New York is a perplexing city to loaf in. (Walt Whitman if he came back
to Mannahatta would soon get brain fever.) During the middle hours of
the day, at any rate, it is almost impossible to idle with the proper
spirit and completeness. There is a prevailing bustle and skirmish that
"exerts a compulsion," as President Wilson would say. The air is
electric and nervous. We have often tried to dawdle gently about the
neighbourhood of the City Hall in the lunch hour, to let the general
form and spirit of that clearing among the cliffs sink into our mind, so
that we could get some picture of it. We have sat under a big brown
umbrella, to have our shoes shined, when we had nothing more important
to do than go to the doughnut foundry on Park Row and try some of those
delectable combinations of foods they have there, such as sponge cake
with whipped cream and chocolate fudge. And in a few seconds we have
found ourself getting all stirred up and crying loudly to the artist
that we only wanted a once-over, as we had an important appointment. You
have to put a very heavy brake on your spirit in downtown New York or
you find yourself dashing about in a prickle of excitement, gloriously
happy just to be in a hurry, without particularly caring whither you are
hastening, or why.
[Illustration]
One of the odd things about being in a hurry is that it seems so
fiercely important when you yourself are the hurrier and so comically
ludicrous when it is someone else. We see our friend Artaxerxes
scorching up Church Street and we scream with laughter at him, because
we know perfectly well that there is absolutely not one of his affairs
important enough to cause him to buzz along like that. We look after him
with a sort of mild and affectionate pity for a deluded creature who
thinks that his concerns are of such glorious magnitude. And then, a few
hours later, we find ourself on a subway car with only ten minutes to
catch the train for Salamis at Atlantic Avenue. And what is our state of
mind? We stand, gritting our teeth (we are too excited to sit, even if
there were a seat) and holding our watch. The whole train, it seems to
us, is occupied by invalids, tottering souls and lumbago cripples, who
creep off at the stations as though five seconds made not the slightest
difference. We glare and fume and could gladly see them all maced in
sunder with battle-axes. Nothing, it seems to us, could soothe our
bitter hunger for haste but to have a brilliant Lexington Avenue express
draw up at the platform with not a soul in it. Out would step a polite
guard, looking at his watch. "You want to catch a train at 5:27?" he
asks. "Yes, sir, yes, sir; step aboard." All the other competitors are
beaten back with knotted thongs and we are ushered to a seat. The bells
go chiming in quick sequence up the length of the train and we are off
at top speed, flying wildly past massed platforms of indignant people.
We draw up at Atlantic Avenue, and the solitary passenger, somewhat
appeased, steps off. "Compliments of the Interborough, sir," says the
guard.
The commuter, urgently posting toward the 5:27, misses the finest
flavour of the city's life, for it is in the two or three hours after
office work is over that the town is at her best. What a spry and
smiling mood is shown along the pavements, particularly on these clear,
warm evenings when the dropping sun pours a glowing tide of soft rosy
light along the cross-town streets. There is a cool lightness in the
air; restaurants are not yet crowded (it is, let us say, a little after
six) and beside snowy tablecloths the waiters stand indulgently with
folded arms. Everybody seems in a blithe and spirited humour. Work is
over for the day, and now what shall we do for amusement? This is the
very peak of living, it seems to us, as we sally cheerily along the
street. It is like the beginning of an O. Henry story. The streets are
fluttering with beautiful women; light summer frocks are twinkling in
the busy frolic air. Oh, to be turned loose at the corner of Broadway
and Thirty-second Street at 6:15 o'clock of a June evening, with nothing
to do but follow the smile of adventure to the utmost! Thirty-second, we
might add, is our favourite street in New York. It saddens us to think
that the old boarding house on the corner of Madison Avenue is vanished
now and all those quaint and humorous persons dispersed. We can still
remember the creak of the long stairs and the clink of a broken slab in
the tiled flooring of the hall as one walked down to the dining room.
Affection for any particular street largely depends on the associations
it has accumulated in one's mind. For several years most of our
adventures in New York centred round Thirty-second Street; but its
physique has changed so much lately that it has lost some of its appeal.
We remember an old stone-yard that used to stand where the Pennsylvania
Hotel is now, a queer jumbled collection of odd carvings and relics. At
the front door there was a bust of Pan on a tall pedestal, which used to
face us with a queer crooked grin twice a day, morning and evening. We
had a great affection for that effigy, and even wrote a little piece
about him in one of the papers, for which we got about $4 at a time
when it was considerably needed. We used to say to ourself that some day
when we had a home in the country we would buy Pan and set him in a Long
Island garden where he would feel more at home than in the dusty winds
of Thirty-second Street. Time went on and we disappeared from our old
haunts, and when we came back Pan had vanished, too. You may imagine our
pleasure when we found him again the other day standing in front of a
chop house on Forty-fourth Street.
But one great addition to the delights of the Thirty-second Street
region is the new and shining white tunnel that leads one from the Penn
Station subway platform right into the heart of what used (we think) to
be called Greeley Square. It is so dazzling and candid in its new tiling
that it seems rather like a vast hospital corridor. One emerges through
the Hudson Tube station and perhaps sets one's course for a little
restaurant on Thirty-fifth Street which always holds first place in our
affection. It is somewhat declined from its former estate, for the upper
floors, where the violent orchestra was and the smiling little
dandruffian used to sing solos when the evening grew glorious, are now
rented to a feather and ostrich plume factory. But the old basement is
still there, much the same in essentials, by which we mean the pickled
beet appetizers, the minestrone soup, the delicious soft bread with its
brittle crust, and the thick slices of rather pale roast beef swimming
in thin, pinkish gravy. And the three old French waiters, hardened in
long experience of the frailties of mortality, smile to see a former
friend. One, grinning upon us rather bashfully, recalls the time when
there was a hilarious Oriental wedding celebrating in a private room
upstairs and two young men insisted on going in to dance with the bride.
He has forgiven various pranks, we can see, though he was wont to be
outraged at the time. "Getting very stout," he says, beaming down at us.
"You weigh a hundred pounds more than you used to." This is not merely
cruel; it is untrue. We refrain from retorting on the growth of his bald
spot.