In your rambles you have seen it, passed it twenty times a day,)
As "A Novel Exhibition of Examples of Decay."
There is Nordau we all sneer at, and Verlaine we all adore,
And a little book of verses with its betters by the score,
With three faces on the cover I believe I've seen before.
Well, here's matter for reflection, makes me wonder where I am.
Here is Ibsen the gray lion, linked to Beardsley the black lamb.
I was never out of Boston: all that I can say is, "Damn!"
Who could think, in two short summers we should cause so much remark,
With no purpose but our pastime, and to make the public hark,
When I soloed on _The Chap-Book_, and you answered with _The Lark_!
Do young people take much pleasure when they read that sort of thing?
"Well, they buy it," answered Doxey, "and I take what it will bring.
Publishers may dread extinction--not with such fads on the string.
"There is always sale for something, and demand for what is new.
These young men who are so restless, and have nothing else to do,
Like to think there is 'a movement,' just to keep themselves in view.
"There is nothing in Decadence but the magic of a name.
People talk and papers drivel, scent a vice, and hint a shame;
And all that is good for business, helps to boom my little game."
But when I sit down to reason, think to stand upon my nerve,
Meditate on portly leisure with a balance in reserve,
In he comes with his "Decadence!" like a fly in my preserve.
I can see myself, O Burgess, half a century from now,
Laid to rest among the ghostly, like a broken toy somehow,
All my lovely songs and ballads vanished with your "Purple Cow."
But I will return some morning, though I know it will be hard,
To Cornhill among the bookstalls, and surprise some minor bard,
Turning over their old rubbish for the treasures we discard.
I shall warn him like a critic, creeping when his back is turned,
"Ink and paper, dead and done with; Doxey spent what Doxey earned;
Poems doubtless are immortal, where a poem can be discerned!"
How his face will go to ashes, when he feels his empty purse!
How he'll wish his vogue were greater; plume himself it is no worse;
Then go bother the dear public with his puny little verse!
Don't I know how he will pose it; patronize our larger time;
"Poor old Browning; little Kipling; what attempts they made to rhyme!"
Just let me have half an hour with the nincompoop sublime!
I will haunt him like a purpose, I will ghost him like a fear;
When he least expects my presence, I'll be mumbling in his ear,
"O Le Lupe lived in Frisco, and I lived in Boston here.
"Never heard of us? Good heavens, can you never have been told
Of the _Larks_ we used to publish, and the _Chap-Books_ that we sold?
Where are all our first edition?" I feel damp and full of mould.
A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW
BY BILL NYE
We are stopping quietly here, taking our meals in our rooms mostly, and
going out very little indeed. When I say we, I use the term editorially.
We notice first of all the great contrast between this and other hotels,
and in several instances this one is superior. In the first place, there
is a sense of absolute security when one goes to sleep here that can not
be felt at a popular hotel, where burglars secrete themselves in the
wardrobe during the day and steal one's pantaloons and contents at
night. This is one of the compensations of life in prison.
Here the burglars go to bed at the hour that the rest of us do. We all
retire at the same time, and a murderer can not sit up any later at
night than the smaller or unknown criminal can.
You can get to Ludlow Street Jail by taking the Second avenue Elevated
train to Grand street, and then going east two blocks, or you can fire a
shotgun into a Sabbath-school.
You can pay five cents to the Elevated Railroad and get here, or you can
put some other man's nickel in your own slot and come here with an
attendant.
William Marcy Tweed was the contractor of Ludlow Street Jail, and here
also he died. He was the son of a poor chair-maker, and was born April
3, 1823. From the chair business in 1853 to congress was the first false
step. Exhilarated by the delirium of official life, and the false joys
of franking his linen home every week, and having cake and preserves
franked back to him at Washington, he resolved to still further taste
the delights of office, and in 1857 we find him as a school
commissioner.
In 1860 he became Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society, an association at
that time more purely political than politically pure. As president of
the board of supervisors, head of the department of public works, state
senator, and Grand Sachem of Tammany, Tweed had a large and seductive
influence over the city and state. The story of how he earned a scanty
livelihood by stealing a million of dollars at a pop, and thus, with the
most rigid economy, scraped together $20,000,000 in a few years by
patient industry and smoking plug tobacco, has been frequently told.
Tweed was once placed here in Ludlow Street Jail in default of
$3,000,000 bail. How few there are of us who could slap up that amount
of bail if rudely gobbled on the street by the hand of the law. While
riding out with the sheriff, in 1875, Tweed asked to see his wife, and
said he would be back in a minute.
