I have never been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to read
signs. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented
a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him
to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. He
had the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind of
mustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, I have become
a part of this mustard. Further, I know more of an ink, a brand of hams,
a kind of cigarette, and a novelist than any man living. I went by train
to see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patent
mucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisian
millinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and original
kind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ran
through soap.
I have accumulated superior information concerning these things, because
I am at their mercy. If I want to know where I am I must find the
definitive sign. This accounts for my glib use of the word mucilage, as
well as the titles of other staples.
I suppose even the Briton in mixing his life must sometimes consult the
labels on 'buses and streets and stations, even as the chemist consults
the labels on his bottles and boxes. A brave man would possibly affirm
that this was suggested by the existence of the labels.
The reason that I did not learn more about hams and mucilage in New York
seems to me to be partly due to the fact that the British advertiser is
allowed to exercise an unbridled strategy in his attack with his new
corset or whatever upon the defensive public. He knows that the
vulnerable point is the informatory sign which the citizen must, of
course, use for his guidance, and then, with horse, foot, guns, corsets,
hams, mucilage, investment companies, and all, he hurls himself at the
point.
Meanwhile I have discovered a way to make the Sanscrit scholar heed my
creature who plays the piano with a hammer.
NEW YORK SKETCHES
STORIES TOLD BY AN ARTIST IN NEW YORK
A TALE ABOUT HOW "GREAT GRIEF" GOT HIS HOLIDAY DINNER.
Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
cupboard.
"There are only two eggs and a half of a loaf of bread left," he
announced brutally.
"Heavens!" said Warwickson, from where he lay smoking on the bed. He
spoke in his usual dismal voice. By it he had earned his popular name of
Great Grief.
Wrinkles was a thrifty soul. A sight of an almost bare cupboard maddened
him. Even when he was not hungry, the ghosts of his careful ancestors
caused him to rebel against it. He sat down with a virtuous air. "Well,
what are we going to do?" he demanded of the others. It is good to be
the thrifty man in a crowd of unsuccessful artists, for then you can
keep the others from starving peacefully. "What are we going to do?"
"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles," said Grief from the bed. "You make me think."
Little Pennoyer, with head bended afar down, had been busily scratching
away at a pen and ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter his
plaintive optimism.
"The _Monthly Amazement_ may pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I've
waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and
perhaps I'll get it."
His friends listened to him tolerantly, but at last Wrinkles could not
omit a scornful giggle. He was such an old man, almost twenty-eight, and
he had seen so many little boys be brave. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
man." Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was
said for a long time thereafter.
The crash of the New York streets came faintly. Occasionally one could
hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of this begrimed
building that squatted, slumbering and aged, between two exalted
commercial structures that would have had to bend afar down to perceive
it. The light snow beat pattering into the window corners, and made
vague and grey the vista of chimneys and roofs. Often the wind scurried
swiftly and raised a long cry.
Great Grief leaned upon his elbow. "See to the fire, will you,
Wrinkles?"
Wrinkles pulled the coal-box out from under the bed and threw open the
stove door preparatory to shovelling some fuel. A red glare plunged in
the first faint shadow of dusk. Little Pennoyer threw down his pen and
tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the
table. "It's too dark to work." He lit his pipe and walked about,
stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.
When dusk came it saddened these youths. The solemnity of darkness
always caused them to ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said Grief.
The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with
scratches, the tousled bed in one corner, the mass of boxes and trunks
in another, the little fierce stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover,
there were some wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a
shelf, high up, there was a plaster cast dark with dust in the creases.
A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction, and then twined
impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some extensive cobwebs
on the ceilings.
"Well, let's eat," said Grief.
Later, there came a sad knock at the door. Wrinkles, arranging a tin
pail on the stove, little Pennoyer busy at slicing the bread, and Great
Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled: "Come in!"
The door opened and Corinson entered dejectedly. His overcoat was very
new. Wrinkles flashed an envious glance at it, but almost immediately he
cried: "Hello, Corrie, old boy!"
Corinson sat down and felt around among the pipes until he found a good
one. Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he
had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was
balanced on a trunk, and then the gas stove was balanced on the chair.
Coffee making was a feat.
"Well," said Grief, with his back turned, "how goes it, Corrie? How's
Art, hey?" He fastened a terrible emphasis upon the word.
"Crayon portraits," said Corinson.
"What?" They turned towards him with one movement, as if from a lever
connection. Little Pennoyer dropped his knife.
"Crayon portraits," repeated Corinson. He smoked away in profound
cynicism. "Fifteen dollars a week or more this time of year, you know."
He smiled at them like a man of courage.
Little Pennoyer picked up his knife again. "Well, I'll be blowed," said
Wrinkles. Feeling it incumbent upon him to think, he dropped into a
chair and began to play serenades on his guitar and watch to see when
the water for the eggs would boil. It was a habitual pose.
Great Grief, however, seemed to observe something bitter in the affair.
"When did you discover that you couldn't draw?" he said stiffly.
"I haven't discovered it yet," replied Corinson, with a serene air. "I
merely discovered that I would rather eat."
"Oh!" said Grief.
"Hand me the eggs, Grief," said Wrinkles. "The water's boiling."
Little Pennoyer burst into the conversation. "We'd ask you to dinner,
Corrie, but there's only three of us and there's two eggs. I dropped a
piece of bread on the floor, too. I'd shy one."
"That's all right, Penny," said the other; "don't trouble yourself. You
artists should never be hospitable. I'm going anyway. I've got to make a
call. Well, good night, boys. I've got to make a call. Drop in and see
me."
When the door closed upon him, Grief said: "The coffee's done; I hate
that fellow. That overcoat cost thirty dollars, if it cost a red. His
egotism is so tranquil. It isn't like yours, Wrinkles. He--"
The door opened again and Corinson thrust in his head. "Say, you
fellows, you know it's Thanksgiving to-morrow?"
"Well, what of it?" demanded Grief.
Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, I know it is, Corrie, I thought of it this
morning."
"Well, come out and have a table d'hote with me to-morrow night. I'll
blow you off in good style."
While Wrinkles played an exuberant air on his guitar, little Pennoyer
did part of a ballet. They cried ecstatically: "Will we? Well, I guess
yes?"
When they were alone again, Grief said: "I'm not going, anyhow. I hate
that fellow."
"Oh, fiddle," said Wrinkles. "You're an infernal crank. And besides,
where's your dinner coming from to-morrow night if you don't go? Tell me
that."
Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, that's so, Grief. Where's your dinner coming
from if you don't go?"
Grief said: "Well, I hate him, anyhow."
* * * * *
AS TO PAYMENT OF THE RENT.
Little Pennoyer's four dollars could not last for ever. When he received
it he and Wrinkles and Great Grief went to a table d'hote. Afterwards
little Pennoyer discovered that only two dollars and a half remained. A
small magazine away down town had accepted one out of the six drawings
that he had taken them, and later had given him four dollars for it.
Penny was so disheartened when he saw that his money was not going to
last for ever, that even with two dollars and a half in his pockets, he
felt much worse than when he was penniless, for at that time he
anticipated twenty-four. Wrinkles lectured upon "Finance."
Great Grief said nothing, for it was established that when he received
six dollar cheques from comic weeklies he dreamed of renting studios at
seventy-five dollars per month, and was likely to go out and buy five
dollars' worth of second-hand curtains and plaster casts.
When he had money Penny always hated the cluttered den in the old
building. He desired to go out and breathe boastfully like a man. But he
obeyed Wrinkles, the elder and the wise, and if you had visited that
room about ten o'clock of a morning or about seven of an evening you
would have thought that rye bread, frankfurters, and potato salad from
Second Avenue were the only foods in the world.
Purple Sanderson lived there too, but then he really ate. He had learned
parts of the gasfitter's trade before he came to be such a great artist,
and when his opinions disagreed with that of every art manager in New
York, he went to see a plumber, a friend of his, for whose opinion he
had a great respect. In consequence, he frequented a very great
restaurant on Twenty-third Street, and sometimes on Saturday nights he
openly scorned his companions.
Purple was a good fellow, Grief said, but one of his singularly bad
traits was that he always remembered everything. One night, not long
after little Pennoyer's great discovery, Purple came in, and as he was
neatly hanging up his coat, said: "Well, the rent will be due in four
days."
"Will it?" demanded Penny, astounded. Penny was always astounded when
the rent came due. It seemed to him the most extraordinary occurrence.
"Certainly it will," said Purple, with the irritated air of a superior
financial man.
"My soul!" said Wrinkles.
Great Grief lay on the bed smoking a pipe and waiting for fame. "Oh, go
home, Purple. You resent something. It wasn't me, it was the calendar."
"Try and be serious a moment, Grief."
"You're a fool, Purple."
Penny spoke from where he was at work. "Well, if those _Amazement
Magazine_ people pay me when they said they would I'll have money then."
"So you will, dear," said Grief, satirically. "You'll have money to
burn. Did the _Amazement_ people ever pay you when they said they
would? You're wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You
talk like an artist."
Wrinkles, too, smiled at little Pennoyer. "The _Established Magazine_
people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them too. It will
only cost him a big blue chip. By the time he has invested all the money
he hasn't got and the rent is two weeks' overdue, he will be able to
tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after
the publication. Go ahead, Penny."
It was the habit to make game of little Pennoyer. He was always having
gorgeous opportunities, with no opportunity to take advantage of his
opportunities.
Penny smiled at them, his tiny, tiny smile of courage.
"You're a confident little cuss," observed Grief, irrelevantly.
"Well, the world has no objection to your being confident also, Grief,"
said Purple.
"Hasn't it?" said Grief. "Well, I want to know."
Wrinkles could not be light-spirited long. He was obliged to despair
when occasion offered. At last he sank down in a chair and seized his
guitar.
"Well, what's to be done?" he said. He began to play mournfully.
"Throw Purple out," mumbled Grief from the bed.
"Are you fairly certain that you will have money then, Penny?" asked
Purple.
Little Pennoyer looked apprehensive. "Well, I don't know," he said.
And then began that memorable discussion, great in four minds. The
tobacco was of the "Long John" brand. It smelled like burning mummies.
A DINNER ON SUNDAY EVENING.
Once Purple Sanderson went to his home in St. Lawrence county to enjoy
some country air, and, incidentally, to explain his life failure to his
people. Previously, Great Grief had given him odds that he would return
sooner than he had planned, and everybody said that Grief had a good
bet. It is not a glorious pastime, this explaining of life failures.
Later, Great Grief and Wrinkles went to Haverstraw to visit Grief's
cousin and sketch. Little Pennoyer was disheartened, for it is bad to be
imprisoned in brick and dust and cobbles when your ear can hear in the
distance the harmony of the summer sunlight upon leaf and blade of
green. Besides, he did not hear Wrinkles and Grief discoursing and
quarrelling in the den, and Purple coming in at six o'clock with
contempt.
On Friday afternoon he discovered that he only had fifty cents to last
until Saturday morning, when he was to get his cheque from the _Gamin_.
He was an artful little man by this time, however, and it is as true as
the sky that when he walked toward the _Gamin_ office on Saturday he had
twenty cents remaining.
The cashier nodded his regrets, "Very sorry, Mr.--er--Pennoyer, but our
pay-day, you know, is on Monday. Come around any time after ten."
"Oh, it don't matter," said Penny. As he walked along on his return he
reflected deeply how he could invest his twenty cents in food to last
until Monday morning any time after ten. He bought two coffee cakes in a
third avenue bakery. They were very beautiful. Each had a hole in the
centre, and a handsome scallop all around the edges.
Penny took great care of those cakes. At odd times he would rise from
his work and go to see that no escape had been made. On Sunday he got up
at noon and compressed breakfast and noon into one meal. Afterwards he
had almost three-quarters of a cake still left to him. He congratulated
himself that with strategy he could make it endure until Monday morning
any time after ten.
