undeniable that there was a sprightliness, a joyant brightness, in the
flowing red scarf on Ignatius Aloysius's nautical breast, which was
nowhere paralleled in Patrick's more subdued array. And the tenth
commandment seemed very arbitrary to Patrick, the star of St. Mary's
Sunday-school, when he saw that the red silk was attracting nearly all
the attention of his female contingent. If Eva admired flaunting ties it
were well that she should say so now. There was yet time to spare
himself the agony of riding on rubber-neck-boat-birds with one whose
interest wandered from brass buttons. Darkly Patrick scowled upon his
unconscious rival, and guilefully he remarked to Eva:
"Red neckties is nice, don't you think?"
"Awful nice," Eva agreed; "but they ain't so stylish like high-stiffs.
High-stiffs und derbies is awful stylish."
Gloom and darkness vanished from the heart and countenance of the Knight
of Munster, for around his neck he wore, with suppressed agony, the
highest and stiffest of "high-stiffs" and his brows--and the back of his
neck--were encircled by his big brother's work-a-day derby. Again he saw
and described to Eva the vision which had lived in his hopes for now so
many weeks: against a background of teeming jungle, mysterious and alive
with wild beasts, an amiable boat-bird floated on the water-lake: and
upon the boat-bird, trembling but reassured, sat Eva Gonorowsky, hand in
hand with her brass-buttoned protector.
As the car sped up the Bowery the children felt that they were indeed
adventurers. The clattering Elevated trains overhead, the crowds of
brightly decked Sunday strollers, the clanging trolley cars, and the
glimpses they caught of shining green as they passed the streets leading
to the smaller squares and parks, all contributed to the holiday
upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista of
green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the
conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive
companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the
hollers from all those things what hollers." And so, in happy watching
and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street,
the first and most popular entrance to the park, before an interested
passenger came to their rescue. They tumbled off the car and pressed
towards the green only to find themselves shut out by a high stone wall,
against which they crouched and listened in vain for identifying
hollers. The silence began to frighten them, when suddenly the quiet air
was shattered by a shriek which would have done credit to the biggest of
boat-birds or of lions, but which was--the children discovered after a
moment's panic--only the prelude to an outburst of grief on the
chaperon's part. When the inarticulate stage of her sorrow was passed,
she demanded instant speech with her mamma. She would seem to have
expressed a sentiment common to the majority, for three heads in Spring
finery leaned dejectedly against the stone barrier while Nathan removed
his car-fare to contribute the remark that he was growing hungry.
Patrick was forced to seek aid in the passing crowd on Fifth Avenue, and
in response to his pleading eyes and the depression of his party, a lady
of gentle aspect and "kind looks" stopped and spoke to them.
"Indeed, yes," she reassured them; "this is Central Park."
"It has looks off the country," Eva commented.
"Because it is a piece of the country," the lady explained.
"Then we dassent to go, the while we ain't none of us got no sickness,"
cried Eva forlornly. "We're all, all healthy, und the country is for
sick childrens."
"I am glad you are well," said the lady kindly; "but you may certainly
play in the park. It is meant for all little children. The gate is near.
Just walk on near this wall until you come to it."
It was only a few blocks, and they were soon in the land of their
hearts' desire, where were waving trees and flowering shrubs and
smoothly sloping lawns, and, framed in all these wonders, a beautiful
little water-lake all dotted and brightened by fleets of tiny boats. The
pilgrims from the East Side stood for a moment at gaze and then bore
down upon the jewel, straight over grass and border, which is a course
not lightly to be followed within park precincts and in view of park
policemen. The ensuing reprimand dashed their spirits not at all and
they were soon assembled close to the margin of the lake, where they got
entangled in guiding strings and drew to shore many a craft, to the
disgust of many a small owner. Becky Zalmonowsky stood so closely over
the lake that she shed the chatelaine bag into its shallow depths and
did irreparable damage to her gala costume in her attempts to "dibble"
for her property. It was at last recovered, no wetter than the toilette
it was intended to adorn, and the cousins Gonorowsky had much difficulty
in balking Becky's determination to remove her gown and dry it then and
there.
