beginning of November, and if you can manage to take in Election Day,
and especially Election Night, it will not be a bad notion. New York has
five saturnalia every year: New Year's Night, Decoration Day, Fourth of
July, Election Night, and Thanksgiving, and not the least of these is
Election Night. If it is a right first Tuesday of November, the daytime
wind will be veering from west to south and back, sun and cloud will
equally share the hours between them, and a not unnatural quiet, as of
political passions hushed under the blanket of the Australian ballot,
will prevail. The streets will be rather emptied than filled, and the
litter of straw and scrap-paper, and the ordure and other filth of the
great slattern town, will blow agreeably about under your feet and into
your eyes and teeth. But with the falling of the night there will be a
rise of the urban spirits; the sidewalks will thicken with citizens of
all ages and sexes and nations; and if you will then seek some large
centre for the cinematographic dissemination of the election news, you
will find yourself one of a multitude gloating on the scenes of comedy
and tragedy thrown up on the canvas to stay your impatience for the
returns. Along the curbstones are stationed wagons for the sale of the
wind and string instruments, whose raw, harsh discords of whistling and
twanging will begin with the sight of the vote from the first precinct.
Meantime policemen, nervously fondling their clubs in their hands, hang
upon the fringes of the crowd, which is yet so good-natured that it
seems to have no impulse but to lift children on its shoulders and put
pretty girls before it, and caress old women and cripples into favorable
positions, so that they may see better. You will wish to leave it before
the clubbing begins, and either go home to the slumbers which the
whistling and twanging will duly attend; or join the diners going into
or coming out of the restaurants, or the throngs strolling down into the
fairy realms of Broadway, under the flare of the whiskeys and the
actresses.
At such a time it is best to be young, but it is not so very bad to be
old, for the charm of the hour, the air, and the place is such that even
the heart of age must rise a little at it. What the night may really be,
if it is not positively raining, you "do not know or need to know."
Those soft lamps overhead, which might alike seem let garlanding down
from the vault above or flowering up from the gulfs below out of a still
greater pyrotechnic richness, supply the defect, if there is any, of
moon and stars. Only the air is actual, the air of the New York night,
which is as different from that of the London night as from that of the
Paris night, or, for all we know, the St. Petersburg night. At times we
have fancied in its early autumnal tones something Florentine, something
Venetian, but, after all, it is not quite either, even when the tones of
these are crudest. It is the subtlest, the most penetrating expression
of the New York temperament; but what that is, who shall say? That
mystic air is haunted little from the past, for properly speaking there
never was a city so unhistorical in temperament. A record of civic
corruption, running back to the first servants of the Dutch Companies,
does not constitute municipal history, and our part in national events
from the time we felt the stirrings of national consciousness has not
been glorious, as these have not been impressive. Of New York's present
at any given moment you wish to say in her patient-impatient slang,
"Forget it, forget it." There remains only the future from which she can
derive that temperamental effect in her night air; but, again, what
that is, who shall say? If any one were so daring, he might say it was
confidence modified by anxiety; a rash expectation of luck derived from
immunity for past transgression; the hopes of youth shot with youth's
despairs: not sweet, innocent youth, but youth knowing and experienced,
though not unwilling to shun evil because of the bad morrow it sometimes
brings. No other city under the sun, we doubt, is so expressive of that
youth: that modern youth, able, agile, eager, audacious; not the youth
of the poets, but the youth of the true, the grim realists.
[Illustration: ELECTION-NIGHT CROWDS]
Something, a faint, faint consciousness of this, visits even the sad
heart of age on any New York night when it is not raining too hard, and
one thinks only of getting indoors, where all nights are alike. But
mostly it comes when the autumn is dreaming toward winter in that
interlude of the seasons which we call Indian Summer. It is a stretch of
time which we have handsomely bestowed upon our aborigines, in
compensation for the four seasons we have taken from them, like some of
those Reservations which we have left them in lieu of the immeasurable
lands we have alienated. It used to be longer than it is now; it used to
be several weeks long; in the sense of childhood, it was almost months.