At three in the afternoon there came a faint-hearted knock. "Come in,"
said Penny. The door opened and old Tim Connegan, who was trying to be a
model, looked in apprehensively. "I beg pardon, sir," he said at once.
"Come in, Tim, you old thief," said Penny. Tim entered slowly and
bashfully. "Sit down," said Penny. Tim sat down and began to rub his
knees, for rheumatism had a mighty hold upon him.
Penny lit his pipe and crossed his legs. "Well, how goes it?"
Tim moved his square jaw upward and flashed Penny a little glance.
"Bad?" said Penny.
The old man raised his hand impressively. "I've been to every studio in
the hull city, and I never see such absences in my life. What with the
seashore and the mountains, and this and that resort, I think all the
models will be starved by fall. I found one man in up on Fifty-seventh
Street. He ses to me: 'Come around Tuesday--I may want yez and I may
not.' That was last week. You know, I live down on the Bowery, Mr.
Pennoyer, and when I got up there on Tuesday, he ses: 'Confound you, are
you here again?' ses he. I went and sat down in the park, for I was too
tired for the walk back. And there you are, Mr. Pennoyer. What with
trampin' around to look for men that are thousand miles away, I'm near
dead."
"It's hard," said Penny.
"It is, sir. I hope they'll come back soon. The summer is the death of
us all, sir; it is. Sure, I never know where my next meal is coming
until I get it. That's true."
"Had anything to-day?"
"Yes, sir, a little."
"How much?"
"Well, sir, a lady gave me a cup of coffee this morning. It was good,
too, I'm telling you."
Penny went to his cupboard. When he returned, he said: "Here's some
cake."
Tim thrust forward his hands, palms erect. "Oh, now, Mr. Pennoyer, I
couldn't. You--"
"Go ahead. What's the odds?"
"Oh, now."
"Go ahead, you old bat."
Penny smoked.
When Tim was going out, he turned to grow eloquent again. "Well, I can't
tell you how much I'm obliged to you, Mr. Pennoyer. You--"
"Don't mention it, old man."
Penny smoked.
THE SILVER PAGEANT.
"It's rotten," said Grief.
"Oh, it's fair, old man. Still, I would not call it a great contribution
to American art," said Wrinkles.
"You've got a good thing, Gaunt, if you go at it right," said little
Pennoyer.
These were all volunteer orations. The boys had come in one by one and
spoken their opinions. Gaunt listened to them no more than if they had
been so many match-peddlers. He never heard anything close at hand, and
he never saw anything excepting that which transpired across a mystic
wide sea. The shadow of his thoughts was in his eyes, a little grey
mist, and, when what you said to him had passed out of your mind, he
asked: "Wha--a--at?" It was understood that Gaunt was very good to
tolerate the presence of the universe, which was noisy and interested in
itself. All the younger men, moved by an instinct of faith, declared
that he would one day be a great artist if he would only move faster
than a pyramid. In the meantime he did not hear their voices.
Occasionally when he saw a man take vivid pleasure in life, he faintly
evinced an admiration. It seemed to strike him as a feat. As for him, he
was watching that silver pageant across a sea.
When he came from Paris to New York somebody told him that he must make
his living. He went to see some book publishers, and talked to them in
his manner--as if he had just been stunned. At last one of them gave him
drawings to do, and it did not surprise him. It was merely as if rain
had come down.
Great Grief went to see him in his studio, and returned to the den to
say: "Gaunt is working in his sleep. Somebody ought to set fire to him."
It was then that the others went over and smoked, and gave their
opinions of a drawing. Wrinkles said: "Are you really looking at it,
Gaunt? I don't think you've seen it yet, Gaunt?"
"What?"
"Why don't you look at it?"
When Wrinkles departed, the model, who was resting at that time,
followed him into the hall and waved his arms in rage. "That feller's
crazy. Yeh ought t' see--" and he recited lists of all the wrongs that
can come to models.
It was a superstitious little band over in the den. They talked often of
Gaunt. "He's got pictures in his eyes," said Wrinkles. They had expected
genius to blindly stumble at the perface and ceremonies of the world,
and each new flounder by Gaunt made a stir in the den. It awed them, and
they waited.
At last one morning Gaunt burst into the room. They were all as dead
men.
"I'm going to paint a picture." The mist in his eyes was pierced by a
Coverian gleam. His gestures were wild and extravagant. Grief stretched
out smoking on the bed, Wrinkles and little Pennoyer working at their
drawing-boards tilted against the table--were suddenly frozen. If bronze
statues had come and danced heavily before them, they could not have
been thrilled further.
Gaunt tried to tell them of something, but it became knotted in his
throat, and then suddenly he dashed out again.
Later they went earnestly over to Gaunt's studio. Perhaps he would tell
them of what he saw across the sea.
He lay dead upon the floor. There was a little grey mist before his
eyes.
When they finally arrived home that night they took a long time to
undress for bed, and then came the moment when they waited for some one
to put out the gas. Grief said at last, with the air of a man whose
brain is desperately driven: "I wonder--I--what do you suppose he was
going to paint?"
Wrinkles reached and turned out the gas, and from the sudden profound
darkness, he said: "There is a mistake. He couldn't have had pictures in
his eyes."
A STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK.
The man and the boy conversed in Italian, mumbling the soft syllables
and making little, quick egotistical gestures. Suddenly the man glared
and wavered on his limbs for a moment as if some blinding light had
flashed before his vision; then he swayed like a drunken man and fell.
The boy grasped his arm convulsively, and made an attempt to support his
companion so that the body slid to the side-walk with an easy motion
like a corpse sinking into the sea. The boy screamed.
Instantly people from all directions turned their gaze upon that figure
prone upon the side-walk. In a moment there was a dodging, peering,
pushing crowd about the man. A volley of questions, replies,
speculations flew to and fro among all the bobbing heads.
"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"
"Oh, a jag, I guess!"
"Aw, he's got a fit!"
"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"
Two streams of people coming from different directions met at this point
to form a great crowd. Others came from across the street.
Down under their feet, almost lost under this mass of people, lay a man,
hidden in the shadows caused by their forms, which, in fact, barely
allowed a particle of light to pass between them. Those in the foremost
rank bended down eagerly, anxious to see everything. Others behind them
crowded savagely like starving men fighting for bread. Always, the
question could be heard flying in the air. "What's th' matter." Some,
near to the body, and perhaps feeling the danger of being forced over
upon it, twisted their heads and protested violently to those unheeding
ones who were scuffling in the rear: "Say, quit yer shovin', can't yeh?
What do yeh want, anyhow? Quit!"
Somebody back in the throng suddenly said: "Say, young feller, cheese
that pushin'! I ain't no peach!"
Another voice said: "Well, dat's all right--"
The boy who had been with the Italian was standing helplessly, a
frightened look in his eyes, and holding the man's hand. Sometimes he
looked about him dumbly, with indefinite hope, as if he expected sudden
assistance to come from the clouds. The men about him frequently jostled
him until he was obliged to put his hand upon the breast of the body to
maintain his balance. Those nearest the man upon the sidewalk at first
saw his body go through a singular contortion. It was as if an invisible
hand had reached up from the earth and had seized him by the hair. He
seemed dragged slowly, pitilessly backward, while his body stiffened
convulsively, his hands clenched, and his arms swung rigidly upward.
Through his pallid, half-closed lids one could see the steel-coloured,
assassin-like gleam of his eye, that shone with a mystic light as a
corpse might glare at those live ones who seemed about to trample it
under foot. As for the men near, they hung back, appearing as if they
expected it might spring erect and grab them. Their eyes, however, were
held in a spell of fascination. They scarce seemed to breathe. They were
contemplating a depth into which a human being had sunk, and the marvel
of this mystery of life or death held them chained. Occasionally from
the rear a man came thrusting his way impetuously, satisfied that there
was a horror to be seen, and apparently insane to get a view of it.
More self-contained men swore at these persons when they tread upon
their toes.
The street cars jingled past this scene in endless parade. Occasionally,
down where the elevated road crossed the street, one could hear
sometimes a thunder, suddenly begun and suddenly ended. Over the heads
of the crowd hung an immovable canvas sign: "Regular Dinner twenty
cents."
The body on the pave seemed like a bit of debris sunk in this human
ocean.
But after the first spasm of curiosity had passed away, there were those
in the crowd who began to bethink themselves of some way to help. A
voice called out: "Rub his wrists." The boy and a man on the other side
of the body began to rub the wrists and slap the palms of the man. A
tall German suddenly appeared, and resolutely began to push the crowd
back. "Get back there--get back," he repeated continually while he
pushed at them. He seemed to have authority; the crowd obeyed him. He
and another man knelt down by the man in the darkness and loosened his
shirt at the throat. Once they struck a match and held it close to the
man's face. This livid visage suddenly appearing under their feet in the
light of the match's yellow glare, made the crowd shudder. Half
articulate exclamations could be heard. There were men who nearly
created a riot in the madness of their desire to see the thing.
Meanwhile others had been questioning the boy. "What's his name? Where
does he live?"
Then a policeman appeared. The first part of this little drama had gone
on without his assistance, but now he came, striding swiftly, his helmet
towering over the crowd and shading that impenetrable police face. He
charged the crowd as if he were a squadron of Irish Lancers. The people
fairly withered before this onslaught. Occasionally he shouted: "Come,
make way there. Come, now!" He was evidently a man whose life was
half-pestered out of him by people who were sufficiently unreasonable
and stupid as to insist on walking in the streets. He felt the rage
toward them that a placid cow feels toward the flies that hover in
clouds and disturb its repose. When he arrived at the centre of the
crowd he first said, threateningly: "What's th' matter here?" And then
when he saw that human bit of wreckage at the bottom of the sea of men,
he said to it: "Come, git up out that! Git out a here!"
Whereupon hands were raised in the crowd and a volley of decorated
information was blazed at the officer.
"Ah, he's got a fit, can't yeh see?"
"He's got a fit!"
"What th'ell yeh doin'? Leave 'im be!"
The policeman menaced with a glance the crowd from whose safe precincts
the defiant voices had emerged.
A doctor had come. He and the policeman bended down at the man's side.
Occasionally the officer reared up to create room. The crowd fell away
before his admonitions, his threats, his sarcastic questions, and before
the sweep of those two huge buckskin gloves.
At last the peering ones saw the man on the side-walk begin to breathe
heavily, strainedly, as if he had just come to the surface from some
deep water. He uttered a low cry in his foreign way. It was like a
baby's squeal or the side wail of a little storm-tossed kitten. As this
cry went forth to all those eager ears the jostling, crowding
recommenced again furiously, until the doctor was obliged to yell
warningly a dozen times. The policeman had gone to send the ambulance
call.
Then a man struck another match, and in its meagre light the doctor felt
the skull of the prostrate man carefully to discover if any wound had
been caused by his fall to the stone side-walk. The crowd pressed and
crushed again. It was as if they fully expected to see blood by the
light of the match, and the desire made them appear almost insane. The
policeman returned and fought with them. The doctor looked up
occasionally to scold and demand room.
At last, out of the faint haze of light far up the street, there came
the sound of a gong beating rapidly. A monstrous truck loaded to the sky
with barrels scurried to one side with marvellous agility. And then the
black waggon, with its gleam of gold lettering and bright brass gong,
clattered into view, the horse galloping. A young man, as imperturbable
almost as if he were at a picnic, sat upon the rear seat. When they
picked up the limp body, from which came little moans and howls, the
crowd almost turned into a mob. When the ambulance started on its
banging and clanging return, they stood and gazed until it was quite out
of sight. Some resumed their way with an air of relief. Others still
continued to stare after the vanished ambulance and its burden as if
they had been cheated, as if the curtain had been rung down on a tragedy
that was but half completed; and this impenetrable blanket intervening
between a sufferer and their curiosity seemed to make them feel an
injustice.