Then Ignatius Aloysius, the exacting, remembered garrulously that he had
as yet seen nothing of the rubber-neck-boat-birds and suggested that
they were even now graciously "hollering like an'thing" in some remote
fastness of the park. So Patrick gave commands and the march was resumed
with bliss now beaming on all the faces so lately clouded. Every turn of
the endless walks brought new wonders to these little ones who were
gazing for the first time upon the great world of growing things of
which Miss Bailey had so often told them. The policeman's warning had
been explicit and they followed decorously in the paths and picked none
of the flowers which as Eva had heard of old, were sticking right up out
of the ground. But other flowers there were dangling high or low on tree
or shrub, while here and there across the grass a bird came hopping or a
squirrel ran. But the pilgrims never swerved. Full well they knew that
these delights were not for such as they.
It was, therefore, with surprise and concern that they at last
debouched upon a wide green space where a flag waved at the top of a
towering pole; for, behold, the grass was covered thick with children,
with here and there a beneficent policeman looking serenely on.
"Dast _we_ walk on it?" cried Morris. "Oh, Patrick, dast we?"
"Ask the cop," Nathan suggested. It was his first speech for an hour,
for Becky's misadventure with the chatelaine bag and the water-lake had
made him more than ever sure that his own method of safe-keeping was the
best.
"Ask him yerself," retorted Patrick. He had quite intended to accost a
large policeman, who would of course recognize and revere the buttons of
Mr. Brennan _pere_, but a commander cannot well accept the advice of his
subordinates. But Nathan was once more beyond the power of speech, and
it was Morris Mogilewsky who asked for and obtained permission to walk
on God's green earth. With little spurts of running and tentative jumps
to test its spring, they crossed Peacock Lawn to the grateful shade of
the trees at its further edge and there disposed themselves upon the
ground and ate their luncheon. Nathan Spiderwitz waited until Sadie had
finished and then entrusted the five gleaming pennies to her care while
he wildly bolted an appetizing combination of dark brown bread and
uncooked eel.
Becky reposed flat upon the chatelaine bag and waved her still damp
shoes exultantly. Eva lay, face downward beside her, and peered
wonderingly deep into the roots of things.
"Don't it smells nice!" she gloated. "Don't it looks nice! My, ain't we
havin' the party-time!"
"Don't mention it," said Patrick, in careful imitation of his mother's
hostess manner. "I'm pleased to see you, I'm sure."
"The Central Park is awful pretty," Sadie soliloquized as she lay on her
back and watched the waving branches and blue sky far above. "Awful
pretty! I likes we should live here all the time."
"Well," began Ignatius Aloysius Diamantstein, in slight disparagement of
his rival's powers as a cicerone; "well, I ain't seen no lions, nor no
rubber-neck-boat-birds. Und we ain't had no rides on nothings. Und I
ain't heard no hollers neither."
As if in answer to this criticism there arose, upon the road beyond the
trees, a snorting, panting noise, growing momentarily louder and
culminating, just as East Side nerves were strained to breaking point,
in a long hoarse and terrifying yell. There was a flash of red, a cloud
of dust, three other toots of agony, and the thing was gone. Gone, too,
were the explorers and gone their peaceful rest. To a distant end of the
field they flew, led by the panic-stricken chaperon, and followed by Eva
and Patrick, hand in hand, he making show of bravery he was far from
feeling, and she frankly terrified. In a secluded corner, near the
restaurant, the chaperon was run to earth by her breathless charges:
"I seen the lion," she panted over and over. "I seen the fierce, big red
lion, und I don't know where is my mamma."
Patrick saw that one of the attractions had failed to attract, so he
tried another.
"Le's go an' see the cows," he proposed. "Don't you know the po'try
piece Miss Bailey learned us about cows?"
Again the emotional chaperon interrupted. "I'm loving much mit Miss
Bailey, too," she wailed. "Und I don't know where is she neither." But
the pride of learning upheld the others and they chanted in sing-song
chorus, swaying rhythmically the while from leg to leg:
"The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart Robert Louis Stevenson."
Becky's tears ceased. "Be there cows in the Central Park?" she
demanded.
"Sure," said Patrick.
"Und what kind from cream will he give us? Ice cream?"
"Sure," said Patrick again.
"Let's go," cried the emotional chaperon. A passing stranger turned the
band in the general direction of the menagerie and the reality of the
cow brought the whole "memory gem" into strange and undreamed reality.