It is still qualitatively the same, and it is more than any other time
expressive of the New York temperament, perhaps because we have honored
in the civic ideal the polity of our Indian predecessors, and in Tammany
and its recurrently triumphant braves, have kept their memory green. But
if this is not so, the spiritual fact remains, and under the sky of the
Election Night you _feel_ New York as you do in no other hour. The sense
extends through the other autumn nights till that night, sure to come,
when the pensive weather breaks in tears, and the next day it rains and
rains, and the streets stream with the flood, and the dull air reeks
with a sort of inner steam, hot, close, and sticky as a brother: a
brother whose wants are many and whose resources are few. The morning
after the storm, there will be a keen thrill in the air, keen but
wholesome and bracing as a good resolution and not necessarily more
lasting. The asphalt has been washed as clean as a renovated conscience,
and the city presses forward again to the future in which alone it has
its being, with the gay confidence of a sinner who has forgiven himself
his sins and is no longer sorry for them.
After that interlude, when the streets of the Advanced Vaudeville, which
we know as New York, begin again and continue till the Chasers come in
late May, there will be many other sorts of weather, but none so
characteristic of her. There will be the sort of weather toward the end
of January, when really it seems as if nothing else could console him
for the intolerable freezing and thawing, the snow upon snow, the rain
upon rain, the winds that soak him and the winds that shrivel him, and
the suns that mock him from a subtropic sky through subarctic air. We
foresee him then settling into his arm-chair, while the wind whistles as
naturally as the wind in the theatre around the angles of his lofty
flat, and drives the snow of the shredded paper through the air or beats
it in soft clots against the pane. He turns our page, and as he catches
our vague drift, before yielding himself wholly to its allure, he
questions, as readers like to do, whether the writer is altogether right
in his contention that the mid-autumnal moment is the most
characteristic moment of the New York year. Is not the mid-winter moment
yet more characteristic? He conjures up, in the rich content of his
indoor remoteness, the vision of the vile street below his flat, banked
high with the garnered heaps of filthy snow, which alternately freeze
and thaw, which the rain does not wash nor the wind blow away, and which
the shredded-paper flakes are now drifting higher. He sees the
foot-passers struggling under their umbrellas toward the avenues where
the reluctant trolleys pause jarringly for them, and the elevated trains
roar along the trestle overhead; where the saloon winks a wicked eye on
every corner; where the signs of the whiskeys and actresses flare
through the thickened night; and the cab tilts and rocks across the
trolley rails, and the crowds of hotel-sojourners seek the shelter of
the theatres, and all is bleak and wet and squalid. In more respectful
vision he beholds the darkened mansions of the richest and best, who
have already fled the scene of their brief winter revel and are forcing
the spring in their Floridas, their Egypts, their Rivieras. He himself
remains midway between the last fall and the next spring; and perhaps he
decides against the writer, as the perverse reader sometimes will, and
holds that this hour of suspense and misgiving is the supreme, the
duodecimal hour of the metropolitan dial. He may be right; who knows?
New York's hours are all characteristic; and the hour whose mystical
quality we have been trying to intimate is already past, and we must
wait another year before we can put it to the test again; wait till the
trees once more stand perfectly still: yellow, yellowish-green, crimson,
russet, and the wind comes up and blows them bare, and yet another
summer is dead, and the mourners, the ghosts, the _revenants_ have once
more returned to town.
II
PERSONAL AND EPISTOLARY ADDRESSES
A constant reader of the Easy Chair has come to it with a difficulty
which, at the generous Christmas-tide, we hope his fellow-readers will
join us in helping solve: they may, if they like, regard it as a merry
jest of the patron saint of the day, a sort of riddle thrown upon the
table at the general feast for each to try his wits upon
"Across the walnuts and the wine."
"How," this puzzled spirit has asked, "shall I address a friend of mine
who, besides being a person of civil condition, with a right to the
respect that we like to show people of standing in directing our letters
to them, has the distinction of being a doctor of philosophy, of
letters, and of laws by the vote of several great universities? Shall I
greet him as, say, Smythe Johnes, Esq., or Dr. Smythe Johnes, or Smythe
Johnes, Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D., or simply Mr. Smythe Johnes?"
