladies with red hair. Many of them are blondes, who might
have been natives of Lincolnshire. They are all pretty; some are
beautiful; and their charms certainly obtained no fictitious aid from
their dress or surroundings. Water-proof cloaks and a muddy street
could not help them. Baltimoreans may say I should look for beauty in
North Charles street, or Mount Vernon place, if I expect to see it
_en promenade_. But I am not looking for it. I find it in the great,
busy, Christmas crowd, tramping through the snow, and buying toys and
candies for the children. The “carriage ladies” wear furs, and those
everlasting diamond ear-rings, without which expensive ornament few
American women appear to consider themselves “real ladies.” New York
and Boston modify the fashion in this respect, though you may still see
women sitting down to breakfast at hotel restaurants in silks, satins,
and diamonds.