Gaily they set out through new and always beautiful ways; through
tunnels where feet and voices rang with ghostly boomings most pleasant
to the ear; over bridges whence they saw--in partial proof of Isaac
Borrachsohn's veracity--"mans und ladies ridin'." Of a surety they rode
nothing more exciting than horses, but that was, to East Side eyes, an
unaccustomed sight, and Eva opined that it was owing, probably, to the
shortness of their watch that they saw no lions and tigers similarly
amiable. The cows, too, seemed far to seek, but the trees and grass and
flowers were everywhere. Through long stretches of "for sure country"
they picked their way, until they came, hot but happy, to a green and
shady summerhouse on a hill. There they halted to rest, and there
Ignatius Aloysius, with questionable delicacy, began to insist once more
upon the full measure of his bond.
"We ain't seen the rubber-neck-boat-birds," he complained. "Und we ain't
had no rides on nothings."
"You don't know what is polite," cried Eva, greatly shocked at this
carping spirit in the presence of a hard-worked host. "You could to
think shame over how you says somethings like that on a party."
"This ain't no party," Ignatius Aloysius retorted. "It's a 'scursion. To
a party somebody _gives_ you what you should eat; to a 'scursion you
_brings_ it. Und anyway, we ain't had no rides."
"But we heard a holler," the guest of honor reminded him. "We heard a
fierce, big holler from a lion. I don't know do I need a ride on
something what hollers. I could to have a fraid maybe."
"Ye wouldn't be afraid on the boats when I hold yer hand, would ye?"
Patrick anxiously inquired, and Eva shyly admitted that, thus supported,
she might not be dismayed. To work off the pride and joy caused by this
avowal, Patrick mounted the broad seat extending all around the
summerhouse and began to walk clatteringly upon it. The other pilgrims
followed suit and the whole party stamped and danced with infinite
enjoyment. Suddenly the leader halted with a loud cry of triumph and
pointed grandly out through one of the wistaria-hung openings. Not De
Soto on the banks of the Mississippi nor Balboa above the Pacific could
have felt more victorious than Patrick did as he announced:
"There's the water-lake!"
His followers closed in upon him so impetuously that he was borne down
under their charge and fell ignominiously out on the grass. But he was
hardly missed, he had served his purpose. For there, beyond the rocks
and lawns and red japonicas, lay the blue and shining water-lake in its
confining banks of green. And upon its softly quivering surface floated
the rubber-neck-boat-birds, white and sweetly silent instead of red and
screaming--and the superlative length and arched beauty of their necks
surpassed the wildest of Ikey Borrachsohn's descriptions. And relying
upon the strength and politeness of these wondrous birds there were
indeed "mans und ladies und boys und little girls" embarking,
disembarking, and placidly weaving in and out and round about through
scenes of hidden but undoubted beauty.
Over rocks and grass the army charged towards bliss unutterable,
strewing their path with overturned and howling babies of prosperity
who, clumsy from many nurses and much pampering, failed to make way.
Past all barriers, accidental or official, they pressed, nor halted to
draw rein or breath until they were established, beatified, upon the
waiting swan-boat.
Three minutes later they were standing outside the railings of the
landing and regarding, through welling tears, the placid lake, the sunny
slopes of grass and tree, the brilliant sky and the gleaming
rubber-neck-boat-bird which, as Ikey described, "made go its legs," but
only, as he had omitted to mention, for money. So there they stood,
seven sorrowful little figures engulfed in the rayless despair of
childhood and the bitterness of poverty. For these were the children of
the poor, and full well they knew that money was not to be diverted from
its mission: that car-fare could not be squandered on bliss.
Becky's woe was so strong and loud that the bitter wailings of the
others served merely as its background. But Patrick cared not at all for
the general despair. His remorseful eyes never strayed from the bowed
figure of Eva Gonorowsky, for whose pleasure and honor he had striven so
long and vainly. Slowly she conquered her sobs, slowly she raised her
daisy-decked head, deliberately she blew her small pink nose, softly she
approached her conquered knight, gently and all untruthfully she
faltered, with yearning eyes on the majestic swans:
"Don't you have no sad feelings, Patrick. I ain't got none. Ain't I told
you from long, how I don't need no rubber-neck-boat-bird rides? I don't
need 'em! I don't need 'em! I"--with a sob of passionate longing--"I'm
got all times a awful scare over 'em. Let's go home, Patrick. Becky
needs she should see her mamma, und I guess I needs my mamma too."
