That procession was seven miles long, and everyone who marched or rode,
and each of the massed spectators had his or her terror of life at the
back of the heart. But RoBards knew only his own anxiety.
The Fire Kings had left their engine house by the time he reached the
place and he had to search for them in the welter of humanity. The
Battery was the point from which the parade was to start and every
street within two miles of it was filled with men and horses and mobs
of impatient people already footsore with standing about on the sharp
cobblestones.
At last the serpent began to move its glittering head. The Grand
Marshal, General Hopkins, set forth with a retinue of generals and
aids, guards and riflemen. The horse artillery and various guard
regiments followed with seven brass bands. The second division under
Major General Stryker consisted of the Governor and his staff, the
state artillery, State Fencibles and cadets, councilmen from various
cities, foreign consuls, and members of the Society of the Cincinnati,
escorting the water commissioners and engineers, all in barouches. The
third division included officers of the army and navy and militia,
“reverend the clergy,” judges, lawyers, professors, and students; the
chamber of commerce and the board of trade. The firemen made up the
fourth division. Four other divisions tailed after.
It seemed that there could be nobody left to watch when so many
marched. But the walks and windows, porches and roofs were a living
plaster of heads and bodies. New York had more than doubled its
numbers since the Erie Canal festival and had now nearly three hundred
and fifty thousand souls within its bounds, as well as thousands on
thousands of visitors.
It gave RoBards’ heart another twinge to stand an obscure member of a
fire-gang and watch Harry Chalender go by in a carriage as one of the
victorious engineers.
RoBards had fought him and his ambitions and must haul on a rope now
like a harnessed Roman captive, while his victor triumphed past him in
a chariot, or, worse, a barouche.
Life had defeated RoBards again and again. With the loftiest motives
he had been always the loser, and he could not understand things.
Chalender was a flippant fencer with life; yet somehow he fought always
on the winning side and the worthier side. His mortal offense had been
condoned, outlawed, and the offended ones helped to conceal his guilt.
It was bitter for an earnest man like RoBards to go afoot after such a
rake as Chalender. Why should he have killed and hidden Jud Lasher in a
wall, and let Harry Chalender, who had been as evil, ride by in state
showered with the cheers due a hero, a savior of New York?
RoBards would never cease to shudder lest it be found out that he had
spared Chalender; and he would never cease to shudder lest it be found
out that he had punished Jud Lasher. A jury would probably acquit him
for killing Lasher, but only if he exculpated himself by publishing
the disaster that had befallen Immy. If he had killed Chalender and
published his wife’s frailty, a jury would have acquitted him for
that, too. But why should it have befallen him to be compelled to such
decisions and such secrecies?
Now his wife, holding his daughter in her lap, would wave salutations
to Chalender, and remember—what would she remember? And would she blush
with remorse or with recollected ecstasy? RoBards turned so scarlet
at the thought that when the Fire Kings halted for a moment, one of
his companions told him he looked queer and offered him a nip at his
hip-flask of brandy.
RoBards said it was the heat, and then the command to march resounded
along the line. The Fire Kings resumed the long trudge round Bowling
Green up Broadway all the distance to Union Park, round the Park and
down the Bowery, through Grand Street and East Broadway and Chatham to
City Hall Park, where they were to form on the surrounding sidewalks
during the exercises.
The fire division was led by a band of music from the Neptune Hose
Company of Philadelphia. Engines and hose carts from there and other
cities followed, all smothered in flowers and ribbons. The New York
Fire Department was preceded by its banner, borne on a richly carpeted
stage drawn by four white horses elegantly caparisoned, each steed led
by a black groom in Turkish dress.
That banner was a masterwork. On one side widows and orphans blessed
the Fire Department for its protection, while a “hero of the flames”
attended them. Neptune towered above them, “evidently delighted with
the victory he had accomplished over his ancient enemy, the Demon of
Fire, by the aid of his skillful and intrepid allies, the firemen of
New York.”
On the other side of the banner was the Queen of Cities pointing to the
Croton Dam. The banner of mazarine blue, with crimson and amber fringe,
tassels, and cord, was surmounted by a carved wood trumpet and helmet,
ladder and trumpet, and an eagle with extended wings.