MINETTA LANE, NEW YORK.
ITS WORST DAYS HAVE NOW PASSED AWAY. BUT ITS INHABITANTS STILL INCLUDE
MANY WHOSE DEEDS ARE EVIL.
THE CELEBRATED RESORT OF MAMMY ROSS.
Minetta Lane is a small and becobbled valley between hills and dingy
brick. At night the street lamps, burning dimly, cause the shadows to
be important, and in the gloom one sees groups of quietly conversant
negroes, with occasionally the gleam of a passing growler. Everything is
vaguely outlined and of uncertain identity, unless, indeed, it be the
flashing buttons and shield of the policeman on his coast. The Sixth
Avenue horse-cars jingle past one end of the lane, and a block eastward
the little thoroughfare ends in the darkness of M'Dougall Street.
One wonders how such an insignificant alley could get such an assuredly
large reputation, but, as a matter of fact, Minetta Lane and Minetta
Street, which leads from it southward to Bleecker Street, were, until a
few years ago, two of the most enthusiastically murderous thoroughfares
in New York. Bleecker Street, M'Dougall Street, and nearly all the
streets thereabouts were most unmistakably bad; the other streets went
away and hid. To gain a reputation in Minetta Lane in those days a man
was obliged to commit a number of furious crimes, and no celebrity was
more important than the man who had a good honest killing to his credit.
The inhabitants, for the most part, were negroes, and they represented
the very worst element of their race. The razor habit clung to them with
the tenacity of an epidemic, and every night the uneven cobbles felt
blood. Minetta Lane was not a public thoroughfare at this period. It was
a street set apart, a refuge for criminals. Thieves came here
preferably with their gains, and almost any day peculiar sentences
passed among the inhabitants. "Big Jim turned a thousand last night."
"No-Toe's made another haul." And the worshipful citizens would make
haste to be present at the consequent revel.
As has been said, Minetta Lane was then no thoroughfare. A peaceable
citizen chose to make a circuit rather than venture through this place,
that swarmed with the most dangerous people in the city. Indeed, the
thieves of the district used to say: "Once get in the lane and you're
all right." Even a policeman in chase of a criminal would probably shy
away instead of pursuing him into the lane. The odds were too great
against a lone officer.
Sailors, and any men who might appear to have money about them, were
welcomed with all proper ceremony at the terrible dens of the lane. At
departure they were fortunate if they still retained their teeth. It was
the custom to leave very little else to them. There was every facility
for the capture of coin, from trap-doors to plain ordinary knock-out
drops.
And yet Minetta Lane is built on the grave of Minetta Brook, where, in
olden times, lovers walked under the willows on the bank, and Minetta
Lane, in later times, was the home of many of the best families of the
town.
A negro named Bloodthirsty was perhaps the most luminous figure of
Minetta Lane's aggregation of desperadoes. Bloodthirsty supposedly is
alive now, but he has vanished from the lane. The police want him for
murder. Bloodthirsty is a large negro, and very hideous. He has a
rolling eye that shows white at the wrong time, and his neck, under the
jaw, is dreadfully scarred and pitted.
Bloodthirsty was particularly eloquent when drunk, and in the wildness
of a spree he would rave so graphically about gore that even the
habitated wool of old timers would stand straight.
Bloodthirsty meant most of it, too. That is why his orations were
impressive. His remarks were usually followed by the wide, lightning
sweep of his razor. None cared to exchange epithets with Bloodthirsty. A
man in a boiler iron suit would walk down to City Hall and look at the
clock before he would ask the time of day from the single-minded and
ingenuous Bloodthirsty.
After Bloodthirsty, in combative importance, came No-Toe Charley.
Singularly enough, Charley was called No-Toe Charley because he did not
have a toe on his feet. Charley was a small negro, and his manner of
amusement befitting a smaller man. Charley was more wise, more sly, more
round-about than the other man. The path of his crimes was like a
corkscrew in architecture, and his method led him to make many tunnels.
With all his cleverness, however, No-Toe was finally induced to pay a
visit to the gentlemen in the grim, grey building up the river--Sing
Sing.
Black-Cat was another famous bandit who made the land his home.
Black-Cat is dead. Jube Tyler has been sent to prison, and after
mentioning the recent disappearance of Old Man Spriggs it may be said
that the lane is now destitute of the men who once crowned it with a
glory of crime. It is hardly essential to mention Guinea Johnson.
Guinea is not a great figure. Guinea is just an ordinary little crook.
Sometimes Guinea pays a visit to his friends, the other little crooks
who make homes in the lane, but he himself does not live there, and with
him out of it there is now no one whose industry's unlawfulness has yet
earned him the dignity of a nickname. Indeed, it is difficult to find
people now who remember the old gorgeous days, although it is but two
years since the lane shone with sin like a new head-light. But after a
search the reporter found three.
Mammy Ross is one of the last relics of the days of slaughter still
living there. Her weird history also reaches back to the blossoming of
the first members of the Whyo gang in the Old Sixth Ward, and her mind
is stored with bloody memories. She at one time kept a sailors'
boarding-house near the Tombs prison, and the accounts of all the
festive crimes of that neighbourhood in ancient years roll easily from
her tongue. They killed a sailor man every day, and pedestrians went
about the streets wearing stoves for fear of the handy knives. At the
present day the route to Mammy's home is up a flight of grimy stairs
that are pasted on the outside of an old and tottering frame house. Then
there is a hall blacker than a wolf's throat, and this hall leads to a
little kitchen where Mammy usually sits groaning by the fire. She is, of
course, very old, and she is also very fat. She seems always to be in
great pain. She says she is suffering from "de very las' dregs of de
yaller fever."
During the first part of a reporter's recent visit, old Mammy seemed
most dolefully oppressed by her various diseases. Her great body shook
and her teeth clicked spasmodically during her long and painful
respirations. From time to time she reached her trembling hand and drew
a shawl closer about her shoulders. She presented as true a picture of a
person undergoing steady, unchangeable, chronic pain as a patent
medicine firm could wish to discover for miraculous purposes. She
breathed like a fish thrown out on the bank, and her old head
continually quivered in the nervous tremors of the extremely aged and
debilitated person. Meanwhile her daughter hung over the stove and
placidly cooked sausages.
Appeals were made to the old woman's memory. Various personages who had
been sublime figures of crime in the long-gone days were mentioned to
her, and presently her eyes began to brighten. Her head no longer
quivered. She seemed to lose for a period her sense of pain in the
gentle excitement caused by the invocation of the spirits of her memory.
It appears that she had had a historic quarrel with Apple Mag. She first
recited the prowess of Apple Mag; how this emphatic lady used to argue
with paving stones, carving knives, and bricks. Then she told of the
quarrel; what Mag said; what she said. It seems that they cited each
other as spectacles of sin and corruption in more fully explanatory
terms than are commonly known to be possible. But it was one of Mammy's
most gorgeous recollections, and, as she told it, a smile widened over
her face.
Finally she explained her celebrated retort to one of the most
illustrious thugs that had blessed the city in bygone days. "Ah says to
'im, ah says: 'You--you'll die in yer boots like Gallopin'
Thompson--dat's what you'll do. You des min' dat', honey. Ah got o'ny
one chile, an' he ain't nuthin' but er cripple; but le'me tel' you, man,
dat boy'll live t' pick de feathers f'm de goose dat'll eat de grass dat
grows over your grave, man.' Dat's what I tol' 'm. But--law sake--how I
know dat in less'n three day, dat man be lying in de gutter wif a knife
stickin' out'n his back. Lawd, no, I sholy never s'pected noting like
dat."
These reminiscences, at once maimed and reconstructed, have been
treasured by old Mammy as carefully, as tenderly, as if they were the
various little tokens of an early love. She applies the same
black-handed sentiment to them, and, as she sits groaning by the fire,
it is plainly to be seen that there is only one food for her ancient
brain, and that is the recollection of the beautiful fights and murders
of the past.
On the other side of the lane, but near Mammy's house, Pop Babcock keeps
a restaurant. Pop says it is a restaurant, and so it must be one; but
you could pass there ninety times each day and never know you were
passing a restaurant. There is one obscure little window in the
basement, and if you went close and peered in you might, after a time,
be able to make out a small, dusty sign, lying amid jars on a dusty
shelf. This sign reads: "Oysters in every style." If you are of a
gambling turn of mind, you will probably stand out in the street and bet
yourself black in the face that there isn't an oyster within a hundred
yards. But Pop Babcock made that sign, and Pop Babcock could not tell an
untruth. Pop is a model of all the virtues which an inventive fate has
made for us. He says so.
As far as goes the management of Pop's restaurant, it differs from
Sherry's. In the first place, the door is always kept locked. The
wardmen of the Fifteenth precinct have a way of prowling through the
restaurant almost every night, and Pop keeps the door locked in order to
keep out the objectionable people that cause the wardmen's visits. He
says so. The cooking stove is located in the main room of the
restaurant, and it is placed in such a strategic manner that it occupies
about all the space that is not already occupied by a table, a bench,
and two chairs. The table will, on a pinch, furnish room for the plates
of two people if they are willing to crowd. Pop says he is the best cook
in the world.
When questioned concerning the present condition of the lane, Pop said:
"Quiet! Quiet! Lo'd save us, maybe it ain't. Quiet! Quiet!" His emphasis
was arranged crescendo, until the last word was really a vocal
explosion. "Why, dish er' lane ain't nohow like what it uster be--no,
indeed it ain't. No, sir. 'Deed it ain't. Why, I kin remember when dey
was a-cuttin' an' a-slashin' long yere all night. 'Deed dey wos. My-my,
dem times was different. Dat der Kent, he kep' de place at Green Gate
cou't down yer ol' Mammy's--an' he was a hard baby--'deed he was--an'
ol' Black-Cat an' ol' Bloodthirsty, dey was a-comin' round yere
a-cuttin', an' a-slashin', an' a-cuttin', an' a-slashin'. Didn't dar'
say boo to a goose in dose days, dat you didn't, less'n you lookin' fer
a scrap. No, sir." Then he gave information concerning his own prowess
at that time. Pop is about as tall as a picket of an undersized fence.
"But dey didn't have nothin' ter say ter me. No, sir, 'deed dey didn't.
I would lay down fer none of 'em. No, sir. Dey knew my gait, 'deed dey
did. Man, man, many's de time I buck up agin 'em."
At this time Pop had three customers in his place, one asleep on the
bench, one asleep on two chairs, and one asleep on the floor behind the
stove.
But there is one who lends dignity of the real bevel-edged type to
Minetta Lane, and that man is Hank Anderson. Hank, of course, does not
live in the lane, but the shadows of his social perfections fall upon it
as refreshingly as a morning dew.
Hank gave a dance twice in each week at a hall hard by in M'Dougall
Street, and the dusky aristocracy of the neighbourhood know their
guiding beacon. Moreover, Hank holds an annual ball in Forty-fourth
Street. Also, he gives a picnic each year to the Montezuma Club, when he
again appears as a guiding beacon. This picnic is usually held on a
barge, and the excursion is a very joyous one. Some years ago it
required the entire reserve squad of an up-town police precinct to
properly control the enthusiasm of the gay picnickers, but that was an
exceptional exuberance, and no measure of Hank's ability for management.
He is really a great manager. He was Boss Tweed's body-servant in the
days when Tweed was a political prince, and any one who saw Bill Tweed
through a spy-glass learned the science of leading, pulling, driving,
and hauling men in a way to keep the men ignorant of it. Hank imbibed
from this fount of knowledge, and he applied his information in Thompson
Street. Thompson Street salaamed. Presently he bore a proud title: "The
Mayor of Thompson Street." Dignities from the principal political
organisations of the city adorned his brow, and he speedily became
illustrious.
