INCLUDING STUDIES OF TRAFFIC "COPS"
The other day it was such a pleasant April day I thought I'd take the
afternoon off. It was such a very pleasant day that I didn't want to go
anywhere in particular. Do you ever feel that way? I mean like you just
wanted to be by yourself and sit down and think awhile.
Later on, you have an idea, you'll come back into things much refreshed.
But the thought of answering these letters now, or of doing this or
doing that, kind of lets you down inside your stomach. Your brain seems
to have dropped down somewhere behind your ears. If that fellow across
the office comes over to pull another of his bright ideas on you you
think you'll probably scream, or brain him, or something. He's getting
terrible, anyhow.
You have any number of excellent friends, and (ordinarily) you are quite
fond of them. Perhaps you will go to see one of them. There's Ed, you've
been wanting for you don't know how long to go round and see him. Never
seemed to have time. But no; you don't want to see Ed--today. Same way
with all the others, as you go over the list of them in your mind.
Couldn't bear to see any of 'em--not this afternoon. For one thing,
they're all so selfish.... So interested in their own affairs.
As I was straightening up my desk an idea came to me about jobs. Seems
to me that when I have a job I'm all the while worrying about how to
break out of it. I think: Well, I'm tied up here until the first of the
year; but I'll sure shake it after that; too cramped and limited. And
then when I am out of a job I immediately begin to worry about how to
get another one. That's Life, I guess.
I turned uptown and floated along with the current of the Avenue throng.
It was a glittering April throng. The newest stockings were out. I had
not seen them before. The newest stockings (you will have noted) are so
very, very thin and the pores (so to say) in them are so large that they
give the ladies who wear them the agreeable effect of being bare-legged.
At Thirty-fourth Street the traffic policeman on post at our side of
this corner, by an outward gesture of his arms pressed back the
sidewalk stream for a couple of moments of cross-town vehicular traffic.
He stood within a few inches of the front row of the largely feminine
crush. Whenever an impatient pedestrian broke through the line he had
formed and attempted to dart across the street he emitted a peculiar
little whistle followed by the admonishment, "Hold on, lady!" or "Hey
there, mister!" Thus having returned the derelict to cover, he would
smile very intimately, with a kind of sly cuteness, at the more handsome
young women directly before him--who invariably tittered back at him.
And thus, frequently, a little conversation was started.
Now as a vigilant historian of the social scene this matter of the
gallant relations of traffic policemen to perambulating ladies of
somewhat fashionable, even patrician aspect, I find highly interesting.
It is a subject which does not seem to have been much examined into.
Why, exactly, should flowers of débutante-Bryn-Mawr appearance look with
something like tenderness at policemen? Seems to me I have read now and
then in the papers strikingly romantic stories wherein a mounted
policeman in the park (formerly a cowboy) saved the life of an
equestrienne heiress on a runaway mount, and was rewarded the next day
(or something like that) with her hand. Such a story my mind always
gladly accepts as one of the dramatic instances where life artistically
imitates the movies. Crossing Thirty-fourth Street, however, seems to me
another matter.
And what system of selection operates in the Department whereby this
officer or that is chosen from among all his brethren for the
paradisaical job of being beau of a fashionable crossing? And would you
not think that a more uniform judgment would be exercised in the
election of men to such Brummellian duties? Adonises in the traffic
force I have, indeed, seen (there is one at Forty-second Street), but
this chap of whom I have just been speaking (the whimsical whistler)
certainly was not one of them. He was what is called "pie-faced."
Hunched up his shoulders like an owl. Yet his ogling of loveliness in
new spring attire was completely successful, was in no instance that I
observed resented, was received with arch merriment. Indeed, his heavy,
pink-tea attentions were obviously regarded as quite flattering by the
fair recipients! As he let the tide break to cross the street it was
plain, from bright glances backward, that he had fluttered little hearts
which would smile upon him again. And so, in such a Romeo-like manner,
does this bulky sentimentalist, armed with concealed weapons, have
dalliance with the passing days. What you 'spose it is about him gives
him his fascination in flashing eyes haughty to the rest of the
masculine world--his bright buttons, or what?
Yes; these curious and romantic little relationships between traffic
cops on social duty, so to say, and their dainty admirers are not (in
some instances at least) so transient as to be merely the exchange of
roguish words and soft glances of the moment. There is that really
august being of matinee-idol figure at--well, let us say at Forty-second
Street. Sir Walter Raleigh could not with more courtliness pilot his
fair freight across the Avenue. So it was the day after Christmas I saw
not one but several of his young friends blushingly put dainty packages
into his hands.
Is there not an excellent O. Henry sort of story in this piquant city
situation?
Well, floating like a cork upon a river I drifted along up the Avenue. I
passed a man I had not seen for several years. Yes; that certainly was
the fellow I used to know. And yet he was an altogether different being
now, too. The sort of a shock I got has perhaps also been experienced by
you. Only a short time ago, it seemed to me, this friend of mine had
been robust and ruddy, masterful and gay, in the prime of his years. I
had somehow innocently expected him always to be so. Just as I find it
very unreal to think of myself in any other way than I am now. Don't
you? As to yourself, I mean. He was quite grey. His shoulders hung
forward. His chest seemed to have fallen in on itself. His legs moved
back and forth without ever altogether straightening out. He had a
whipped look. Wrinkled clothes and dusty black derby hat, he was
conspicuous in the peacockean scene. And yet on a time he had been, I
knew, as much a conqueror of hearts as any policeman. So would it
sometime be with me--like this?
What do you know about that! In the next block another acquaintance of
old I saw. But when I had known him he was stooped and little and thin
and dried up and cringing. He worked in a basement and did not wear a
collar, at least by day. He used to look very old. Now here he was
swinging along looking very much like Mr. Caruso, or some such personage
as that.
How may this phenomenon be accounted for, what was the misfortune of one
of these persons and the secret of the other? I know a man who has a
theory which, at least, sounds all right. It is not buttermilk nor
monkey glands, he contends, which will keep a man young and stalwart so
much as (what he calls) an objective in life--a distant rampart to take,
a golden fleece to pursue. That is why, he declares, scientists and
artists frequently live happy and alert to such a great age: Thomas A.
Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Jap chap (what's his name? Hokusai)
who at a hundred and ten or thereabout was called "the old man mad about
painting."
Maybe it was thinking of that idea, maybe it was the fearsome thought of
that dusty derby hat of my friend's which haunted my mind, or maybe my
competitive instincts had been aroused from spring slumber by the
spectacle of my Caruso-like friend careering along, anyhow a decidedly
bugged-up feeling began to flow through me; I wavered in my loitering, I
turned, my sails (so to speak) caught the wind, and I laid my course
abruptly back to the office. I had suddenly a great itch to get at all
those letters.
I was very glad to see that fellow across the office from me. He is a
good fellow and very helpful. I said to him, "Look here, what do you
think about this idea for getting business?"
"Oh, my goodness!" he said; "it's altogether too fine a day to think
about work. I'd just like to go out and wander up the Avenue with
nothing on my mind but my hair."