entering the comparatively new church, where marble and stained glass
are harmoniously combined. The outer walls are pure white marble, the
interior a soothing sanctuary of many colors. Underfoot is a rich brown
marble from the shores of Lake Champlain. The wainscoting is of green
rep and red Numidian marble. Eight immense pillars supporting the dome
are in two shades of yellow Etrurian marble, delicate and unmarked.
The altar is of the same shade, but exquisitely veined with a darker
coloring. Both chancel and choir floors are richly mosaiced, the
chancel steps being of the same delightful coloring as the piers. To
the left of the chancel is the pulpit, an octagonal structure of Alps
green, with bands and cornices of Etrurian and Sienna marble supported
on eight columns of alternate Alps green and red Numidian, finished
with a brass railing and Etrurian marble steps. The magnificent organ,
with its two thousand three hundred or more pipes, is entirely worthy
its charming setting. Over all falls the rich, warm-tinted light from
numerous memorial windows, each a gem in design and coloring. On one of
these the worshiper is admonished to “Be of good cheer, for there shall
be no loss of life among ye, but only of the ship.”
Admonish as one may, however, the majority of the old seamen are
but little moved by such graven beauty; being hardened in simple,
unorthodox ways. Not a few of them are given to swearing loudly,
drinking frequently, snoring heavily on Sundays and otherwise
disporting themselves in droll and unsanctified ways. To many of them
this institution appears to be even a wasteful affair, intended more
to irritate than to aid them. Not a few of them, as you may guess,
resent routine, duty, and the very necessary officials, and each other.
Although they possess comfortable and even superior living apartments,
wholesome and abundant food, good clothing, abundant clean linen, a
library of eight thousand volumes, newspapers, periodicals, time and
opportunity for the pursuit of any fad or fancy, and no restrictions at
which a reasonable man could demur, still they are not entirely happy.
Life itself is passing, and that is the great sorrow.
And so occasionally there is to be found in that portion of the
basement room from which the light is debarred, looking out from behind
an iron door upon a company of blind mariners who occupy this section,
working and telling stories, a mariner or two in jail. And if you
venture to inquire, his mates will volunteer the information that he
is neither ill nor demented but troubled with that complaint which is
common to landsmen and sailors, “pure cussedness.” In some the symptom
of this, I am told, will take the form of an unconquerable desire to
go from room to room in the early morning and pull aged and irate
mariners from their comfortable beds. In others it has broken out as a
spell of silence, no word for any one, old or young, official or fellow
resident. In another drunkenness is the refuge, a protracted spell,
resulting in dismissal, with an occasional reinstatement. Another will
fight with his roommate or his neighbor, sometimes drawing a chalk line
between the two halves of a double room and defying the other to cross
it at peril of his life. There have been many public quarrels and
fights. Yet, all things considered, and age and temperament being taken
into consideration, they do well enough. And not a few have sufficient
acumen and industry to enter upon profitable employments. For there are
many visitors, to whom useful or ornamental things can be sold. And a
few of these salts will even buy from or trade with each other.
In consequence one meets with an odd type of merchant here and there.
There is one old seaman, for instance, a relic of Federal service in
“’61,” whose chamber is ornamented to the degree of confusion with
things nautical, most of which are for sale. To enter upon him one must
pass through a whole fleet of small craft, barks, brigs, schooners and
sloops--the result of his jacknife leisure--arranged upon chests of
drawers. Still another, at the time I visited the place, delighted in
painting marine views on shells, and a third was fair at photography,
having acquired his skill after arriving at the Harbor. He photographed
and sold pictures of other inmates and some local scenes. Many can and
do weave rugs and mats, others cane chairs or hammocks or fish-nets.
Still others have a turn for executing small ornaments which they
produce in great numbers and sell for their own profit. No one is
compelled to work, and the result is that nearly all desire to. The
perversity of human nature expresses itself there. In the long, light
basement corridors, where it is warm and cozy, there are to be found
hundreds of old sailors, all hard at work defying monotony with rapid
and skilful finger movements.