MYRA KELLY
Is it necessary to say that she was Irish? The humor, the sympathy, the
quick understanding, the tenderness, that play through all her stories
are the birthright of the children of Erin. Myra Kelly was born in
Dublin, Ireland. Her father was Dr. John E. Kelly, a well-known surgeon.
When Myra was little more than a baby, the family came to New York City.
Here she was educated at the Horace Mann High School, and afterwards at
Teachers College, a department of Columbia University, New York. She
graduated from Teachers College in 1899. Her first school was in the
primary department of Public School 147, on East Broadway, New York,
where she taught from 1899 to 1901. Here she met all the "little
aliens," the Morris and Isidore, Yetta and Eva of her stories, and won
her way into their hearts. To her friends she would sometimes tell of
these children, with their odd ideas of life and their dialect. "Why
don't you write these stories down?" they asked her, and at last she sat
down and wrote her first story, "A Christmas Present for a Lady." She
had no knowledge of editorial methods, so she made four copies of the
story and sent them to four different magazines. Two of them returned
the story, and two of them accepted it, much to her embarrassment. The
two acceptances came from _McClure's Magazine_ and _The Century_. As
_McClure's_ replied first she gave the story to them, and most of her
other stories were first published in that magazine.
When they appeared in book form, they were welcomed by readers all over
the country. Even the President of the United States wrote to express
his thanks to her, in the following letter:
Oyster Bay, N. Y.
July, 26, 1905.
My dear Miss Kelly:--
Mrs. Roosevelt and I and most of the children know your very
amusing and very pathetic accounts of East Side school children
almost by heart, and I really think you must let me write and thank
you for them. When I was Police Commissioner I quite often went to
the Houston Street public school, and was immensely impressed by
what I saw there. I thought there were a good many Miss Baileys
there, and the work they were doing among their scholars (who were
largely of Russian-Jewish parentage like the children you write of)
was very much like what your Miss Bailey has done.
Very sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
After two years of school room work, Miss Kelly's health broke down, and
she retired from teaching, although she served as critic teacher in the
Speyer School, Teachers College, for a year longer. One of the persons
who had read her books with delight was Allen Macnaughton. Soon after he
met Miss Kelly, and in 1905 they were married. They lived for a time at
Oldchester Village, New Jersey, in the Orange mountains, in a colony of
literary people which her husband was interested in establishing. After
several years of very successful literary work, she developed
tuberculosis. She went to Torquay, England, in search of health, and
died there March 31, 1910.
Her works include the following titles: _Little Citizens_; _The Isle of
Dreams_; _Wards of Liberty_; _Rosnah_; _the Golden Season_; _Little
Aliens_; _New Faces_. One of the leading magazines speaks of her as the
creator of a new dialect.
HERO WORSHIP
_Most of us are hero-worshippers at some time of our lives. The boy
finds his hero in the baseball player or athlete, the girl in the
matinee idol, or the "movie" star. These objects of worship are not
always worthy of the adoration they inspire, but this does not matter
greatly, since their worshippers seldom find it out. There is something
fine in absolute loyalty to an ideal, even if the ideal is far from
reality. "The Tenor" is the story of a famous singer and two of his
devoted admirers_.
THE TENOR[1]
BY
H. C. BUNNER
It was a dim, quiet room in an old-fashioned New York house, with
windows opening upon a garden that was trim and attractive, even in its
wintry days--for the rose-bushes were all bundled up in straw ulsters.
The room was ample, yet it had a cosy air. Its dark hangings suggested
comfort and luxury, with no hint of gloom. A hundred pretty trifles told
that it was a young girl's room: in the deep alcove nestled her dainty
white bed, draped with creamy lace and ribbons.
"I was _so_ afraid that I'd be late!"
The door opened, and two pretty girls came in, one in hat and furs, the
other in a modest house dress. The girl in the furs, who had been afraid
that she would be late, was fair, with a bright color in her cheeks, and
an eager, intent look in her clear brown eyes. The other girl was
dark-eyed and dark-haired, dreamy, with a soft, warm dusky color in her
face. They were two very pretty girls indeed--or, rather, two girls
about to be very pretty, for neither one was eighteen years old.