Hundreds of firemen followed in glazed caps, red flannel shirts, and
pantaloons of various colors. The devices were wonderful, a scene
from the tragedy of _Metamora_, a scene from _Romeo and Juliet_, a
phœnix, many phœnices, Neptunes galore, burning churches, a mother
rescuing a child from an eagle’s nest, an Indian maid parting from her
lover, Liberties, sea-horses, tritons, Hebes, the Battle of Bunker
Hill, Cupids, mottoes like “From our vigilance you derive safety,”
“Duty, though in peril,” “We come to conquer and to save,” “Industry
and perseverance overcome every obstacle,” “Combined to do good and
not to injure,” “Semper paratus,” “We are pledged to abstain from all
intoxicating drinks.”
Among the fascinating objects carried in procession were the Bible on
which George Washington had taken the first presidential oath; the
printing press used by Benjamin Franklin in London, and a modern
press, for contrast, striking off an ode written for the occasion; a
foundry; a group of millers up to their eyes in meal as they ground
corn and bagged it; sections of Croton water pipe of every dimension
with examples of all the tools; a display of gold and silverware of
several thousand dollars’ value.
The Temperance Societies attracted especial attention. They included
gray-haired men, boys, mothers and daughters, and numerous reformed
drunkards. Their banners were inspiring. The Bakers’ Temperance
Benevolent Society carried a banner showing on one side all the horrors
of intemperance, “the lightning destroying the false light that has
already enticed the ship of the Inebriate to his destruction; the
moderate drinker coming on under easy sail, just entering the sea
of trouble; the first glass making its appearance on the horizon; a
figure representing beastly intoxication, another just throwing off the
shackles of intemperance; the Anchor of Hope firmly planted in the Rock
of Safety with the pledge of total abstinence for its cable extending
across the abyss of destruction and winding through the land. On the
other side, the Genius of Temperance offered the Staff of Life and the
Cup of Health; the Temple of Science and Wisdom divided the picture
with Peace, Commerce, Mechanics, and Agriculture flanking. A smaller
banner showed the interior of a Bake House with the Temperate Bakers
cheerfully performing their work.”
Other banners were even more comprehensive.
The procession moved along with the usual open and shut effect. There
would come an abrupt halt with everybody in a jumble. Then a quick
start-off and a lengthening gap that must be closed on the run. It was
annoying, wearisome, and soon began to seem foolish. Why should one
half of the town wear its feet off marching past the other half of the
town whose feet were asleep with the long sitting still?
By a stroke of luck, the Fire Kings made a long pause near the
residence on Broadway where Patty and her two families, old and young,
had been invited to watch the parade. RoBards was as confused as a
silly child when his son Keith recognized him and advertised him
with loud yells of “Papa!” He and Immy then came bolting to the curb,
followed by Patty.
People stared and made comments on the amazing thing that a man’s wife
should violate decorum with such public friendliness. It was as bad
manners as greeting a friend cordially on a Sunday.
Patty edged close to her husband and said—as if she knew it would help
him on his journey:
“Did you see how fat Harry Chalender is getting? He looked like an
idiot sitting up there while a man of your ability walks. It’s simply
disgusting!”
Oh, mystic comfort of contempt—the lean man’s for the fat; the fat
man’s for the lean; the failure’s for the conqueror! By the alchemy of
sympathy, RoBards’ anger was dissipated by finding its duplicate in his
wife’s heart. He smiled at her earnestness in a matter that had but
lately driven him frantic. It is thus that men prove women excitable.
Then the bands ahead and abaft struck up at the same time but not with
the same tune and he had to move on, his mind and his feet trying in
vain to adapt themselves to both rackets.
It was two o’clock before the advanced guard of Washington Grays
galloped up in front of the City Hall. It was half past four when the
last man had passed in review, and Samuel Stevens, Esq., president of
the Board of Water Commissioners, began his address.
He cried: “The works of Rome were built by soldiers and by slaves. Ours
was voted for by freemen, was constructed by freemen—and we make the
aspiration that in all ages to come it may bless freemen, and freemen
only!”
The president of the Croton Aqueduct Board followed, saying: “The
obstacles have disappeared! The hill has been leveled or pierced, the
stream and the valley have been overleaped, the rock has been smitten!
Nature, yielding to human industry, perseverance, and skill, no longer
withholds the boon she had before denied us. A river, whose pure
waters are gathered from the lakes of the mountain-range, arrested and
diverted in its course, after pouring its tribute through a permanent
and spacious archway for more than forty miles, at length reaches our
magnificent reservoirs, from whence it is conducted by subterranean
conduits, extending one hundred and thirty additional miles, throughout
the greatest portion of our city.”
