It was a soft, calm morning of sunshine and placid air. Clear and cool,
it was "a Herbert Spencer of a day," as H. G. Wells once remarked. The
vista of West Ninety-eighth Street, that engaging alcove in the city's
enormous life, was all freshness and kempt tranquillity, from the gray
roof of the old training ship at the river side up to the tall red spire
near Columbus Avenue. This pinnacle, which ripens to a fine claret
colour when suffused with sunset, we had presumed to be a church tower,
but were surprised, on exploration, to find it a standpipe of some sort
connected with the Croton water system.
Sunday morning in this neighbourhood has its own distinct character.
There is a certain air of luxurious ease in the picture. One has a
feeling that in those tall apartment houses there are a great many
ladies taking breakfast in negligee. They are wearing (if one may trust
the shop windows along Broadway) boudoir caps and mules. Mules, like
their namesakes in the animal world, are hybrid things, the offspring of
a dancing pump and a bedroom slipper. They are distinctly futile, but no
matter, no matter. Wearing mules, however, is not a mere vanity; it is
a form of physical culture, for these skimpish little things are always
disappearing under the bed, and crawling after them keeps one slender.
Again we say, no matter. This is no concern of ours.
[Illustration]
Near Broadway a prosperous and opulently tailored costume emerges from
an apartment house: cutaway coat, striped trousers, very long pointed
patent leather shoes with lilac cloth tops. Within this gear, we
presently see, is a human being, in the highest spirits. "All set!" he
says, joining a group of similars waiting by a shining limousine. Among
these, one lady of magnificently millinered aspect, and a smallish man
in very new and shiny riding boots, of which he is grandly conscious.
There are introductions. "Mr. Goldstone, meet Mrs. Silverware." They are
met. There is a flashing of eyes. Three or four silk hats simultaneously
leap into the shining air, are flourished and replaced. The observer is
aware of the prodigious gayety and excitement of life. All climb into
the car and roll away down Broadway. All save the little man in riding
boots. He is left on the sidewalk, gallantly waving his hand. Come, we
think, he is going riding. A satiny charger waits somewhere round the
corner. We will follow and see. He slaps his hunting crop against his
glorious boots, which are the hue of quebracho wood. No; to our chagrin,
he descends into the subway.
We sit on the shoeshining stand on Ninety-sixth Street, looking over the
Sunday papers. Very odd, in the adjoining chairs men are busily engaged
polishing shoes that have nobody in them, not visibly, at any rate.
Perhaps Sir Oliver is right after all. While we are not watching, the
beaming Italian has inserted a new pair of laces for us. Long afterward,
at bedtime, we find that he has threaded them in that unique way known
only to shoe merchants and polishers, by which every time they are tied
and untied one end of the lace gets longer and the other shorter. Life
is full of needless complexities. We descend the hill. Already (it is
9:45 A. M.) men are playing tennis on the courts at the corner of West
End Avenue. A great wagon crammed with scarlet sides of beef comes
stumbling up the hill, drawn, with difficulty, by five horses.
When we get down to the Ninety-Sixth Street pier we see the barque
_Windrush_ lying near by with the airy triangles of her rigging
pencilled against the sky, and look amorously on the gentle curve of her
strakes (if that is what they are). We feel that it would be a fine
thing to be off soundings, greeting the bounding billow, not to say the
bar-room steward; and yet, being a cautious soul of reservations all
compact, we must admit that about the time we got abreast of New Dorp
we would be homesick for our favourite subway station.
The pier, despite its deposit of filth, bales of old shoes, reeking
barrels, scows of rubbish, sodden papers, boxes of broken bottles and a
thick paste of dust and ash-powder everywhere, is a happy lounging
ground for a few idlers on Sunday morning. A large cargo steamer, the
_Eclipse_, lay at the wharf, standing very high out of the water. Three
small boys were watching a peevish old man tending his fishing lines,
fastened to wires with little bells on them. "What do you catch here?"
we said. Just then one of the little bells gave a cracked tinkle and the
angler pulled up a small fish, wriggling briskly, about three inches
long. This seemed to anger him. He seemed to consider himself in some
way humiliated by the incident. He grunted. One of the small boys was
tactful. "Oh, gee!" he said. "Sometimes you catch fish that long,"
indicating a length which began at about a yard and diminished to about
eighteen inches as he meditated. "I don't know what kind they are," he
said. "They're not trouts, but some other kind of fish."
This started the topic of relative sizes, always fascinating to small
boys. "That's a pretty big boat," said one, craning up at the tall stem
of the _Eclipse_. "Oh, gee, that ain't big!" said another. "You ought to
see some of the Cunard boats, the _Olympic_ or the _Baltic_."
On Riverside Drive horseback riders were cantering down the bridlepath,
returning from early outings. The squirrels, already grossly overfed,
were brooding languidly that another day of excessive peanuts was at
hand. Behind a rapidly spinning limousine pedalled a grotesquely humped
bicyclist, using the car as a pacemaker. He throbbed fiercely just
behind the spare tire, with his face bent down into a rich travelling
cloud of gasoline exhaust. An odd way of enjoying one's self! Children
were coming out in troops, with their nurses, for the morning air. Here
was a little boy with a sailor hat, and on the band a gilt legend that
was new to us. Instead of the usual naval slogan, it simply said
_Democracy_. This interested us, as later in the day we saw another,
near the goldfish pond in Central Park. Behind the cashier's grill of a
Broadway drug store the good-tempered young lady was reading Zane Grey.
"I love his books," she said, "but they make me want to break loose and
go out West."