Hank knew the lane well in its direful days. As for the inhabitants, he
kept clear of them, and yet in touch with them, according to a method
that he might have learned in the Sixth ward. The Sixth ward was a good
place in which to learn that trick. Anderson can tell many strange tales
and good of the lane, and he tells them in the graphic way of his class.
"Why, they could steal your shirt without moving a wrinkle on it."
The killing of Joe Carey was the last murder that happened in the
Minettas. Carey had what might be called a mixed-ale difference with a
man named Kenny. They went out to the middle of Minetta Street to
affably fight it out and determine the justice of the question.
In the scrimmage Kenny drew a knife, thrust quickly, and Carey fell.
Kenny had not gone a hundred feet before he ran into the arms of a
policeman.
There is probably no street in New York where the police keep closer
watch than they do in Minetta Lane. There was a time when the
inhabitants had a profound and reasonable contempt for the public
guardians, but they have it no longer apparently. Any citizen can walk
through there at any time in perfect safety, unless, perhaps, he should
happen to get too frivolous. To be strictly accurate, the change began
under the reign of police Captain Chapman. Under Captain Groo, a
commander of the Fifteenth precinct, the lane donned a complete new
garb. Its denizens brag now of its peace, precisely as they once bragged
of its war. It is no more a bloody lane. The song of the razor is seldom
heard. There are still toughs and semi-toughs galore in it, but they
can't get a chance with the copper looking the other way. Groo got the
poor lane by the throat. If a man should insist upon becoming a victim
of the badger game, he could probably succeed, upon search in Minetta
Lane, as indeed, he could on any of the great avenues, but then Minetta
Lane is not supposed to be a pearly street of Paradise.
In the meantime the Italians have begun to dispute the possession of the
lane with the negroes. Green Gate Court is filled with them now, and a
row of houses near the M'Dougall Street corner is occupied entirely by
Italian families. None of them seem to be over fond of the old Mulberry
Bend fashion of life, and there are no cutting affrays among them worth
mentioning. It is the original negro element that makes the trouble when
there is trouble.
But they are happy in this condition are these people. The most
extraordinary quality of the negro is his enormous capacity for
happiness under most adverse circumstances. Minetta Lane is a place of
poverty and sin, but these influences cannot destroy the broad smile of
the negro--a vain and simple child, but happy. They all smile here, the
most evil as well as the poorest. Knowing the negro, one always expects
laughter from him, be he ever so poor, but it was a new experience to
see a broad grin on the face of the devil. Even old Pop Babcock had a
laugh as fine and mellow as would be the sound of falling glass, broken
saints from high windows, in the silence of some great cathedral's
hollow.
THE ROOF GARDENS AND GARDENERS OF NEW YORK.
A PHASE OF NEW YORK LIFE AS SEEN BY A CLOSE OBSERVER.
When the hot weather comes the roof gardens burst into full bloom, and
if an inhabitant of Chicago should take flight on his wings over this
city, he would observe six or eight flashing spots in the darkness,
spots as radiant as crowns. These are the roof gardens, and if a giant
had flung a handful of monstrous golden coins upon the sombre-shadowed
city he could not have benefited the metropolis more, although he would
not have given the same opportunity to various commercial aspirants to
charge a price and a half for everything. There are two classes of
men--reporters and central office detectives--who do not mind these
prices because they are very prodigal of their money.
Now is the time of the girl with the copper voice, the Irishman with
circular whiskers, and the minstrel who had a reputation in 1833. To the
street the noise of the band comes down on the wind in fitful gusts, and
at the brilliantly illuminated rail there is suggestion of many straw
hats.
One of the main features of the roof garden is the waiter, who stands
directly in front of you whenever anything interesting transpires on the
stage. This waiter is three hundred feet high and seventy-two feet wide.
His finger can block your view of the golden-haired _soubrette_, and
when he waves his arm the stage disappears as if by a miracle. What
particularly fascinates you is his lack of self-appreciation. He doesn't
know that his length over all is three hundred feet, and that his beam
is seventy-two feet. He only knows that while the golden-haired
_soubrette_ is singing her first verse he is depositing beer on the
table before some thirsty New Yorkers. He only knows that during the
third verse the thirsty New Yorkers object to the roof-garden prices. He
does not know that behind him are some fifty citizens who ordinarily
would not give three whoops to see the golden-haired _soubrette_, but
who, under these particular circumstances, are kept from swift
assassination by sheer force of the human will. He gives an impressive
exhibition of a man who is regardless of consequences, oblivious to
everything save his task, which is to provide beer. Some day there may
be a wholesale massacre of roof-garden waiters, but they will die with
astonished faces and with questions on their lips. Skulls so steadfastly
opaque defy axes, or any of the other methods which the populace
occasionally use to cure colossal stupidity.
Between numbers on an ordinary roof-garden programme, the orchestra
sometimes plays what the more enlightened and wary citizens of the town
call a "beer overture." But, for reasons which no civil service
commission could give, the waiter does not choose this time to serve the
thirsty. No; he waits until the golden-haired _soubrette_ appears, he
waits until the haggard audience has goaded itself into some interest in
the proceedings. Then he gets under way. Then he comes forth and blots
out the stage. In case of war, all roof-garden waiters should be
recruited in a special regiment and sent out in advance of everything.
There is a peculiar quality of bullet-proofness about them which would
turn a projectile pale.
If you have strategy enough in your soul you may gain furtive glimpses
of the stage, despite the efforts of the waiters, and then, with
something to engage the attention when the attention grows weary of the
mystic wind, the flashing yellow lights, the music, and the undertone of
the far street's roar, you should be happy.
Far up into the night there is a wildness, a temper to the air which
suggests tossing tree boughs and the swift rustle of grass. The New
Yorker, whose business will not allow him to go out to nature, perhaps,
appreciates these little opportunities to go up to nature, although
doubtless he thinks he goes to see the show.
One season two new roof gardens have opened. The one at the top of Grand
Central Palace is large enough for a regimental drill room. The band is
imprisoned still higher in a turreted affair, and a person who prefers
gentle and unobtrusive amusement can gain deep pleasure and satisfaction
from watching the leader of this band gesticulating upon the heavens.
His figure is silhouetted beautifully against the sky, and every gesture
in which he wrings noise from his band is interestingly accentuated.
The other new roof garden was Oscar Hammerstein's Olympia, which blazes
on Broadway.
Oscar originally made a great reputation for getting out injunctions.
All court judges in New York worked overtime when Oscar was in this
business. He enjoined everybody in sight. He had a special machine
made--"Drop a nickel in the judge and get an injunction." Then he sent a
man to Washington for twenty-two thousand dollars' worth of nickels. In
Harlem, where he then lived, it rained orders of the court every day at
twelve o'clock. The street-cleaning commission was obliged to enlist a
special force to deal with Oscar's injunctions. Citizens meeting on the
street never said: "Good morning, how do you feel to-day?" They always
said: "Good morning, have you been enjoined yet to-day?" When a man
perhaps wished to enter a little game of draw, the universal form was
changed when he sent a note to his wife: "Dear Louise, I have received
an order of the court restraining me from coming home to dinner
to-night. Yours, George."
But Oscar changed. He smashed his machine, girded himself, and resolved
to provide the public with amusement. And now we see this great mind
applying itself to a roof garden with the same unflagging industry and
boundless energy which had previously expressed itself in injunctions.
The Olympia, his new roof garden, is a feat. It has an exuberance which
reminds one of the Union Depot train-shed of some western city. The
steel arches of the roof make a wide and splendid sweep, and over in the
corner there are real swans swimming in real water. The whole structure
glares like a conflagration with the countless electric lights. Oscar
has caused the execution of decorative paintings upon the walls. If he
had caused the execution of the decorative painters he would have done
better; but a man who has devoted the greater part of his life to the
propagation of injunctions is not supposed to understand that wall
decoration which appears to have been done with a nozzle is worse than
none. But if carpers say that Oscar failed in his landscapes, none can
say that he failed in his measurements of the popular mind. The people
come in swarms to the Olympia. Two elevators are busy at conveying them
to where the cool and steady night-wind insults the straw hat; and the
scene here during the popular part of the evening is perhaps more gaudy
and dazzling than any other in New York.
The bicycle has attained an economic position of vast importance. The
roof garden ought to attain such a position, and it doubtless will
soon--as we give it the opportunity it desires.
The Arab or the Moor probably invented the roof garden in some long-gone
centuries, and they are at this day inveterate roof gardeners. The
American, surprisingly belated--for him, has but recently seized upon
the idea, and its development here has been only partial. The
possibilities of the roof garden are still unknown.
Here is a vast city in which thousands of people in summer half stifle,
cry out continually for air, fresher air. Just above their heads is what
might be called a county of unoccupied land. It is not ridiculously
small when compared with the area of New York county itself. But it is
as lonely as a desert, this region of roofs. It is as untrodden as the
corners of Arizona. Unless a man be a roof gardener, he knows
practically nothing of this land.
Down in the slums necessity forces a solution of problems. It drives the
people to the roofs. An evening upon a tenement roof with the great
golden march of the stars across the sky, and Johnnie gone for a pail of
beer, is not so bad if you have never seen the mountains nor heard, to
your heart, the slow, sad song of the pines.
IN THE BROADWAY CARS.
PANORAMA OF A DAY FROM THE DOWN-TOWN RUSH OF THE MORNING TO THE
UNINTERRUPTED WHIRR OF THE CABLE AT NIGHT--THE MAN, AND THE WOMAN, AND
THE CONDUCTOR.
The cable cars come down Broadway as the waters come down at Lodore.
Years ago Father Knickerbocker had convulsions when it was proposed to
lay impious rails on his sacred thoroughfare. At the present day the
cars, by force of column and numbers, almost dominate the great street,
and the eye of even an old New Yorker is held by these long yellow
monsters which prowl intently up and down, up and down, in a mystic
search.
In the grey of the morning they come out of the up-town, bearing
janitors, porters, all that class which carries the keys to set alive
the great down-town. Later, they shower clerks. Later still, they shower
more clerks. And the thermometer which is attached to a conductor's
temper is steadily rising, rising, and the blissful time arrives when
everybody hangs to a strap and stands on his neighbour's toes. Ten
o'clock comes, and the Broadway cars, as well as elevated cars, horse
cars, and ferryboats innumerable, heave sighs of relief. They have
filled lower New York with a vast army of men who will chase to and fro
and amuse themselves until almost nightfall.
The cable car's pulse drops to normal. But the conductor's pulse begins
now to beat in split seconds. He has come to the crisis in his day's
agony. He is now to be overwhelmed with feminine shoppers. They all are
going to give him two-dollar bills to change. They all are going to
threaten to report him. He passes his hand across his brow and curses
his beard from black to grey and from grey to black.
Men and women have different ways of hailing a car. A man--if he is not
an old choleric gentleman, who owns not this road but some other
road--throws up a timid finger, and appears to believe that the King of
Abyssinia is careering past on his war-chariot, and only his opinion of
other people's Americanism keeps him from deep salaams. The gripman
usually jerks his thumb over his shoulder and indicates the next car,
which is three miles away. Then the man catches the last platform, goes
into the car, climbs upon some one's toes, opens his morning paper, and
is happy.
When a woman hails a car there is no question of its being the King of
Abyssinia's war-chariot. She has bought the car for three dollars and
ninety-eight cents. The conductor owes his position to her, and the
gripman's mother does her laundry. No captain in the Royal Horse
Artillery ever stops his battery from going through a stone house in a
way to equal her manner of bringing that car back on its haunches. Then
she walks leisurely forward, and after scanning the step to see if there
is any mud upon it, and opening her pocket-book to make sure of a
two-dollar bill, she says: "Do you give transfers down Twenty-eighth
Street?"