Decidedly, we should answer, to begin with, _not_ "Mr. Smythe Johnes" if
you wish to keep the finest bloom on your friendship with any man who
knows the world. He will much prefer being addressed simply "Smythe
Johnes," with his street and number, for he feels himself classed by
your "Mr. Smythe Johnes" with all those Mr. Smythe Johneses whom he
loves and honors in their quality of tradesmen and working-men, but
does not hold of quite the same social rank as himself. After our revolt
in essentials from the English in the eighteenth century, we are now
conforming more and more in the twentieth to their usages in
non-essentials, and the English always write Smythe Johnes, Esq., or Dr.
Smythe Johnes or the like, unless Mr. Smythe Johnes is in trade or below
it. They, indeed, sometimes carry their scruple so far that they will
address him as Mr. Smythe Johnes at his place of business, and Smythe
Johnes, Esq., at his private residence.
The English, who like their taffy thick and slab, and who, if one of
them happens to be the Earl of Tolloller, are not richly enough
satisfied to be so accosted by letter, but exact some such address as
The Right Honorable the Earl of Tolloller, all like distinctions in
their taffy, and are offended if you give them a commoner sort than they
think their due. But the Americans, who pretend to a manlier
self-respect, had once pretty generally decided upon Mr. Smythe Johnes
as the right direction for his letters. They argued that Esquire was the
proper address for lawyers, apparently because lawyers are so commonly
called Squire in the simpler life. In the disuse of the older form of
Armiger they forgot that _inter arma silent leges_, and that Esquire was
logically as unfit for lawyers as for civil doctors, divines, or
mediciners. He of the Easy Chair, when an editor long ago, yielded to
the prevalent American misrendering for a time, and indiscriminately
addressed all his contributors as "Mr." One of them, the most liberal of
them in principle, bore the ignominy for about a year, and then he
protested. After that the young editor (he was then almost as young as
any one now writing deathless fiction) indiscriminately addressed his
contributors as Esq. Yet he had an abiding sense of the absurdity in
directing letters to John G. Whittier, Esq., for if the poet was truly a
Friend and an abhorrer of war, he could not be hailed Armiger without
something like insult.
With doctors of divinity the question is not so vexing or vexed; but it
is said that of late a lion is rising in the way of rightly addressing
doctors of medicine. If you wish to be attended by a physician who pays
all visits after nightfall in evening dress, it is said that you are now
to write Smythe Johnes, M.D., Esq., and not Dr. Smythe Johnes, as
formerly. In England, the source of all our ceremonial woes, you cannot
call a surgeon "doctor" without offence; he is Mr. Smythe Johnes when
spoken to, but whether he is Mr. Smythe Johnes through the post, Heaven
knows.
It is a thousand pities that when we cut ourselves off from that
troubled source politically, we did not dam it up in all the things of
etiquette. We indeed struck for freedom and sense at the very highest
point, and began at once to write George Washington, President, as we
still write William H. Taft, President. The Chief Magistrate is offered
no taffy in our nation, or perhaps the word President is held to be
taffy enough and to spare; for only the Governor of Massachusetts is
legally even so much as Excellency. Yet by usage you are expected to
address all ambassadors and ministers as Excellencies, and all persons
in public office from members of Congress and of the Cabinet down to the
lowest legislative or judicial functionaries as Honorables. This
simplifies the task of directing envelopes to them, and, if a man once
holds military rank in any peace establishment, he makes life a little
easier for his correspondents by remaining General, or Captain, or
Admiral, or Commander. You cannot Mister him, and you cannot Esquire
him, and there is, therefore, no question as to what you shall
superscribe him.