All of these are not friendly, however, and many are vastly
argumentative. No subject is too small nor any too large for their
discussion in this sunlit forum. Especially are they inclined to
belittle each other’s experiences when comparing them with their own
important past, and so many a word is passed in wrath.
“I hain’t a-goin’ to hear sich rubbish,” remarked one seaman, who had
taken offense at another’s detailed account of his terrible experience
in some sea fight of the Civil War. “Sich things ain’t a-happenin’ to
common seamen.”
“Yuh don’t need to, yuh know,” sarcastically replied the other. “This
here’s a free country, I guess, ’cept for criminals,--and they hain’t
all locked up, as they should be.”
“So I thought when I first seed yuh,” came the sneering reply, and then
followed a hoarse chuckle which was only silenced by the stamping away
of an irate salt with cheeks puffed out in rage.
Nearly all are irritatingly independent, resenting the least suggestion
of superiority with stubborn sarcasm or indifference. Thus one, who
owned his own ship once and had carefully refrained from whistling in
deference to the superstitious line: “If you whistle aloud you’ll call
up a blow; if noisy you’ll bring on a calm,” met another strolling
about the grounds exuberantly indulging a long-restrained propensity to
“pipe the merry lay.”
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t whistle aboard my ship,” said he insinuatingly.
“Yeh! But I ain’t aboard yer ship, thankee--I’m on my own deck.” And
“Haul in the bow lines; Jenny, you’re my darling!” triumphantly swelled
out on the evening breeze.
Down on the unplaned planks of the Snug Harbor wharf a score of old
salts, regardless of slivers, sit the livelong day and watch the
white-winged craft passing up and down. Being “square-riggers”--that
is, having served all their lives aboard ship, barks and brigs--they
look with silent contempt upon the fore and aft vessels of the harbor
as they sail by. Presently comes, “Hello, Jim! Goin’ to launch her?”
from one who is contemplating with a quizzical eye a little weazened
old man who comes clambering down the side of the dock with a miniature
ship under his arm and a broad smile of satisfaction on his face.
“Ay, that’s it,” answers the newcomer. He has spent many weeks in
building the little ship and now will be decided whether or not his
skill has been wasted on a bad model. At once the critical faculty of
the tars on the dock is engaged, and he of the boat becomes the subject
of a brisk discussion. Sapient admonitions, along with long squirts of
tobacco juice, are vouchsafed, the latter most accurately aimed at some
neighboring target. Sarcasm is not wanting, the ability of the builder
as well as the merit of his craft coming in for comment. The launching
of such a craft has even engendered bitter hatreds and not a few fights.
We will say, however, that the craft is successfully launched and with
sails full spread runs proudly before a light wind. In such a case
invariably all the old sailors will look on with a keen squint and a
certain tremor of satisfaction at seeing her behave so gallantly. Such
being the case, the builder is at liberty to make a few sententious
remarks anent the art of shipbuilding--not otherwise. And he may then
retire after a time, proud in his knowledge and his very certain
triumph over those who would have scoffed had they had the slightest
opportunity.
I troubled to ask a number of these worthies from time to time whether,
assuming they were young again, they would choose a sea-faring life.
“Indeed I would, my boy,” one answered me one morning. And another:
“Not I. If I were to sail four thousand times I’d be as seasick the
last trip as on the first day out. Every blessed trip I made for the
first five years I nearly died of seasickness.”
“Why did you keep it up, then?” I asked.
“Well, when I’d get into port everybody would ask: ‘Well, how did you
like it? Are you going again?’ ‘Of course I am,’ I would answer, and
went from pure shamefacedness and not to be outdone. After a while I
didn’t mind it so much, and finally kept to it ’cause I couldn’t do
anything else.”
One of the old basket makers at the Harbor had occupied a rolling chair
in the hospital and made baskets for nearly thirty-nine years. There
was still another, ninety-three years of age, who would have been
there forty years the summer I was there. And withal he was a most
ingenious basket maker. One of the old salts kept an eating-stand where
appetizing lunches were served, and he bore the distinction of having
rounded the Horn forty-nine times in a sailing vessel. He was one of
the few who possessed his soul in patience, resting content with his
lot and turning to fate a gentle and smiling face.