Some time the conductor breaks the bell strap when he pulls it under
these conditions. Then, as the car goes on, he goes and bullies some
person who had nothing to do with the affair.
The car sweeps on its diagonal path through the Tenderloin with its
hotels, its theatres, its flower shops, its 10,000,000 actors who played
with Booth and Barret. It passes Madison Square and enters the gorge
made by the towering walls of great shops. It sweeps around the double
curve at Union Square and Fourteenth Street, and a life insurance agent
falls in a fit as the car dashes over the crossing, narrowly missing
three old ladies, two old gentlemen, a newly-married couple, a sandwich
man, a newsboy, and a dog. At Grace Church the conductor has an
altercation with a brave and reckless passenger who beards him in his
own car, and at Canal Street he takes dire vengeance by tumbling a
drunken man on to the pavement. Meanwhile, the gripman has become
involved with countless truck drivers, and inch by inch, foot by foot,
he fights his way to City Hall Park. On past the Post Office the car
goes, with the gripman getting advice, admonition, personal comment, an
invitation to fight from the drivers, until Battery Park appears at the
foot of the slope, and as the car goes sedately around the curve the
burnished shield of the bay shines through the trees.
It is a great ride, full of exciting actions. Those inexperienced
persons who have been merely chased by Indians know little of the
dramatic quality which life may hold for them. These jungle of men and
vehicles, these canyons of streets, these lofty mountains of iron and cut
stone--a ride through them affords plenty of excitement. And no lone
panther's howl is more serious in intention than the howl of the truck
driver when the cable car bumps one of his rear wheels.
Owing to a strange humour of the gods that make our comfort, sailor hats
with wide brims come into vogue whenever we are all engaged in hanging
to cable-car straps. There is only one more serious combination known to
science, but a trial of it is at this day impossible. If a troupe of
Elizabethan courtiers in large ruffs should board a cable car, the
complication would be a very awesome one, and the profanity would be in
old English, but very inspiring. However, the combination of
wide-brimmed hats and crowded cable cars is tremendous in its power to
cause misery to the patient New York public.
Suppose you are in a cable car, clutching for life and family a creaking
strap from overhead. At your shoulder is a little dude in a very
wide-brimmed straw hat with a red band. If you were in your senses you
would recognise this flaming band as an omen of blood. But you are not
in your senses; you are in a Broadway cable car. You are not supposed to
have any senses. From the forward end you hear the gripman uttering
shrill whoops and running over citizens. Suddenly the car comes to a
curve. Making a swift running start, it turns three hand-springs, throws
a cart wheel for luck, bounds into the air, hurls six passengers over
the nearest building, and comes down a-straddle of the track. That is
the way in which we turn curves in New York.
Meanwhile, during the car's gamboling, the corrugated rim of the dude's
hat has swept naturally across your neck, and has left nothing for your
head to do but to quit your shoulders. As the car roars your head falls
into the waiting arms of the proper authorities. The dude is dead;
everything is dead. The interior of the car resembles the scene of the
battle of Wounded Knee, but this gives you small satisfaction.
There was once a person possessing a fund of uncanny humour who greatly
desired to import from past ages a corps of knights in full armour. He
then purposed to pack the warriors into a cable car and send them around
a curve. He thought that he could gain much pleasure by standing near
and listening to the wild clash of steel upon steel--the tumult of
mailed heads striking together, the bitter grind of armoured legs
bending the wrong way. He thought that this would teach them that war is
grim.
Towards evening, when the tides of travel set northward, it is curious
to see how the gripman and conductor reverse their tempers. Their
dispositions flop over like patent signals. During the down-trip they
had in mind always the advantages of being at Battery Park. A perpetual
picture of the blessings of Battery Park was before them, and every
delay made them fume--made this picture all the more alluring. Now the
delights of up-town appear to them. They have reversed the signs on the
cars; they have reversed their aspirations. Battery Park has been gained
and forgotten. There is a new goal. Here is a perpetual illustration
which the philosophers of New York may use.
In the Tenderloin, the place of theatres, and of the restaurant where
gayer New York does her dining, the cable cars in the evening carry a
stratum of society which looks like a new one, but it is of the familiar
strata in other clothes. It is just as good as a new stratum, however,
for in evening dress the average man feels that he has gone up three
pegs in the social scale, and there is considerable evening dress about
a Broadway car in the evening. A car with its electric lamp resembles a
brilliantly-lighted salon, and the atmosphere grows just a trifle
strained. People sit more rigidly, and glance sidewise, perhaps, as if
each was positive of possessing social value, but was doubtful of all
others. The conductor says: "Ah, gwan. Git off th' earth." But this is
to a man at Canal Street. That shows his versatility. He stands on the
platform and beams in a modest and polite manner into the car. He notes
a lifted finger and grabs swiftly for the bell strap. He reaches down to
help a woman aboard. Perhaps his demeanour is a reflection of the manner
of the people in the car. No one is in a mad New York hurry; no one is
fretting and muttering; no one is perched upon his neighbour's toes.
Moreover, the Tenderloin is a glory at night. Broadway of late years has
fallen heir to countless signs illuminated with red, blue, green, and
gold electric lamps, and the people certainly fly to these as the moths
go to a candle. And perhaps the gods have allowed this opportunity to
observe and study the best-dressed crowds in the world to operate upon
the conductor until his mood is to treat us with care and mildness.
Late at night, after the diners and theatre-goers have been lost in
Harlem, various inebriate persons may perchance emerge from the darker
regions of Sixth Avenue and swing their arms solemnly at the gripman. If
the Broadway cars run for the next 7000 years this will be the only time
when one New Yorker will address another in public without an excuse
sent direct from heaven. In these cars late at night it is not
impossible that some fearless drunkard will attempt to inaugurate a
general conversation. He is quite willing to devote his ability to the
affair. He tells of the fun he thinks he has had; describes his
feelings; recounts stories of his dim past. None reply, although all
listen with every ear. The rake probably ends by borrowing a match,
lighting a cigar, and entering into a wrangle with the conductor with an
_abandon_, a ferocity, and a courage that do not come to us when we are
sober.
In the meantime the figures on the street grow fewer and fewer.
Strolling policemen test the locks of the great dark-fronted stores.
Nighthawk cabs whirl by the cars on their mysterious errands. Finally
the cars themselves depart in the way of the citizen, and for the few
hours before dawn a new sound comes into the still thoroughfare--the
cable whirring in its channel underground.
THE ASSASSIN IN MODERN BATTLES.
THE TORPEDO BOAT DESTROYERS THAT "PERFORM IN THE DARKNESS. AN ACT WHICH
IS MORE PECULIARLY MURDEROUS THAN MOST THINGS IN WAR."
In the past century the gallant aristocracy of London liked to travel
down the south bank of the Thames to Greenwich Hospital, where venerable
pensioners of the crown were ready to hire telescopes at a penny each,
and with these telescopes the lords and ladies were able to view at a
better advantage the dried and enchained corpses of pirates hanging from
the gibbets on the Isle of Dogs. In those times the dismal marsh was
inhabited solely by the clanking figures whose feet moved in the wind
like rather poorly-constructed weather cocks.
But even the Isle of Dogs could not escape the appetite of an expanding
London. Thousands of souls now live on it, and it has changed its
character from that of a place of execution, with mist, wet with fever,
coiling forever from the mire and wandering among the black gibbets, to
that of an ordinary, squalid, nauseating slum of London, whose streets
bear a faint resemblance to that part of Avenue A which lies directly
above Sixtieth Street in New York.
Down near the water front one finds a long brick building,
three-storeyed and signless, which shuts off all view of the river. The
windows, as well as the bricks, are very dirty, and you see no sign of
life, unless some smudged workman dodges in through a little door. The
place might be a factory for the making of lamps or stair rods, or any
ordinary commercial thing. As a matter of fact, the building fronts the
shipyard of Yarrow, the builder of torpedo boats, the maker of knives
for the nations, the man who provides everybody with a certain kind of
efficient weapon. One then remembers that if Russia fights England,
Yarrow meets Yarrow; if Germany fights France, Yarrow meets Yarrow; if
Chili fights Argentina, Yarrow meets Yarrow.
Besides the above-mentioned countries Yarrow has built torpedo boats for
Italy, Austria, Holland, Japan, China, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, and
Spain. There is a keeper of a great shop in London who is known as the
Universal Provider. If a general conflagration of war should break out
in the world, Yarrow would be known as one of the Universal Warriors,
for it would practically be a battle between Yarrow, Armstrong, Krupp,
and a few other firms. This is what makes interesting the dinginess of
the cantonment on the Isle of Dogs.
The great Yarrow forte is to build speedy steamers of a tonnage of not
more than 240 tons. This practically includes only yachts, launches,
tugs, torpedo boat destroyers, torpedo boats, and of late
shallow-draught gunboats for service on the Nile, Congo, and Niger. Some
of the gunboats that shelled the dervishes from the banks of the Nile
below Khartoum were built by Yarrow. Yarrow is always in action
somewhere. Even if the firm's boats do not appear in every coming sea
combat, the ideas of the firm will, for many nations, notably France and
Germany, have bought specimens of the best models of Yarrow construction
in order to reduplicate and reduplicate them in their own yards.
When the great fever to possess torpedo boats came upon the Powers of
Europe, England was at first left far in the rear. Either Germany or
France to-day has in her fleet more torpedo boats than has England. The
British tar is a hard man to oust out of a habit. He had a habit of
thinking that his battleships and cruisers were the final thing in naval
construction. He scoffed at the advent of the torpedo boat. He did not
scoff intelligently but because, mainly, he hated to be forced to change
his ways.
You will usually find an Englishman balking and kicking at innovation up
to the last moment. It takes him some years to get an idea into his
head, and when finally it is inserted, he not only respects it, he
reveres it. The Londoners have a fire brigade which would interest the
ghost of a Babylonian, as an example of how much the method of
extinguishing fires could degenerate in two thousand years, and in 1897,
when a terrible fire devastated a part of the city, some voices were
raised challenging the efficiency of the fire brigade. But that part of
the London County Council which corresponds to fire commissioners in
United States laid their hands upon their hearts and solemnly assured
the public that they had investigated the matter, and had found the
London fire brigade to be as good as any in the world. There were some
isolated cases of dissent, but the great English public as a whole
placidly accepted these assurances concerning the activity of the
honoured corps.
For a long time England blundered in the same way over the matter of
torpedo boats. They were authoritatively informed that there was nothing
in all the talk about torpedo boats. Then came a great popular uproar,
in which people tumbled over each other to get to the doors of the
Admiralty and howl about torpedo boats. It was an awakening as
unreasonable as had been the previous indifference and contempt. Then
England began to build. She has never overtaken France or Germany in the
number of torpedo boats, but she now heads the world with her
collection of that marvel of marine architecture--the torpedo boat
destroyer. She has about sixty-five of these vessels now in commission,
and has about as many more in course of building.
People ordinarily have a false idea of the appearance of a destroyer.
The common type is longer than an ordinary gunboat--a long, low,
graceful thing, flying through the water at fabulous speed, with a great
curve of water some yards back of the bow, and smoke flying horizontally
from the three or four stacks.
Bushing this way and that way, circling, dodging, turning, they are like
demons.
The best kind of modern destroyer has a length of 220 feet, with a beam
of 26-1/2 feet. The horse-power is about 6500, driving the boat at a
speed of thirty-one knots or more. The engines are triple-expansion,
with water tube boilers. They carry from 70 to 100 tons of coal, and at
a speed of eight or nine knots can keep the sea for a week; so they are
independent of coaling in a voyage of between 1300 and 1500 miles. They
carry a crew of three or four officers, and about forty men.
They are armed usually with one twelve-pounder gun, and from three to
five six-pounder guns, besides their equipment of torpedoes. Their hulls
and top hamper are painted olive, buff, or preferably slate, in order to
make them hard to find with the eye at sea.