A score of years ago two friends, now, alas! both doctors of philosophy,
of letters, and of laws, agreed to superscribe their letters simply
Smythe Johnes and Johnes Smythe respectively, without any vain prefix or
affix. They kept up this good custom till in process of time they went
to Europe for prolonged sojourns, and there corrupted their manners, so
that when they came home they began addressing each other as Esq., and
have done so ever since. Neither is any the better for the honors they
exchange on the envelopes they do not look at, and doubtless if mankind
could be brought to the renunciation of the vain prefixes and affixes
which these friends once disused the race would be none the worse for
it, but all the better. One prints Mr. Smythe Johnes on one's
visiting-card because it passes through the hands of a menial who is not
to be supposed for a moment to announce plain Smythe Johnes; but it is
the United States post-office which delivers the letters of Smythe
Johnes, and they can suffer no contamination from a service which
conveys the letters of plain William H. Taft to him with merely the
explanatory affix of President, lest they should go to some other
William H. Taft.
Undoubtedly the address of a person by the name with which he was
christened can convey no shadow of disrespect. The Society of Friends
understood this from the beginning, and they felt that they were wanting
in no essential civility when they refused name-honor as well as
hat-honor to all and every. They remained covered in the highest
presences, and addressed each by his Christian name, without conveying
slight; so that a King and Queen of England, who had once questioned
whether they could suffer themselves to be called Thy Majesty instead
of Your Majesty by certain Quakers, found it no derogation of their
dignity to be saluted as Friend George and Friend Charlotte. The signory
of the proudest republic in the world held that their family names were
of sufficiency to which titles could add nothing, and the Venetian who
called himself Loredano, or Gradenigo, or Morosini, or Renier, or
Rezzonico did not ask to be called differently. In our own day a lady of
the ancient and splendid family of the Peruzzi in Florence denied that
the title of count existed in it or need exist: "Ognuno puo essere
conte: Peruzzi, no." ("Any one may be a count; but not a Peruzzi.") In
like manner such names as Lincoln and Franklin, and Washington and
Grant, and Longfellow and Bryant could have gained nothing by Mr. before
them or Esq. after them. Doctor Socrates or Doctor Seneca would not have
descended to us in higher regard with the help of these titles; and
Rear-Admiral Themistocles or Major-General Epaminondas could not have
had greater glory from the survival of parchments so directed to them.
The Venetian nobles who disdained titles came in process of time to be
saluted as Illustrissimo; but in process of time this address when used
orally began to shed its syllables till Illustrissimo became
Lustrissimo, and then Strissimo, and at last Striss, when perhaps the
family name again sufficed. So with us, Doctor has familiarly become
"Doc," and Captain, "Cap," until one might rather have no title at all.
Mr. itself is a grotesque malformation of a better word, and Miss is a
silly shortening of the fine form of Mistress. This, pronounced Misses,
can hardly add dignity to the name of the lady addressed, though
doubtless it cannot be disused till we are all of the Society of
Friends. The popular necessity has resulted in the vulgar vocative use
of Lady, but the same use of Gentleman has not even a vulgar success,
though it is not unknown. You may say, with your hand on the bell-strap,
"Step lively, lady," but you cannot say, "Step lively, gentleman," and
the fine old vocative "Sir" is quite obsolete. We ourselves remember it
on the tongues of two elderly men who greeted each other with "Sir!" and
"Sir!" when they met; and "Step lively, sir," might convey the same
delicate regard from the trolley conductor as "Step lively, lady." Sir
might look very well on the back of a letter; Smythe Johnes, Sir, would
on some accounts be preferable to Smythe Johnes, Esq., and, oddly
enough, it would be less archaic.
Such of our readers as have dined with the late Queen or the present
King of England will recall how much it eased the yoke of ceremony to
say to the sovereign, "Yes, ma'am," or "Yes, sir," as the use is,
instead of your Majesty. But to others you cannot say "Yes, ma'am," or
"Yes, sir," unless you are in that station of life to which you would be
very sorry it had pleased God to call you. Yet these forms seem
undeniably fit when used by the young to their elders, if the difference
of years is great enough.