He came back by way of Spain, in the fall of '76, looking much improved.
But the malaria and dissipation of Blackwell's Island afterward impaired
his health, and having done time there, and having been arrested
afterward and placed in Ludlow Street Jail, he died here April 12, 1878,
leaving behind him a large, vain world, and an equally vain judgment for
$6,537,117.38, to which he said he would give his attention as soon as
he could get a paving contract in the sweet ultimately.
From the exterior Ludlow Street Jail looks somewhat like a conservatory
of music, but as soon as one enters he readily discovers his mistake.
The structure has 100 feet frontage, and a court, which is sometimes
called the court of last resort. The guest can climb out of this court
by ascending a polished brick wall about 100 feet high, and then letting
himself down in a similar way on the Ludlow street side.
That one thing is doing a great deal toward keeping quite a number of
people here who would otherwise, I think, go away.
James D. Fish and Ferdinand Ward both remained here prior to their
escape to Sing Sing. Red Leary, also, made his escape from this point,
but did not succeed in reaching the penitentiary. Forty thousand
prisoners have been confined in Ludlow Street Jail, mostly for civil
offenses. A man in New York runs a very short career if he tries to be
offensively civil.
As you enter Ludlow Street Jail the door is carefully closed after you,
and locked by means of an iron lock about the size of a pictorial family
Bible. You then remain on the inside for quite a spell. You do not hear
the prattle of soiled children any more. All the glad sunlight, and
stench-condensing pavements, and the dark-haired inhabitants of
Rivington street, are seen no longer, and the heavy iron storm-door
shuts out the wail of the combat from the alley near by. Ludlow Street
Jail may be surrounded by a very miserable and dirty quarter of the
city, but when you get inside all is changed.
You register first. There is a good pen there that you can write with,
and the clerk does not chew tolu and read a sporting paper while you
wait for a room. He is there to attend to business, and he attends to
it. He does not seem to care whether you have any baggage or not. You
can stay here for days, even if you don't have any baggage. All you need
is a kind word and a mittimus from the court.
One enters this sanitarium either as a boarder or a felon. If you decide
to come in as a boarder, you pay the warden $15 a week for the privilege
of sitting at his table and eating the luxuries of the market. You also
get a better room than at many hotels, and you have a good strong door,
with a padlock on it, which enables you to prevent the sudden and
unlooked-for entrance of the chambermaid. It is a good-sized room, with
a wonderful amount of seclusion, a plain bed, table, chairs, carpet and
so forth. After a few weeks at the seaside, at $19 per day, I think the
room in which I am writing is not unreasonable at $2.
Still, of course, we miss the sea breeze.
You can pay $50 to $100 per week here if you wish, and get your money's
worth, too. For the latter sum one may live in the bridal chamber, so to
speak, and eat the very best food all the time.
Heavy iron bars keep the mosquitoes out, and at night the house is
brilliantly lighted by incandescent lights of one-candle power each.
Neat snuffers, consisting of the thumb and forefinger polished on the
hair, are to be found in each occupied room.
Bread is served to the Freshmen and Juniors in rectangular wads. It is
such bread as convicts' tears have moistened many thousand years. In
that way it gets quite moist.
The most painful feature about life in Ludlow Street Jail is the
confinement. One can not avoid a feeling of being constantly hampered
and hemmed in.
One more disagreeable thing is the great social distinction here. The
poor man who sleeps in a stone niche near the roof, and who is
constantly elbowed and hustled out of his bed by earnest and restless
vermin with a tendency toward insomnia, is harassed by meeting in the
court-yard and corridors the paying boarders who wear good clothes, live
well, have their cigars, brandy and Kentucky Sec all the time.
The McAllister crowd here is just as exclusive as it is on the outside.
But, great Scott! what a comfort it is to a man like me, who has been
nearly killed by a cyclone, to feel the firm, secure walls and solid
time lock when he goes to bed at night! Even if I can not belong to the
400, I am almost happy.
We retire at 7:30 o'clock at night and arise at 6:30 in the morning, so
as to get an early start. A man who has five or ten years to stay in a
place like this naturally likes to get at it as soon as possible each
day, and so he gets up at 6:30.