Their principal functions, theoretically, are to discover and kill the
enemy's torpedo boats, guard and scout for the main squadron, and
perform messenger service. However, they are also torpedo boats of a
most formidable kind, and in action will be found carrying out the
torpedo boat idea in an expanded form. Four destroyers of this type
building at the Yarrow yards were for Japan (1898).
The modern European ideal of a torpedo boat is a craft 152 feet long,
with a beam of 15-1/4 feet. When the boat is fully loaded a speed of 24
knots is derived from her 2000 horse-power engines. The destroyers are
twin screw, whereas the torpedo boats are commonly propelled by a single
screw. The speed of twenty knots is for a run of three hours. These
boats are not designed to keep at sea for any great length of time, and
cannot raid toward a distant coast without the constant attendance of a
cruiser to keep them in coal and provisions. Primarily they are for
defence. Even with destroyers, England, in lately reinforcing her
foreign stations, has seen fit to send cruisers in order to provide help
for them in stormy weather.
Some years ago it was thought the proper thing to equip torpedo craft
with rudders, which would enable them to turn in their own length when
running at full speed. Yarrow found this to result in too much broken
steering gear, and the firm's boats now have smaller rudders, which
enable them to turn in a larger circle.
At one time a torpedo boat steaming at her best gait always carried a
great bone in her teeth. During manoeuvres the watch on the deck of a
battleship often discovered the approach of the little enemy by the
great white wave which the boat rolled at her bows during her headlong
rush. This was mainly because the old-fashioned boats carried two
torpedo tubes set in the bows, and the bows were consequently bluff.
The modern boat carries the great part of her armament amidships and
astern on swivels, and her bow is like a dagger. With no more bow-waves,
and with these phantom colours of buff, olive, bottle-green, or slate,
the principal foe to a safe attack at night is bad firing in the
stoke-room, which might cause flames to leap out of the stacks.
A captain of an English battleship recently remarked: "See those five
destroyers lying there? Well, if they should attack me I would sink four
of them, but the fifth one would sink me."
This was repeated to Yarrow's manager, who said: "He wouldn't sink four
of them if the attack were at night and the boats were shrewdly and
courageously handled." Anyhow, the captain's remark goes to show the
wholesome respect which the great battleship has for these little
fliers.
The Yarrow people say there is no sense in a torpedo flotilla attack on
anything save vessels. A modern fortification is never built near enough
to the water for a torpedo explosion to injure it, and, although some
old stone flush-with-the-water castle might be badly crumpled, it would
harm nobody in particular, even if the assault were wholly successful.
Of course, if a torpedo boat could get a chance at piers and dock gates
they would make a disturbance, but the chance is extremely remote if the
defenders have ordinary vigilance and some rapid fire guns. In harbour
defence the searchlight would naturally play a most important part,
whereas at sea experts are beginning to doubt its use as an auxiliary to
the rapid fire guns against torpedo boats. About half the time it does
little more than betray the position of the ship. On the other hand, a
port cannot conceal its position anyhow, and searchlights would be
invaluable for sweeping the narrow channels.
There could be only one direction from which the assault could come, and
all the odds would be in favour of the guns on shore. A torpedo boat
commander knows this perfectly. What he wants is a ship off at sea with
a nervous crew staring into the encircling darkness from any point in
which the terror might be coming.
Hi, then, for a grand, bold, silent rush and the assassin-like stab.
In stormy weather life on board a torpedo boat is not amusing. They
tumble about like bucking bronchos, especially if they are going at
anything like speed. Everything is battened down as if it were soldered,
and the watch below feel that they are living in a football, which is
being kicked every way at once.
And finally, while Yarrow and other great builders can make torpedo
craft which are wonders of speed and manoeuvring power, they cannot
make that high spirit of daring and hardihood which is essential to a
success.
That must exist in the mind of some young lieutenant who, knowing well
that if he is detected, a shot or so from a rapid fire gun will cripple
him if it does not sink him absolutely, nevertheless goes creeping off
to sea to find a huge antagonist and perform stealthily in the darkness
an act which is more peculiarly murderous than most things in war.
If a torpedo boat is caught within range in daylight, the fighting is
all over before it begins. Any common little gunboat can dispose of it
in a moment if the gunnery is not too Chinese.
IRISH NOTES
I.--AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING.
The melancholy fisherman made his way through a street that was mainly
as dark as a tunnel. Sometimes an open door threw a rectangle of light
upon the pavement, and within the cottages were scenes of working women
and men, who comfortably smoked and talked. From them came the sounds of
laughter and the babble of children. Each time the old man passed
through one of the radiant zones the light etched his face in profile
with touches flaming and sombre until there was a resemblance to a stern
and mournful Dante portrait.
Once a whistling lad came through the darkness. He peered intently for
purposes of recognition. "Good avenin', Mickey," he cried cheerfully.
The old man responded with a groan, which intimated that the lamentable
reckless optimism of the youth had forced from him an expression of an
emotion that he had been enduring in saintly patience and silence. He
continued his pilgrimage toward the kitchen of the village inn.
The kitchen is a great and worthy place. The long range with its lurid
heat continually emits the fragrance of broiling fish, roasting mutton,
joints, and fowl. The high black ceiling is ornamented with hams and
flitches of bacon. There is a long, dark bench against one wall, and it
is fronted by a dark table, handy for glasses of stout. On an old
mahogany dresser rows of plates face the distant range, and reflect the
red shine of the peat. Smoke which has in it the odour of an American
forest fire eddies through the air. The great stones of the floor are
scarred by the black mud from the inn yard. And here the gossip of a
country-side goes on amid the sizzle of broiling fish and the loud
protesting splutter of joints taken from the oven.
When the old man reached the door of this paradise, he stopped for a
moment with his finger on the latch. He sighed deeply; evidently he was
undergoing some lachrymose reflection. For somewhere overhead in the inn
he could hear the wild clamour of dining pig-buyers, men who were come
for the pig fair to be held on the morrow. Evidently in the little
parlour of the inn these men were dining amid an uproar of shouted jests
and laughter. The revelry sounded like the fighting of two mobs amid a
rain of missiles and crash of shop windows. The old man raised his hand
as if, unseen there in the darkness, he was going to solemnly damn the
dinner of the pig-buyers.
Within the kitchen Nora, tall, strong, intrepid, approached the fiery
stove in the manner of a boxer. Her left arm was held high to guard her
face, which was already crimson from the blaze. With a flourish of her
apron she achieved a great brown humming joint from the oven, and,
emerging a glowing and triumphant figure from the steam and smoke and
rapid play of heat, she slid the pan upon the table, even as she saw the
old man standing within the room and lugubriously cleaning the mud from
his boots. "Tis you, Mickey?" she said.
He made no reply until he had found his way to the long bench. "It is,"
he said then. It was clear that in the girl's opinion he had gained some
kind of strategic advantage. The sanctity of her kitchen was
successfully violated, but the old man betrayed no elation. Lifting one
knee and placing it over the other, he grunted in the blissful weariness
of a venerable labourer returned to his own fireside. He coughed
dismally. "Ah, 'tis no good a man gits from fishin' these days. I moind
the toimes whin they would be hoppin' up clear o' the wather, there was
that little room fur thim. I would be likin' a bottle o' stout."
"Niver fear you, Mickey," answered the girl. Swinging here and there in
the glare of the fire, Nora, with her towering figure and bare brawny
arms, was like a feminine blacksmith at a forge. The old man, pallid,
emaciated, watched her from the shadows at the other side of the room.
The lines from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth sank
low to an expression of despair deeper than any moans. He should have
been painted upon the door of a tomb with wringing willows arched above
him and men in grey robes slowly booming the drums of death. Finally he
spoke. "I would be likin' a bottle o' stout, Nora, me girrl," he said.
"Niver fear you, Mickey," again she replied with cheerful obstinacy. She
was admiring her famous roast, which now sat in its platter on the rack
over the range. There was a lull in her tumultuous duties. The old man
coughed and moved his foot with a scraping sound on the stones. The
noise of dining pig-buyers, now heard through doors and winding
corridors of the inn, was a roll of far-away storm.
A woman in a dark dress entered the kitchen and keenly examined the
roast and Nora's other feats. "Mickey here would be wantin' a bottle o'
stout," said the girl to her mistress. The woman turned towards the
spectral figure in the gloom, and regarded it quietly with a clear eye.
"Have yez the money, Mickey?" repeated the woman of the house.
Profoundly embittered, he replied in short terms, "I have."
"There now," cried Nora, in astonishment and admiration. Poising a large
iron spoon, she was motionless, staring with open mouth at the old man.
He searched his pockets slowly during a complete silence in the kitchen.
He brought forth two coppers and laid them sadly, reproachfully, and yet
defiantly on the table.
"There now," cried Nora, stupefied.
They brought him a bottle of the black brew, and Nora poured it out for
him with her own red hand, which looked to be as broad as his chest. A
collar of brown foam curled at the top of the glass. With measured
moments the old man filled a short pipe. There came a sudden howl from
another part of the inn. One of the pig-buyers was at the head of the
stairs bawling for the mistress. The two women hurriedly freighted
themselves with the roast and the vegetables, and sprang with them to
placate the pig-buyers. Alone, the old man studied the gleam of the fire
on the floor. It faded and brightened in the way of lightning at the
horizon's edge.
When Nora returned, the strapping grenadier of a girl was blushing and
giggling. The pig-buyers had been humorous. "I moind the toime--" began
the man sorrowfully. "I moind the toime whin yea was a wee bit of a
girrl, Nora, an' wouldn't be havin' words wid min loike thim buyers."
"I moind the toime whin yea could attind to your own affairs, ye ould
skileton," said the girl promptly. He made a gesture, which may have
expressed his stirring grief at the levity of the new generation, and
then lapsed into another stillness.
The girl, a giantess, carrying, lifting, pushing, an incarnation of
dauntless labour, changing the look of the whole kitchen with a moment's
manipulation of her great arms, did not heed the old man for a long
time. When she finally glanced toward him, she saw that he was sunk
forward with his grey face on his arms. A growl of heavy breathing
ascended. He was asleep.
She marched to him and put both hands to his collar. Despite his feeble
and dreamy protestations, she dragged him out from behind the table and
across the floor. She opened the door and thrust him into the night.
II.--BALLYDEHOB.
The illimitable inventive incapacity of the excursion companies has made
many circular paths throughout Ireland, and on these well-pounded roads
the guardians of the touring public may be seen drilling the little
travellers in squads. To rise in rebellion, to face the superior clerk
in his bureau, to endure his smile of pity and derision, and finally to
wring freedom from him, is as difficult in some parts of Ireland as it
is in all parts of Switzerland. To see the tourists chained in gangs
and taken to see the Lakes of Killarney is a sad spectacle, because
these people believe that they are learning Ireland, even as men believe
that they are studying America when they contemplate the Niagara Falls.
But afterwards, if one escapes, one can go forth, unguided, untaught and
alone, and look at Ireland. The joys of the pig-market, the delirium of
a little tap-room filled with brogue, the fierce excitement of viewing
the Royal Irish Constabulary fishing for trout, the whole quaint and
primitive machinery of the peasant life--its melancholy, its sunshine,
its humour--all this is then the property of the man who breaks like a
Texan steer out of the pens and corrals of the tourist agencies. For
what syndicate of maiden ladies--it is these who masquerade as tourist
agencies--what syndicate of maiden ladies knows of the existence, for
instance, of Ballydehob?
One has a sense of disclosure at writing the name of Ballydehob. It was
really a valuable secret. There is in Ballydehob not one thing that is
commonly pointed out to the stranger as a thing worthy of a half-tone
reproduction in a book. There is no cascade, no peak, no lake, no guide
with a fund of useless information, no gamins practised in the seduction
of tourists. It is not an exhibit, an entry for a prize, like a heap of
melons or cow. It is simply an Irish village wherein live some three
hundred Irish and four constables.