The difficulty remains, however. You cannot as yet write on an envelope,
Smythe Johnes, Sir, or Mary Johnes, Lady; and, in view of this fact, we
find ourselves no nearer the solution of our constant reader's
difficulty than we were at first. The Socialists, who wish to simplify
themselves and others, would address Mr. Johnes as Comrade Smythe
Johnes, but could they address Mrs. Johnes as Comradess? We fancy not;
besides, Comrade suggests arms and bloodshed, which is hardly the
meaning of the red flag of brotherhood, and at the best Comrade looks
affected and sounds even more so. Friend would be better, but orally, on
the lips of non-Quakers, it has an effect of patronage, though no one
could rightly feel slight in a letter addressed to him as Friend Smythe
Johnes.
It is wonderful to consider how the ancients apparently got on without
the use of any sort of prefix or affix to their names on the roll of
parchment or fold of papyrus addressed to them. For all we know, Caesar
was simply C. Julius Caesar to his correspondents, and Pericles was yet
more simply Pericles to the least of his fellow-citizens. These
historical personages may have had the number of their houses inscribed
on their letters; or Pericles might have had Son of Xanthippus added to
his name for purposes of identification; but apparently he managed quite
as well as our Presidents, without anything equivalent to Excellency or
Hon. or Mr. or Esq. To be sure, with the decline of
"The glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome,"
name-honors crept in more and more. It was then not only politer but
much safer to address your petition To the Divine Domitian, or To the
Divine Nero, than to greet those emperors by the mere given names which
were not yet Christian; probably it would not have been enough to add
Caesar to the last name, though Caesar seems to have finally served the
turn of Esq., for all the right that the emperors had to bear it. In the
Eastern Empire, we are not ready to say what was the correct style for
imperial dignitaries; but among the sovereigns who divided the Roman
state and inherited its splendor, some rulers came to be sacred
majesties, though this is still a sensible remove from divine.
However, our present difficulty is with that vast average who in common
parlance are Mr. and Mrs. Smythe Johnes. How shall they be styled on the
backs of their letters? How shall Mrs. Smythe Johnes especially, in
signing herself Mary Johnes, indicate that she is not Miss Mary but Mrs.
Smythe Johnes? When she is left a widow, how soon does she cease to be
Mrs. Smythe Johnes and become Mrs. Mary? Is it requisite to write in the
case of any literary doctorate, Smythe Johnes, LL.D., or Litt.D., or
Ph.D., or is it sufficient to write Dr. before his name? In the case of
a divine, do you put Rev. Dr. before the name, or Rev. before it and
D.D. after it? These are important questions, or, if they are not
important, they are at least interesting. Among the vast mass of
unceremonied, or call it unmannered, Americans the receiver of a letter
probably knows no better than the sender how it should be addressed; but
in the rarer case in which he does know, his self-respect or his
self-love is wounded if it is misaddressed. It is something like having
your name misspelled, though of course not so bad as that, quite; and
every one would be glad to avoid the chance of it.
The matter is very delicate and can hardly be managed by legislation, as
it was on the point of our pen to suggest it should be. The first French
Republic, one and indivisible, decreed a really charming form of
address, which could be used without offence to the self-love or the
self-respect of any one. Citoyen for all men and Citoyenne for all women
was absolutely tasteful, modest, and dignified; but some things, though
they are such kindred things, cannot be done as well as others. The same
imaginative commonwealth invented a decimal chronology, and a new era,
very handy and very clear; but the old week of seven days came back and
replaced the week of ten days, and the Year of our Lord resumed the
place of the Year of the Republic, as Monsieur and Madame returned
victorious over Citoyen and Citoyenne. Yet the reform of weights and
measures, when once established, continued, and spread from France to
most other countries--to nearly all, indeed, less stupid than Great
Britain and the United States--so that the whole civilized world now
counts in grammes and metres. What can be the fine difference? Here is a
pretty inquiry for the psychologist, who has an opportunity to prove
himself practically useful. Is it that grammes and metres are less
personal than week-days and addresses? That can hardly be, or else the
Society of Friends could not have so absolutely substituted First Day
and Second Day, etc., for the old heathen names of our week-days, and
could not have successfully refused all name-honor whatsoever in
addressing their fellow-mortals.