“Will you tell me of an adventure at sea?” I once asked him.
“I could,” he answered, “but I would rather tell you of thirteen
peaceful years here. I came here when I was seventy, though at sixty,
when I was weathering a terrible storm around the Cape with little hope
of ever seeing the rising sun, I promised myself that if ever I reached
home again I would stay there. But I didn’t know myself even then. My
destiny was to remain on the sea for ten years more, with this Harbor
for my few remaining years. At that, if I were young I would go to sea
again, I believe. It’s the only life for me.”
Back of all this company of a thousand or more, playing their last
parts upon this little Harbor stage, is an interesting mechanism,
the system with which the institution is run. There is a clothing
department, where the sailors get their new outfits twice a year. I
warrant that the quizzical old salt who keeps it knows every rent and
tear in every garment of the Harbor. There is a laundry and sewing
department, of which the matron has charge. There is a great kitchen,
absolutely clean, where is space enough to set up a score of little
kitchens. At four p.m. there are visible only two dignitaries in this
savory realm. At that time one slices tomatoes and the other “puts on
tea” for a thousand, the number who regularly dine here. The labor of
cutting great stacks of bread is done by a machine. Broiling steaks or
frying fish for a thousand creates neither excitement nor hurry. The
entire kitchen staff numbers thirty all told, and the thousand sailors
are served with less noise and confusion than an ordinary housewife
makes in cooking for a small family.
There are separate buildings devoted to baking, vegetable storing and
so forth, and the steward, farmer, baker and engineer, that important
quartette, has each his private residence upon the grounds. The
hospital, too, is a well-kept building, carefully arranged and bright
and cleanly as such institutions can be made.
Passing this place, I have often thought what a really interesting and
unique and beautiful charity it is, the orderly and palatial buildings,
the beautiful lawns and flowers, and then the thousand and one
characters who after so many earthly vicissitudes have found their way
here and who, if left to their own devices, would certainly find the
world outside a stormy and desperate affair. So old and so crotchety,
most of them are. Where would they go? Who would endure them? Wherewith
would they be clothed and fed? And again, after having sailed so many
seas and seen so much and been so independent and done heaven only
knows what, how odd to find them here, berthed into so peaceful a
realm and making out after any fashion at all. How quaint, how naïve
and unbelievable, almost. The blue waters of the bay before them,
the smooth even lawn in which the great buildings rest, the flowers,
the calm, the order, the security. And yet I know, too, that to the
hearts of all of these, as to the hearts of each and every one of us,
come such terrific storms of restlessness, such lightnings of anger
or temper, such torturing hours of ennui, beside which the windless
lifelessness of Sargasso is as activity. How fierce their resentment
of that onward shift and push of life that eventually loosens each and
every barque from its moorings and sets it adrift, rudderless, upon the
great, uncharted sea, their eyes and their mood all too plainly show.
And yet here they are, and here they will remain until their barque is
at last adrift, the last stay worn to a frazzle, the last chain rusted
to dust. And betimes they wait, the sirenic call of older and better
days ever in their ears--those days that can never, never, never be
again.
Who would not be ill at ease at times? Who not crotchety, weary,
contemptuous, however much he might choose to possess himself in
serenity? There is this material Snug Harbor for their bodies, to be
sure. But where is the peaceful haven of the heart--on what shore, by
what sea--a Snug Harbor for the soul?
THE SANDWICH MAN
I would not feel myself justified mentally if at some time or other I
had not paused in thought over the picture of the sandwich man. These
shabby figures of decayed or broken manhood, how they have always
appealed to me. I know what they stand for. I have felt with them. I
am sure I have felt beyond them, over and over again, the misery and
pathos of their state.
And yet, what a bit of color they add to the life of any city, what
a foil to its prosperity, its ease--what a fillip to the imagination
of those who have any! Against carriages and autos and showy bursts
of enthusiastic life, if there be such, they stand out at times with
a vividness which makes the antithesis of their state seem many times
more important than it really is. In the face of sickness, health is
wonderful. In the face of cold, warmth is immensely significant. In
the face of poverty, wealth is truly grandeur and may well strut and
stride. And who is so obviously, so notoriously poor as this creature
of the two signs, this perambulating pack-horse of an advertisement,
this hopeless, decayed creature who, if he have but life enough to
walk, will do very well as an invitation to buy.
He is such a biting commentary on life, in one sense, such a coarse,
shabby jest in another, that we cannot help but think on him and the
conditions which produce him. To send forth an anæmic, hollow-eyed,
gaunt-bodied man carrying an announcement of a good dinner, for
instance. Imagine. Or a cure-all. Or a beauty powder. Or a good suit
of clothes. Or a sound pair of shoes. And these with their toes or
their naked bodies all but exposed to the world. An overcoatless man
advertising a warm overcoat in winter. One from whom all and even the
possibility of joy had fled, displaying a notice of joy in the shape
of a sign for a dance-hall, a theater, a moving picture even. The
thick-witted thoughtlessness of the trade-vulgarian who could permit
this!
But the eyes of them! The cold, red, and often wet hands! The torn hats
with snow on them, the thin shoes that are soppy with snow or water.
Is it not a biting commentary on the importance of the individual, _as
such_, that in life he may be used in such a way as this, in a single
short life, as a post upon which to hang things! And that in the face
of all the wealth of the world--over-production! And that in the face
of all the blather and pother anent the poor, and Christ, and mercy,
and I know not what else!
I once protested to an artist friend who chanced to be sketching a line
of these, carrying signs, that it was a pity from the individual’s
point of view, as well as from that of society itself, that such things
must be. But he did not agree with me. “Not at all,” he replied.
“They are mentally and physically pointless, anyhow, aren’t they?
They have no imagination, no strength any more, or they wouldn’t be
carrying signs. Don’t you think that you are applying your noble
emotions to their state? Why shouldn’t they be used? They haven’t
your emotions--they haven’t any emotions, as a matter of fact, or very
rudimentary ones, and such as they have they are applying to simpler,
cheaper things than you do yours. Mostly they’re dirty and indifferent,
believe me.”
I could not say that I wholly disagreed with him. At the same time, I
could not say that I violently agreed with him. It is true that life
does queer tricks with our emotions and quondam passions at times.
The ones that are so very powerful this year, where are they next?
At one time we are racked and torn and flayed and blown by emotions
that at another find us quite dead, incapable of any response. All the
nervous ambitions, as well as the circumstances by which fine emotions
and moods are at one time generated, at another have been entirely
dissipated. Betimes there is nothing left save a disjointed and weary
frame or a wornout brain or nervous system incapable of emotions and
disturbing moods.
Yet, granting the truth of this, what a way to use the image of the
human race, I thought, the image of our old-time selves! Why degrade
the likeness of the thing we once were and by which once we set so
much store and then expect to raise man’s estimate of man? It is
written: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in
vain.” Why take the body of man in so shabby, so degrading a fashion?
Why make a mockery of the body and mind of the human race, and then
expect something superior of life? We talk of elevating the human
race. Can we use ourselves as signs and then do that? It is entirely
probable, of course, that the human race cannot be elevated. Very
good. But if we dream of any such thing, what must such a sight do
to the imagination of the world? What conception of the beauty and
sweetness and dignity of life does it not aid to destroy? What lessons
of hardness and self-preservation and indifference does it not teach?
Does it not glorify health and strength and prosperity at the expense
of every other quality? I think so. To be strong, to be well, to be
prosperous in the face of the sandwich man--is there anywhere more of
an anachronism?