The dark girl glanced at a little porcelain clock.
"You are in time, dear," she said, and helped her companion to take off
her wraps.
Then the two girls crossed the room, and with a caressing and almost a
reverent touch, the dark girl opened the doors of a little carven
cabinet that hung upon the wall, above a small table covered with a
delicate white cloth. In its depths, framed in a mat of odorous double
violets, stood the photograph of the face of a handsome man of forty--a
face crowned with clustering black locks, from beneath which a pair of
large, mournful eyes looked out with something like religious fervor in
their rapt gaze. It was the face of a foreigner.
"O Esther!" cried the other girl, "how beautifully you have dressed him
to-day!"
"I wanted to get more," Esther said; "but I've spent almost all my
allowance--and violets do cost so shockingly. Come, now--" with another
glance at the clock--"don't let's lose any more time, Louise dear."
She brought a couple of tiny candles in Sevres candlesticks, and two
little silver saucers, in which she lit fragrant pastilles. As the pale
gray smoke arose, floating in faint wreaths and spirals before the
enshrined photograph, Louise sat down and gazed intently upon the little
altar. Esther went to her piano and watched the clock. It struck two.
Her hands fell softly on the keys, and, studying a printed program in
front of her, she began to play an overture. After the overture she
played one or two pieces of the regular concert stock. Then she paused.
"I can't play the Tschaikowski piece."
"Never mind," said the other. "Let us wait for him in silence."
The hands of the clock pointed to 2:29. Each girl drew a quick breath,
and then the one at the piano began to sing softly, almost inaudibly,
"les Rameaux" in a transcription for tenor of Faure's great song. When
it was ended, she played and sang the _encore_. Then, with her fingers
touching the keys so softly that they awakened only an echo-like sound,
she ran over the numbers that intervened between the first tenor solo
and the second. Then she sang again, as softly as before.
The fair-haired girl sat by the little table, gazing intently on the
picture. Her great eyes seemed to devour it, and yet there was something
absent-minded, speculative, in her steady look. She did not speak until
Esther played the last number on the program.
"He had three encores for that last Saturday," she said, and Esther
played the three encores.
Then they closed the piano and the little cabinet, and exchanged an
innocent girlish kiss, and Louise went out, and found her father's coupe
waiting for her, and was driven away to her great, gloomy, brown-stone
home near Central Park.
Louise Laura Latimer and Esther Van Guilder were the only children of
two families which, though they were possessed of the three "Rs" which
are all and more than are needed to insure admission to New York
society--Riches, Respectability and Religion--yet were not in Society;
or, at least, in the society that calls itself Society. This was not
because Society was not willing to have them. It was because they
thought the world too worldly. Perhaps this was one reason--although the
social horizon of the two families had expanded somewhat as the girls
grew up--why Louise and Esther, who had been playmates from their
nursery days, and had grown up to be two uncommonly sentimental,
fanciful, enthusiastically morbid girls, were to be found spending a
bright Winter afternoon holding a ceremonial service of worship before
the photograph of a fashionable French tenor.
It happened to be a French tenor whom they were worshiping. It might as
well have been anybody or any thing else. They were both at that period
of girlish growth when the young female bosom is torn by a hysterical
craving to worship something--any thing. They had been studying music
and they had selected the tenor who was the sensation of the hour in New
York for their idol. They had heard him only on the concert stage; they
were never likely to see him nearer. But it was a mere matter of chance
that the idol was not a Boston Transcendentalist, a Popular Preacher, a
Faith-Cure Healer, or a ringleted old maid with advanced ideas of
Woman's Mission. The ceremonies might have been different in form: the
worship would have been the same.
M. Hyppolite Remy was certainly the musical hero of the hour. When his
advance notices first appeared, the New York critics, who are a
singularly unconfiding, incredulous lot, were inclined to discount his
European reputation.
When they learned that M. Remy was not only a great artist, but a man
whose character was "wholly free from that deplorable laxity which is so
often a blot on the proud escutcheon of his noble profession;" that he
had married an American lady; that he had "embraced the Protestant
religion"--no sect was specified, possibly to avoid jealousy--and that
his health was delicate, they were moved to suspect that he might have
to ask that allowances be made for his singing. But when he arrived, his
triumph was complete. He was as handsome as his picture, if he _was_ a
trifle short, a shade too stout.