If one or two prayer-towers spindled above Ballydehob it would be a
perfect Turkish village. The red tiles and red bricks of England do not
appear at all. The houses are low, with soiled white walls. The doors
open abruptly upon dark old rooms. Here and there in the street is some
crude cobbling done with round stones taken from the bed of a brook. At
times there is a great deal of mud. Chickens depredate warily about the
doorsteps, and intent pigs emerge for plunder from the alleys. It is
unavoidable to admit that many people would consider Ballydehob quite
too grimy.
Nobody lives here that has money. The average English tradesman with his
back-breaking respect for this class, his reflex contempt for that
class, his reverence for the tin gods, could here be a commercial lord
and bully the people in one or two ways, until they were thrown back
upon the defence which is always near them, the ability to cut his skin
into strips with a wit that would be a foreign tongue to him. For amid
his wrongs and his rights and his failures--his colossal failures--the
Irishman retains this delicate blade for his enemies, for his friends,
for himself, the ancestral dagger of fast sharp speaking from fast sharp
seeing--an inheritance which could move the world. And the Royal Irish
Constabulary fished for trout in the adjacent streams.
Mrs. Kearney keeps the hotel. In Ireland male innkeepers die young.
Apparently they succumb to conviviality when it is presented to them in
the guise of a business duty. Naturally honest, temperate men, their
consciences are lulled to false security by this idea of hard drinking
being necessary to the successful keeping of a public-house. It is very
terrible.
But they invariably leave behind them capable widows, women who do not
recognise conviviality as a business obligation. And so all through
Ireland one finds these brisk widows keeping hotels with a precision
that is almost military.
In Kearney's there is always a wonderful collection of old women, bent
figures shrouded in shawls who reach up scrawny fingers to take their
little purchases from Mary Agnes, who presides sometimes at the bar, but
more often at the shop that fronts it in the same room. In the gloom of
a late afternoon these old women are as mystic as the swinging, chanting
witches on a dark stage when the thunder-drum rolls and the lightning
flashes by schedule. When a grey rain sweeps through the narrow street
of Ballydehob, and makes heavy shadows in Kearney's tap-room, these old
creatures, with their high mournful voices, and the mystery of their
shawls, their moans and aged mutterings when they are obliged to take a
step, raise the dead superstitions from the bottom of a man's mind.
"My boy," remarked my London friend cheerfully, "these might have
furnished sons to be Aldermen or Congressmen in the great city of New
York."
"Aldermen or Congressmen of the great city of New York always take care
of their mothers," I answered meekly.
On a barrel, over in a corner, sat a yellow-bearded Irish farmer in
tattered clothes who wished to exchange views on the Armenian massacres.
He had much information and a number of theories in regard to them. He
also advanced the opinion that the chief political aim of Russia at
present is in the direction of China, and that it behoved other Powers
to keep an eye on her. He thought the revolutionists in Cuba would never
accept autonomy at the hands of Spain. His pipe glowed comfortably from
his corner; waving the tuppenny glass of stout in the air, he discoursed
on the business of the remote ends of the earth with the glibness of a
fourth secretary of Legation. Here was a little farmer, digging betimes
in a forlorn patch of wet ground, a man to whom a sudden two shillings
would appear as a miracle, a ragged, unkempt peasant, whose mind roamed
the world like the soul of a lost diplomat. This unschooled man believed
that the earth was a sphere inhabited by men that are alike in the
essentials, different in the manners, the little manners, which are
accounted of such great importance by the emaciated. He was to a degree
capable of knowing that he lived on a sphere and not on the apex of a
triangle.
And yet, when the talk had turned another corner, he confidently assured
the assembled company that a hair from a horse's tail when thrown in a
brook would turn shortly to an eel.
III.--THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.
The newspapers called it a Veritable Arsenal. There was a description of
how the sergeant of Constabulary had bent an ear to receive whispered
information of the concealed arms, and had then marched his men swiftly
and by night to surround a certain house. The search elicited a
double-barrelled breech-loading shot-gun, some empty shells, powder,
shot, and a loading machine. The point of it was that some of the Irish
papers called it a Veritable Arsenal, and appeared to congratulate the
Government upon having strangled another unhappy rebellion in its nest.
They floundered and misnamed and mis-reasoned, and made a spectacle of
the great modern craft of journalism, until the affair of this poor
poacher was too absurd to be pitiable, and Englishmen over their coffee
next morning must have almost believed that the prompt action of the
Constabulary had quelled a rising. Thus it is that the Irish fight the
Irish.
One cannot look Ireland straight in the face without seeing a great many
constables. The country is dotted with little garrisons. It must have
been said a thousand times that there is an absolute military
occupation. The fact is too plain.
The constable himself becomes a figure interesting in its isolation. He
has in most cases a social position which is somewhat analogous to that
of a Turk in Thessaly. But then, in the same way, the Turk has the
Turkish army. He can have battalions as companions and make the
acquaintance of brigades. The constable has the Constabulary, it is
true; but to be cooped with three or four others in a small white-washed
iron-bound house on some bleak country side is not an exact parallel to
the Thessalian situation. It looks to be a life that is infinitely
lonely, ascetic, and barren. Two keepers of a lighthouse at a bitter end
of land in a remote sea will, if they are properly let alone, make a
murder in time. Five constables imprisoned 'mid a folk that will not
turn a face toward them, five constables planted in a populated silence,
may develop an acute and vivid economy, dwell in scowling dislike. A
religious asylum in a snow-buried mountain pass will breed conspiring
monks. A separated people will beget an egotism that is almost titanic.
A world floating distinctly in space will call itself the only world.
The progression is perfect.
But the constables take the second degree. They are next to the
lighthouse keepers. The national custom of meeting stranger and friend
alike on the road with a cheery greeting like "God save you" is too
kindly and human a habit not to be missed. But all through the South of
Ireland one sees the peasant turn his eyes pretentiously to the side of
the road at the passing of the constable. It seemed to be generally
understood that to note the presence of a constable was to make a
conventional error. None looked, nodded, or gave sign. There was a line
drawn so sternly that it reared like a fence. Of course, any police
force in any part of the world can gather at its heels a riff-raff of
people, fawning always on a hand licensed to strike that would be larger
than the army of the Potomac, but of these one ordinarily sees little.
The mass of the Irish strictly obey the stern tenet. One hears often of
the ostracism or other punishment that befell some girl who was caught
flirting with a constable.
Naturally the constable retreats to his pride. He is commonly a
soldierly-looking chap, straight, lean, long-strided, well set-up. His
little saucer of a forage cap sits obediently on his ear, as it does for
the British soldier. He swings a little cane. He takes his medicine with
a calm and hard face, and evidently stares full into every eye. But it
is singular to find in the situation of the Royal Irish Constabulary the
quality of pathos.
It is not known if these places in the South of Ireland are called
disturbed districts. Over them hangs the peace of Surrey, but the word
disturbance has an elastic arrangement by which it can be made to cover
anything. All of the villages visited garrisoned from four to ten men.
They lived comfortably in their white houses, strolled in pairs over the
country roads, picked blackberries, and fished for trout. If at some
time there came a crisis, one man was more than enough to surround it.
The remaining nine add dignity to the scene. The crisis chiefly
consisted of occasional drunken men who were unable to understand the
local geography on Saturday nights.
The note continually struck was that each group of constables lived on a
little social island, and there was no boat to take them off. There has
been no such marooning since the days of the pirates. The sequestration
must be complete when a man with a dinky little cap on his ear is not
allowed to talk to the girls.
But they fish for trout. Isaac Walton is the father of the Royal Irish
Constabulary. They could be seen on any fine day whipping the streams
from source to mouth. There was one venerable sergeant who made a rod
less than a yard long. With a line of about the same length attached to
this rod, he hunted the gorse-hung banks of the little streams in the
hills. An eight-inch ribbon of water lined with masses of heather and
gorse will be accounted contemptible by a fisherman with an ordinary
rod. But it was the pleasure of the sergeant to lay on his stomach at
the side of such a stream and carefully, inch by inch, scout his hook
through the pools. He probably caught more trout than any three men in
county Cork. He fished more than any twelve men in the county Cork. Some
people had never seen him in any other posture but that of crowding
forward on his stomach to peer into a pool. They did not believe the
rumour that he sometimes stood or walked like a human.
IV.--A FISHING VILLAGE.
The brook curved down over the rocks, innocent and white, until it faced
a little strand of smooth gravel and flat stones. It turned then to the
left, and thereafter its guilty current was tinged with the pink of
diluted blood. Boulders standing neck-deep in the water were rimmed with
red; they wore bloody collars whose tops marked the supreme instant of
some tragic movement of the stream. In the pale green shallows of the
bay's edge, the outward flow from the criminal little brook was as
eloquently marked as if a long crimson carpet had been laid upon the
waters. The scene of the carnage was the strand of smooth gravel and
flat stones, and the fruit of the carnage was cleaned mackerel.
Far to the south, where the slate of the sea and the grey of the sky
wove together, could be seen Fastnet Rock, a mere button on the moving,
shimmering cloth, while a liner, no larger than a needle, spun a thread
of smoke aslant. The gulls swept screaming along the dull line of the
other shore of roaring Water Bay, and near the mouth of the brook
circled among the fishing boats that lay at anchor, their brown,
leathery sails idle and straight. The wheeling, shrieking tumultuous
birds stared with their hideous unblinking eyes at the Capers--men from
Cape Clear--who prowled to and fro on the decks amid shouts and the
creak of the tackle. Shoreward, a little shrivelled man, overcome by a
profound melancholy, fished hopelessly from the end of the pier. Back of
him, on a hillside, sat a white village, nestled among more trees than
is common in this part of Southern Ireland.
A dinghy sculled by a youth in a blue jersey wobbled rapidly past the
pier-head and stopped at the foot of the moss-green, dank, stone steps,
where the waves were making slow but regular leaps to mount higher, and
then falling back gurgling, choking, and waving the long, dark seaweeds.
The melancholy fisherman walked over to the top of the steps. The young
man was fastening the painter of his boat in an iron ring. In the dinghy
were three round baskets heaped high with mackerel. They glittered like
masses of new silver coin at times, and then other lights of faint
carmine and peacock blue would chase across the sides of the fish in a
radiance that was finer than silver.
The melancholy fisherman looked at this wealth. He shook his head
mournfully. "Ah, now, Denny. This would not be a very good kill."
The young man snorted indignantly at his fellow-townsman. "This will be
th' bist kill th' year, Mickey. Go along now."
The melancholy old man became immersed in deeper gloom. "Shure I have
been in th' way of seein' miny a grand day whin th' fish was runnin'
sthrong in these wathers, but there will be no more big kills here. No
more. No more." At the last his voice was only a dismal croak.
"Come along outa that now, Mickey," cried the youth impatiently. "Come
away wid you."
"All gone now. A-ll go-o-ne now!" The old man wagged his grey head, and,
standing over the baskets of fishes, groaned as Mordecai groaned for his
people.
"'Tis you would be cryin' out, Mickey, whativer," said the youth with
scorn. He was giving his basket into the hands of five incompetent but
jovial little boys to carry to a waiting donkey cart.
"An' why should I not?" said the old man sternly. "Me--in want--"
As the youth swung his boat swiftly out toward an anchored smack, he
made answer in a softer tone. "Shure, if yez got for th' askin', 'tis
you, Mickey, that would niver be in want." The melancholy old man
returned to his line. And the only moral in this incident is that the
young man is the type that America procures from Ireland, and the old
man is one of the home types, bent, pallid, hungry, disheartened, with a
vision that magnifies with a microscope glance any fly-wing of
misfortune, and heroically and conscientiously invents disasters for the
future. Usually the thing that remains to one of this type is a sympathy
as quick and acute for others as is his pity for himself.