When he had finished, the ladies and gentlemen of the Sacred Music
Society sang the ode which General George P. Morris had written at the
request of the Corporation of the City of New York:
“Gushing from this living fountain,
Music pours a falling strain,
As the Goddess of the Mountain
Comes with all her sparkling train....
“Gently o’er the rippling water,
In her coral-shallop bright,
Glides the rock-king’s dove-eyed daughter,
Deck’d in robes of virgin white....
“Water leaps as if delighted
While the conquered foes retire!
Pale Contagion flies affrighted
With the baffled demon, Fire!...
“Round the Aqueducts of story,
As the mists of Lethe throng,
Croton’s waves in all their glory
Troop in melody along.”
From his post on the sidewalk RoBards could hear snatches of the
speeches, bursts of song. He joined in the “nine hearty cheers for the
City of New York and perpetuity to the Croton Water” when the Grand
Marshal called for them.
Then the ceremonies were over and a cold collation was served in the
City Hall, with Croton water and lemonade, but no wine or spirituous
liquors. Patty sent the children home with her parents and joined her
husband at the feast.
Mayor Morris offered a toast to the Governor and he responded,
remarking that New York “but yesterday a dusty trading mart,” had now
“the pure mountain stream gushing through its streets and sparkling in
its squares. To the noble rivers with which it was encircled by Nature,
is now added the limpid stream brought hither by Art, until in the
words of the Roman poet, alike descriptive and prophetic, her citizens
exult,
“_inter flumina nota
Et fontes sacros._”
The night was as brilliant as the day. All the places of public
amusement were crowded and at the Tabernacle a sacred concert was
given. The fair at Niblo’s was suffocatingly frequented, and the
fireworks were splendid. At Castle Garden there were fireworks and a
balloon ascension. The museums and hotels were brilliantly illuminated;
and at the Astor House seven hundred window lights were hung.
The Common Council caused a silver medal to be struck in commemoration
of the occasion, showing on one side the reservoir on Murray’s Hill, on
the other a cross-section of the aqueduct. It would savor of boasting,
perhaps, to aver that this medal was the ugliest in the history of
medalurgy.
Better than all the fireworks of oratory or powder, more blithe than
all the brass music, the roar of cannon and the rattle of firearms,
the bunting and the glitter, was the sudden outburst of the fountains.
The water that had come running down from the Croton dam leaped into
the air and fell with a resounding uproar. It reveled in the light and
bloomed in gigantic blossoms whose frothy shapes hardly changed, though
the drops that made them were never for a moment the same, but always
a new throng that rushed up and lapsed with a constant splashing and
bubbling.
In the City Hall Park the Croton flung itself sixty feet in the air and
came back diamonds. Eighteen jets were so arranged that they designed
various figures, “The Maid of the Mist,” “The Croton Plume,” “The
Dome.” In Union Park there was a willow that wept gleaming stars.
In Harlem there was a geyser more than a hundred feet tall. And the
sunlight thrust rainbows in among the silvery columns. At night colored
fireworks made them uncanny with glamor.
The people felt that the curses of thirst and plague and fire were
indeed banished forever. Time would blight this hope as it upsets all
other reckonings upon perfection, but for the moment hope announced the
millennium and everybody believed her.
By midnight the town was as weary as a boys’ school after a holiday.
When Patty and her husband reached home they found Keith awake and
waiting for them. Immy was asleep, her head enarmed like a bird’s head
curled under its wing. But Keith was staring from his cot. His little
eight-year-old head was athrob with gigantic plans that made doorknobs
of his eyes.
“Papa, I been thinkin’. You know when I was little I was going to be
the man who lights the street lamps; an’ ’en I was goin’ to be a night
watchman when I got grown up; an’ ’en I was goin’ to be a lawyer like
you are, and help you. But now I guess I’ll be a nengineer an’ build
waterworks an’ aqueducks an’ things like that—like Uncle Harry did the
Croton. And some day they’ll have a percession for me, too. You just
wait and see.”
There was no need for restraint of the laughter with which oldsters
mock youngsters’ dreams. That fatal reference to Chalender wrung the
lips of Patty and her husband with sardonic misery. They had once been
innocent, too, and they were still innocent in ambition. It was life
that made fun of them. What sport would it make of their children?