I sometimes think that in our general life-classifications we neglect
the individual, the exceptional individual, who is always sure to be
everywhere, as readily at the bottom of society as at the top, as
readily sandwiched between two glaring signs as anywhere else. It is
quite all right to admit, for argument’s sake or our own peace of mind,
that most of these men are dirty and worn and indifferent, and hence
negligible; though it always seems silly to me to assume that a man
is indifferent or negligible when he will pack a sign in the cold and
snow in order to preserve himself. It is so easy for those of us who
are comfortable to assume that the other man does not care, does not
feel. Here he comes, though, carrying a sign. Why? To be carrying it
because it makes no difference to him? Because he has no emotions? I
don’t believe it. I could not believe it. And all the evidence I have
personally taken has been to the contrary, decidedly so.
I remember seeing once, in the rush of the Christmas trade in New
York City a few years ago, a score of these decidedly shabby and
broken brethren carrying signs for the edification, allurement and
information of the Christmas trade. They were strung out along Sixth
Avenue from Twenty-third to Fourteenth Streets, and the messages which
their billboards carried were various. I noticed that in the budding
gayety of the time these men alone were practically hopeless, dull and
gray. The air was fairly crackling with the suggestion of interest
and happiness for some. People were hurrying hither and thither,
eager about their purchases. There were great van-loads of toys and
fineries constantly being moved and transferred. Life seemed to say:
“This is the season of gifts and affection,” but it obviously meant
nothing to these men. I took a five-dollar bill and had it changed
into half-dollars. I stopped before the first old wizened loiterer
I met, his sign hanging like a cross from his gaunt shoulder, and
before his unsuspecting eyes lifted the half-dollar. Who could be
offering him a half-dollar? his eyes seemed indifferently to ask at
first. Then a perfect eagle’s gleam flashed into them, old and dull
as they were, and a claw-like hand reached for it. No thanks, no
acknowledgment, no polite recognition--just grim realization that
money, a whole half-dollar, was being given, and a physical, wholly
animal determination to get it. What possibilities that half-dollar
seemed to hold to that indifferent, unimaginative mind at that moment!
What it suggested, apparently, of possible comfort! Why? Because there
was no imagination there? because life meant nothing? Not in that
case, surely. A whole epic of failure and desire was written in that
gleam--and we speak of them as emotionless.
[Illustration: The Sandwich Man]
I went further with my half-dollars. I learned what a half-dollar means
to a man in a sandwich sign in the cold in winter. There was no case in
which the eagerness, the surprise, the astonishment was not interesting
if not pathetic. They were not expecting the Christmas holidays to
offer them any suggestion of remembrance. It did not seem real that any
one should stop and give them anything. Yet here was I, and apparently
their wildest anticipations were outreached.
I cannot help thinking, as I close, of an old gray-haired Irish
gentleman--for that he was, by every mark of refinement of feature and
intelligence of eye--who had come so low as to be the perambulating
representative of a restaurant, with a double sign strapped over
his shoulders. His hair was thin, his face pale, his body obviously
undernourished, but he carried himself with dignity and undisturbed
resignation, though he must have been deeply conscious of his state.
I saw him for a number of days during the winter season, walking up
and down the west side of Sixth Avenue, and then I saw him no more.
But during that time a sense of what it means to accept the slings and
arrows of fortune with fortitude and equanimity burned itself deeply
into my mind. He was so much better than that which he was compelled
to do. He walked so patiently to and fro, his eyes sometimes closed,
his lips repeating something. I wondered, what? Whether in the depths
of this slough of his despond this man had not risen superior to his
state, his mind on those high cold verities which after all are above
the pointless little existence that we lead here, this existence with
its petty gauds and its pretty and petty vanities. I hope so. But I do
know that a stinging sense of the slings and arrows of fortune overcame
me, never to be eradicated, and I quoted to myself that arresting,
forceful inquiry of one William Shakespeare:
“For who would bear the whip and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life?”
Not you, you think? Boast not. For after all, who shall say what a day
or a year or a lifetime may not bring forth? And with Whatley cannot
we all say: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”--a beggar, an
outcast of fortune, a sandwich man, no less, to whom the meaning of
life is that he shall be a foil to comfort, a contrast to prosperity, a
commentary on health.
To be the antithesis of what life would prefer to be--what could be
more degraded than that?
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITTLE ITALY