The donkey with his cart-load of gleaming fish, and escorted by the
whooping and laughing boys, galloped along the quay and up a street of
the village until he was turned off at the gravelly strand, at the point
where the colour of the brook was changing. Here twenty people of both
sexes and all ages were preparing the fish for market. The mackerel,
beautiful as fire-etched salvers, first were passed to a long table,
around which worked as many women as could have elbow room. Each one
could clean a fish with two motions of the knife. Then the washers, men
who stood over the troughs filled with running water from the brook,
soused the fish until the outlet became a sinister element that in an
instant changed the brook from a happy thing of gorse and heather of the
hills to an evil stream, sullen and reddened. After being washed, the
fish were carried to a group of girls with knives, who made the cuts
that enabled each fish to flatten out in the manner known of the
breakfast table. And after the girls came the men and boys, who rubbed
each fish thoroughly with great handfuls of coarse salt, which was
whiter than snow, and shone in the daylight from a multitude of gleaming
points, diamond-like. Last came the packers, drilled in the art of
getting neither too few nor too many mackerel into a barrel, sprinkling
constantly prodigal layers of brilliant salt. There were many
intermediate corps of boys and girls carrying fish from point to point,
and sometimes building them in stacks convenient to the hands of the
more important labourers.
A vast tree hung its branches over the place. The leaves made a shadow
that was religious in its effect, as if the spot was a chapel
consecrated to labour. There was a hush upon the devotees. The women at
the large table worked intently, steadfastly, with bowed heads. Their
old petticoats were tucked high, showing the coarse brogans which they
wore--and the visible ankles were proportioned to the brogans as the
diameter of a straw is to that of a half-crown. The national red
under-petticoat was a fundamental part of the scene.
Just over the wall, in the sloping street, could be seen the bejerseyed
Capers, brawny, and with shocks of yellow beard. They paced slowly to
and fro amid the geese and children. They, too, spoke little, even to
each other; they smoked short pipes in saturnine dignity and silence. It
was the fish. They who go with nets upon the reeling sea grow still with
the mystery and solemnity of the trade. It was Brittany; the first
respectable catch of the year had changed this garrulous Irish hamlet
into a hamlet of Brittany.
The Capers were waiting for high tide. It had seemed for a long time
that, for the south of Ireland, the mackerel had fled in company with
potato; but here, at any rate, was a temporary success, and the occasion
was momentous. A strolling Caper took his pipe and pointed with the stem
out upon the bay. There was little wind, but an ambitious skipper had
raised his anchor, and the craft, her strained brown sails idly
swinging, was drifting away on the first oily turn of the tide.
On the top of the pier the figure of the melancholy old man was
portrayed upon the polished water. He was still dangling his line
hopelessly. He gazed down into the misty water. Once he stirred and
murmured: "Bad luck to thim." Otherwise he seemed to remain motionless
for hours. One by one the fishing-boats floated away. The brook changed
its colour, and in the dusk showed a tumble of pearly white among the
rocks.
A cold night wind, sweeping transversely across the pier, awakened
perhaps the rheumatism in the old man's bones. He arose and, mumbling
and grumbling, began to wind his line. The waves were lashing the
stones. He moved off towards the intense darkness of the village
streets.
SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES
FOUR MEN IN A CAVE.
LIKEWISE FOUR QUEENS, AND A SULLIVAN COUNTY HERMIT.
The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill.
The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations to
his companions.
"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we investigate
this thing," said he, in conclusion.
They were won.
The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black mouth
had gaped at him. The four men took lighted pine-knot and clambered over
boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside lay a little
tilted hole. At its side they halted.
"Well?" said the little man.
They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He tried
to struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after,
he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over his
shoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed.
A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy,
green-mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere the
torches became studies in red blaze and black smoke.
"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back." His
companions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the little
man pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words and
cautiously continued his crawl.
Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop
upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed
alive and writhing. When the little man endeavoured to stand erect the
ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His
clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke,
tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch.
"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back," cried he. At that moment he
caught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him.
"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out."
The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around the
corner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that the
little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a
yellow light.
The little man wriggled painfully about, and descended feet in advance.
The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care.
The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and
roared thunderously below him. Lesser stone, loosened by the men above
him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and,
turning half-way about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and
careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the
rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in
his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The pause
of the little man angered him.
"Go on, you fool," he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid."
"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself,
imbecile!"
The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot--!"
He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into
the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery
incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the support
of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man,
who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursing
little man.
They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy floor of the passage.
The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball of
tangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combined
assault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown in
darkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even in
his convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he was
satisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twenty
feet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light of
candles. It dissolved and became eyes.
The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small
fire smouldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In
another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets.
Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.
Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did
not curse the little man, nor did the little swear, in the abstract.
Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the centre of the room of rocks.
A great, grey stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of
the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from
the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped in
his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person in
the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparel
was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting,
fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated,
their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The
gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it
found the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned.
The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the
glass.
Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a
cave, cold, solemn, and damp.
"It's your ante," he said.
"What?" said the little man.
The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the
chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box.
His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.
They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They
whispered.
"A vampire!" said one.
"A ghoul!" said another.
"A Druid before the sacrifice," murmured another.
"The shade of an Aztec witch doctor," said the little man.
As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent a change. It became a
livid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man like
impassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. "It's
your ante!" With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife and
advanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and,
scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man's legs.
His quaking companions pushed him forward.
Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket.
"How much?" he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered.
The carbuncles faded.
"Three dollars," said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang against
the walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits with
voices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket and
placed "three ones" upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked at the
little volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of playing
cards.
Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the grey
beard and the agonised little man played at poker. The three other men
crouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror.
Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. The
candles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the corner
expired.
Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down his
hand and quavered: "I can't call you this time, sir. I'm dead broke."
"What?" shrieked the recluse. "Not call me! Villain! Dastard! Cur! I
have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could not
fit his throat. He choked, wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then
the power of his body was concentrated in a word: "Go!"
He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. The
little man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozen
companions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plunged
after the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushing
brought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp in
furious springs.
The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints of
departing night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenished
camp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide.
"Hello!" he shouted at their approach. "Be you fellers ready to go deer
huntin'?"
Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers.
Finally, the pudgy man came forward.
"John," he inquired, "do you know anything peculiar about this cave
below here?"
"Yes," said Willerkins at once; "Tom Gardner."
"What?" said the pudgy man.
"Tom Gardner."
"How's that?"
"Well, you see," said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls at
his pipe, "Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these here
parts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, and
one time he got a-gamblin' in one of them there dens. He wentter the
dickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol' his
folks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl'. His
leetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after--"
The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed of
devils.
"I wouldn't give a cuss if he had left me 'nough money to get home on
the doggoned, grey-haired red pirate," he shrilled, in a seething
sentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly.
"Oh, well," he said, "we can tell a great tale when we get back to the
city after having investigated this thing."
"Go to the devil," replied the little man.
THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN.
A TALE OF SULLIVAN COUNTY.
On the brow of a pine-plumed hillock there sat a little man with his
back against a tree. A venerable pipe hung from his mouth, and
smoke-wreaths curled slowly skyward. He was muttering to himself with
his eyes fixed on an irregular black opening in the green wall of forest
at the foot of the hill. Two vague waggon ruts led into the shadows. The
little man took his pipe in his hands and addressed the listening pines.
"I wonder what the devil it leads to," said he.
A grey, fat rabbit came lazily from a thicket and sat in the opening.
Softly stroking his stomach with his paw, he looked at the little man in
a thoughtful manner. The little man threw a stone, and the rabbit
blinked and ran through an opening. Green, shadowy portals seemed to
close behind him.
The little man started. "He's gone down that roadway," he said, with
ecstatic mystery to the pines. He sat a long time and contemplated the
door to the forest. Finally, he arose, and awakening his limbs, started
away. But he stopped and looked back.
"I can't imagine what it leads to," muttered he. He trudged over the
brown mats of pine needles, to where, in a fringe of laurel, a tent was
pitched, and merry flames caroused about some logs. A pudgy man was
fuming over a collection of tin dishes. He came forward and waved a
plate furiously in the little man's face.
"I've washed the dishes for three days. What do you think I am--"
He ended a red oration with a roar: "Damned if I do it any more."
The little man gazed dim-eyed away. "I've been wonderin' what it leads
to."
"What?"
"That road out yonder. I've been wonderin' what it leads to. Maybe, some
discovery or something," said the little man.
The pudgy man laughed. "You're an idiot. It leads to ol' Jim Boyd's over
on the Lumberland Pike."
"Ho!" said the little man, "I don't believe that."
The pudgy man swore. "Fool, what does it lead to, then?"
"I don't know just what, but I'm sure it leads to something great or
something. It looks like it."
While the pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity with
fish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously
herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup
of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man was
wandering off.
"He's gone to look at that hole," cried the pudgy man.
The little man went to the edge of the pine-plumed hillock, and, sitting
down, began to make smoke and regard the door to the forest. There was
stillness for an hour. Compact clouds hung unstirred in the sky. The
pines stood motionless, and pondering.
Suddenly the little man slapped his knee and bit his tongue. He stood up
and determinedly filled his pipe, rolling his eye over the bowl to the
doorway. Keeping his eyes fixed he slid dangerously to the foot of the
hillock and walked down the waggon ruts. A moment later he passed from
the noise of the sunshine to the gloom of the woods.
The green portals closed, shutting out live things. The little man
trudged on alone.
Tall tangled grass grew in the roadway, and the trees bended obstructing
branches. The little man followed on over pine-clothed ridges and down
through water-soaked swales. His shoes were cut by rocks of the
mountains, and he sank ankle-deep in mud and moss of swamps. A curve
just ahead lured him miles.
Finally, as he wended the side of a ridge, the road disappeared from
beneath his feet. He battled with hordes of ignorant bushes on his way
to knolls and solitary trees which invited him. Once he came to a tall,
bearded pine. He climbed it, and perceived in the distance a peak. He
uttered an ejaculation and fell out.
He scrambled to his feet, and said: "That's Jones's Mountain, I guess.
It's about six miles from our camp as the crow flies."
He changed his course away from the mountain, and attacked the bushes
again. He climbed over great logs, golden-brown in decay, and was
opposed by thickets of dark-green laurel. A brook slid through the ooze
of a swamp; cedars and hemlocks hung their sprays to the edges of pools.
The little man began to stagger in his walk. After a time he stopped and
mopped his brow.
"My legs are about to shrivel up and drop off," he said.... "Still if I
keep on in this direction, I am safe to strike the Lumberland Pike
before sundown."
He dived at a clump of tag-alders, and emerging, confronted Jones's
Mountain.
The wanderer sat down in a clear place and fixed his eyes on the summit.
His mouth opened widely, and his body swayed at times. The little man
and the peak stared in silence.
A lazy lake lay asleep near the foot of the mountain. In its bed of
water-grass some frogs leered at the sky and crooned. The sun sank in
red silence, and the shadows of the pines grew formidable. The expectant
hush of evening, as if some thing were going to sing a hymn, fell upon
the peak and the little man.
A leaping pickerel off on the water created a silver circle that was
lost in black shadows. The little man shook himself and started to his
feet, crying: "For the love of Mike, there's eyes in this mountain! I
feel 'em! Eyes!"
He fell on his face.
When he looked again, he immediately sprang erect and ran.
"It's comin'!"
The mountain was approaching.
The little man scurried, sobbing through the thick growth. He felt his
brain turning to water. He vanquished brambles with mighty bounds.
But after a time he came again to the foot of the mountain.
"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me." He grovelled.
Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood.