WHEN IS A GREAT CITY A SMALL VILLAGE?
How many times you have noticed it! Regular phenomenon. Suddenly, within
a few hours, the whole nature of the great city is changed--your city
and mine, New York or Chicago, or Boston or Buffalo or Philadelphia.
Though nobody seems to say much about it afterward. Just sort of take
the thing for granted.
It is just like Armistice Night, every once in awhile. Total strangers
suddenly begin to call each other "Neighbor." Voices everywhere become
jollier. Numerous passersby begin to whistle and sing. People go with a
skip and a jump. Catcalls are heard. Groups may be seen all around going
arm in arm, and here and there with arms about necks. Anybody speaks to
you merrily. Merrily you speak to anybody. All eyes shine. Roses are in
every cheek. Hurry is abandoned. Small boys run wild. Nobody now objects
to their stealing a ride. It is fun to see their swinging legs dangling
over the tail of every wagon. Sour human nature is purged. Good humor
reigns. Hurrah!
I mean on the night of a big snow.
This year it looked for long as though we were going to be done out of
this truly Dickensean festival. Seemed like we were going to be like
those unfortunate people in Southern California, who never have any
winter to cheer them up. How tired they must get of their wives and
neighbors, with it bland summer all the time. Perhaps that is the reason
there is such a promiscuous domestic life out there.
Young Will Shakespeare had the dope. He piped the weather for jollity
and pep. "When blood is nipp'd"--"a merry note!"
You remember how it was this time: Spring all winter--and spring fever,
too, a good many of us had all the while. (My doctor said it was
"malaria" with me.) We were congratulating ourselves that we were going
to "get by" without any "blizzards" at all this year. We became "softy."
We guarded ourselves with our umbrellas against the shower. We became
prudent. And what is it Stevenson says of that? "So soon as prudence has
begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first
expression in a paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink
spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlors with a regulated
temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of thin shoes and
tepid milk."
Then one night there came a tinkle in the temperature as of sleigh
bells. And the town, the world sank into a soft blanket of white. Were
you out then? Ah! you should have been. You were not, I hope, in a
parlor with a regulated temperature.
Well, anyhow, everybody else was out. The cross streets of the big city
had "all to oncet" taken on the air of a small town "sociable." Shadowy
multitudes seemed to sprout up out of the ground. The sidewalks,
especially those usually so deserted at this hour, now ahum with dark
busy bowing figures, rang and clanged gayly with the sound of scoop and
shovel. In the democratic, jovial, village-like spirit of the occasion,
many of the workers (those more staid and portly ones) removed their
coats. Every here and there an areaway held, in a holiday effect, a
cluster of bare-headed maid-servants--the "gallery" of the shovellers,
whose presence tended to make of the task of clearing the sidewalk a
night-hour lark.
Voices in the street, as you know, and laughter there, is never so
musical as above snow-stilled pavements. Then, too, cheery echoes are
abroad among the recesses between the houses, in the courts and down the
ways where packages are delivered. The shovellers good-naturedly banter
one another and pass a cordial jest with those who travel by. And every
here and there the rich contralto of negro mirth is heard.
I do not know that the city's parks are not a finer spectacle under snow
than in the summer--their dark glistening branches laden à la Christmas
card, and, after dark, their festoons of lamps more twinkling and more
yellow than at any other time.
Along Broadway what a whirl! The street like an arena, hordes of
gladiators in doughty combat with the onslaught of the storm, snow-carts
banging and backing about (horses seem to stomp and snort and rear more
in a snowstorm than at any other time), new ridiculously miniature
"caterpillar tractors" performing like toy tanks at war, traffic in a
hilarious tangle, street cars crawling along looking more than ever
before like prodigious cat-eyed bugs. Here with a terrific buzz comes
one all dark furiously thrashing the snow from side to side by means of
revolving brooms beneath. The crowds an animated silhouette against the
whitened air. One wants to hop and shout one feels so much alive.
Lots of funny things happen. A taxicab there has got stuck in a drift.
It whirs in a passion. Wallows forward. Runs its nose up a little
hillock of hard crusted snow. Stops. Makes a fine hubbub. Slides back,
stilled, exhausted. Tries again. Same thing repeated. A pounding is
heard on the inside of the door. Chauffeur reaches back his hand to turn
handle of door. Something is wrong. He climbs down. Pulls at door.
Nothing doing. Door has apparently been sprung somehow. Taxi is now
observed to be a bit listed to one side. Pounding, louder than before,
again heard from inside. Conductor from nearby car comes to side of
chauffeur. Also policeman. All lay hold of each other and pull with
united effort at taxi door. Door flies open. Closely knit group of
chauffeur, conductor and policeman nearly tumbles backward into snow.
From cab door descends tall, elegant figure in evening clothes and top
hat. Followed by even more elegant figure of slender lady in opera
cloak. For some reason she appears to be very angry, and shakes her fist
at her three humble liberators. The couple seek some path, from the
trampled oasis where they stand, through the drifts to the sidewalk.
There is none. Her dazzling skirt she has caught high from the mess
about her feet. Perhaps a yard of pale yellow silken hose is revealed
above her satin pumps. Finally in desperation the two plunge forward,
taking gigantic steps, sinking knee-deep at every onward move,
tottering, swaying and at length fairly scrambling toward the haven of
the curb. The dozens along the sidewalk who have been held spellbound by
what they have found to be so delicious a comedy turn to one another
with delighted smiles--and move along again on their way.
It is things like this always happening all about which make snow-storm
nights in the city such a hippodrome affair, and all the world akin.
Over on the Avenue busses are busily pushing plows hitched on before.
There one has got stalled in a drift. It whirs and buzzes and backs and
starts and whirs and buzzes over and over again. No use, it seems.
Still, draped along the curb, the spectators stand, unmindful of the
gale, as absorbed as if at a Yale-Princeton game.
Buzzzzzzzzz--Whirrrrrrrrrrr--and away. She's off! A feeble cheer goes
up. And everybody starts onward again in better humor with himself for
having seen so entertaining a show.
It snowed the night through.
In the morning banks of snow breast-high through the side streets.
Through a narrow aisle down the middle of the roadway trucks cars and
wagons slowly go in single file. Moving thus all in a single line they
have something the effect of a circus parade--elephants and lion cages
and so on.
And lions remind me. It is always well to look at public statues and
outdoor pieces of sculpture the morning after a heavy snow. You are
likely to find them very comical apparitions. The celebrated literary
lions before the New York Public Library, for instance, wore throughout
the day after the first big snow of this winter ridiculous tall caps
pulled down very rakishly over their eyes.
Streaming from the direction of the railroad station were coming the
swarms of our commuter friends, the legs of many of them hoisting along
those prodigious "arctics" which are all the vogue nowadays. Isn't it
curious? There was a time when if you were obliged to wear glasses you
got them as nearly invisible as possible. If you were a man you felt
there was something shameful about having "weak" eyes. If a woman, you
"just knew" that glasses made you look "horrid." And when you wore
overshoes you got them as inconspicuous as possible. Now you affect
shell spectacles that can be seen a block away, and having huge lenses.
Now there is nothing smarter, apparently, than for a young woman with a
trim foot to come into town swaddled in floppers which fit her slim
ankles like a bucket.
Men are still shovelling and scraping away at the streets, a motley
army. What is it so many persons are pausing to smile at, others
hurrying on but with grinning faces turned back? It is at a gentleman
shoveller. Here recruited somehow among this gang of husky laborers is a
slim eccentric figure in a--yes, a frock coat, a derby hat, kid gloves,
and very tight trousers ... a quaint picture of the shabby genteel.
Walking very briskly back and forth, very upright in carriage, the small
of his back curved inward, he pushes his scraper before him holding it
by the very tip of the long handle--and as well as can be observed
doesn't scrape anything at all. His fellow workers regard him with surly
disgust and roughly bump into him at every opportunity. What story is
there, in that absurd, pathetic scene, what O. Henry tale of mischance
in a great city?
A wagon on a side street has got its wheels ground into the snow bank at
the side of the narrow cleared way. Such accidents are all about, and
everywhere men may be seen leaving their own affairs to give a helping
hand to a fellow being in sore straits. The visitation of a great snow
storm strikingly unites the bonds of the brotherhood of man.
Stalled for interminable periods in suburban trains and in traffic jams
hurried men give themselves up cheerfully to the philosophic virtue of
patience.
Vagabonds sent on errands two miles away return after three hours with
tales of the awful slowness of trolley cars. And on days of great snow
storms meet with Christian forgiveness.