We dress by the gaudy light of the candle, and while we do so, we
remember far away at home our wife and the little boy asleep in her
arms. They do not get up at 6:30. It is at this hour we remember the
fragrant drawer in the dresser at home where our clean shirts, and
collars and cuffs, and socks and handkerchiefs, are put every week by
our wife. We also recall as we go about our stone den, with its odor of
former corned beef, and the ghost of some bloody-handed predecessor's
snore still moaning in the walls, the picture of green grass by our own
doorway, and the apples that were just ripening, when the bench warrant
came.
The time from 6:30 to breakfast is occupied by the average, or
non-paying inmate, in doing the chamberwork and tidying up his
state-room. I do not know how others feel about it, but I dislike
chamberwork most heartily, especially when I am in jail. Nothing has
done more to keep me out of jail, I guess, than the fact that while
there I have to make up my bed and dust the piano.
Breakfast is generally table d'hôte and consists of bread. A tin-cup of
coffee takes the taste of the bread out of your mouth, and then if you
have some Limburger cheese in your pocket you can with that remove the
taste of the coffee.
Dinner is served at 12 o'clock, and consists of more bread with soup.
This soup has everything in it except nourishment. The bead on this soup
is noticeable for quite a distance. It is disagreeable. Several days ago
I heard that the Mayor was in the soup, but I didn't realize it before.
I thought it was a newspaper yarn. There is everything in this soup,
from shop-worn rice up to neat's-foot oil. Once I thought I detected
cuisine in it.
The dinner menu is changed on Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays, on which
days you get the soup first and the bread afterward. In this way the
bread is saved.
Three days in a week each man gets at dinner a potato containing a
thousand-legged worm. At 6 o'clock comes supper with toast and
responses. Bread is served at supper time, together with a cup of tea.
To those who dislike bread and never eat soup, or do not drink tea or
coffee, life at Ludlow Street Jail is indeed irksome.
I asked for kumiss and a pony of Benedictine, as my stone boudoir made
me feel rocky, but it has not yet been sent up.
Somehow, while here, I can not forget poor old man Dorrit, the Master of
the Marshalsea, and how the Debtors' Prison preyed upon his mind till he
didn't enjoy anything except to stand off and admire himself. Ludlow
Street Jail is a good deal like it in many ways, and I can see how in
time the canker of unrest and the bitter memories of those who did us
wrong but who are basking in the bright and bracing air, while we, to
meet their obligations, sacrifice our money, our health and at last our
minds, would kill hope and ambition.
In a few weeks I believe I should also get a preying on my mind. That is
about the last thing I would think of preying on, but a man must eat
something.
Before closing this brief and incomplete account as a guest at Ludlow
Street Jail I ought, in justice to my family, to say, perhaps, that I
came down this morning to see a friend of mine who is here because he
refuses to pay alimony to his recreant and morbidly sociable wife. He
says he is quite content to stay here, so long as his wife is on the
outside. He is writing a small ready-reference book on his side of the
great problem, "Is Marriage a Failure?"
With this I shake him by the hand and in a moment the big iron
storm-door clangs behind me, the big lock clicks in its hoarse, black
throat and I welcome even the air of Ludlow street so long as the blue
sky is above it.
THE ENCHANTED HAT
_The Adventure of My Lady's Letter_
BY HAROLD MACGRATH
It was half-after six when I entered Martin's from the Broadway side. I
chose a table by the north wall and sat down on the cushioned seat. I
ordered dinner, and the ample proportions of it completely hoodwinked
the waiter as to the condition of my cardiac affliction: being, as I
was, desperately and hopelessly and miserably in love. Old owls say that
a man can not eat when he is in love. He can if he is mad at the way the
object of his affections has treated him; and I was mad. To be sure, I
can not recall what my order was, but the amount of the waiter's check
is still vivid to my recollection.
I glanced about. The café was crowded, as it usually is at this hour.
Here and there I caught glimpses of celebrities and familiar faces:
journalists, musicians, authors, artists and actors. This is the time
they drop in to be pointed out to strangers from out of town. It's a
capital advertisement. To-night, however, none of these interested me in
the slightest degree; rather, their animated countenances angered me.
How _could_ they laugh and look happy!
At my left sat a young man about my own age. He was also in evening
dress. At my right a benevolent old gentleman, whose eye-glasses
balanced neatly upon the end of his nose, was deeply interested in _The
Law Journal_ and a pint pf mineral water. A little beyond my table was
an exiled Frenchman, and the irritating odor of absinthe drifted at
times across my nostrils.
With my coffee I ordered a glass of Dantzic, and watched the flakes of
beaten gold waver and settle; and presently I devoted myself entirely to
my own particularly miserable thoughts.... To be in love and in debt! To
be with the gods one moment and hunted by a bill-collector the next! To
have the girl you love snub and dismiss you for no more lucid reason
than that you did not attend the dance at the Country Club when you
promised you would! It did not matter that you had a case on that night
from which depended a large slice of your bread and butter; no, that did
not matter. Neither did the fact that you had mixed the dates. You had
promised to go, and you hadn't gone or notified the girl that you
wouldn't go. Your apologetic telegram she had torn into halves and
returned the following morning, together with a curt note to the effect
that she could not value the friendship of a man who made and broke a
promise so easily. It was all over. It was a dashed hard world. How the
deuce do you win a girl, anyhow?
Supposing, besides, that you possessed a rich uncle who said that on the
day of your wedding he would make over to you fifty thousand in
Government three per cents? Hard, wasn't it? Suppose that you were
earning about two thousand a year, and that the struggle to keep up
smart appearances was a keen one. Wouldn't you have been eager to marry,
especially the girl you loved? A man can not buy flowers twice a week,
dine before and take supper after the theater twice a week, belong (and
pay dues and house-accounts) to a country club, a town club and keep
respectable bachelor apartments on two thousand ... and save anything.
And suppose the girl was independently rich? Heigh-ho!
I find that a man needs more money in love than he does in debt. This is
not to say that I was ever very hard pressed; but I hated to pay ten
dollars "on account" when the total was only twenty. You understand me,
don't you? If you don't, somebody who reads this will. Of course, the
girl knew nothing about these things. A young man always falls into the
fault of magnifying his earning capacity to the girl he loves. You see,
I hadn't told her yet that I loved her, though I was studying up
somebody on Moral and Physical Courage for that purpose.
And now it was all over!
I did not care so much about my uncle's gold-bonds, but I did think a
powerful lot of the girl. Why, when I recall the annoyances I've put up
with from that kid brother of hers!... Pshaw, what's the use?
His mother called him "Toddy-One-Boy," in memory of a book she had read
long years ago. He was six years old, and I never think of him without
that jingle coming to mind:
"Little Willie choked his sister,
She was dead before they missed her.
Willie's always up to tricks.
Ain't he cute, he's only six!"
He had the face of a Bouguereau cherub, and mild blue eyes such as we
are told inhabit the countenances of angels. He was the most
innocent-looking chap you ever set eyes on. His mother called him an
angel; I should hate to tell you what the neighbors called him. He
lacked none of that subtle humor so familiar in child-life. Heavens! the
deeds I could (if I dared) enumerate. They turned him loose among the
comic supplements one Sunday, and after that it was all over.
Hadn't he emptied his grandma's medicine capsules and substituted
cotton? And hadn't dear old grandma come down stairs three days later,
saying that she felt much improved? Hadn't he beaten out the brains of
his toy bank and bought up the peanut man on the corner? Yes, indeed!
And hadn't he taken my few letters from his sister's desk and played
postman up and down the street? His papa thought it all a huge joke till
one of the neighbors brought back a dunning dressmaker's bill that had
lain on the said neighbor's porch. It was altogether a different matter
then. Toddy-One-Boy crawled under the bed that night, and only his
mother's tears saved him from a hiding.
All these I thought over as I sat at my table. She knew that I would
have gone had it been possible. Women and logic are only cousins german.
Six months ago I hadn't been in love with any one but myself, and now
the Virgil of love's dream was leading me like a new Dante through _his_
Inferno, and was pointing out the foster-brother of Sisyphus (if he had
a foster-brother), pushing the stone of my lady's favor up the steeps of
Forlorn Hope. Well, I would go up to the club, and if I didn't get home
till mor-r-ning, who was there to care?
The Frenchman had gone, and the benevolent old gentleman. The crowd was
thinning out. The young man at my left rose, and I rose also. We both
stared thoughtfully at the hat-rack. There hung two hats: an opera-hat
and a dilapidated old stovepipe. The young fellow reached up and, quite
naturally, selected the opera-hat. He glanced into it, and immediately a
wrinkle of annoyance darkened his brow. He held the hat toward me.
"Is this yours?" he asked.
I looked at the label.
"No." The wrinkle of annoyance sprang from his brow to mine. My
opera-hat had cost me eight dollars.
The young fellow laughed rather lamely. "Do you live in New York?" he
asked.
I nodded.
"So do I," he continued; "and yet it is evident that both of us have
been neatly caught." He thought for a moment, then brightened. "I'll
tell you what; let's match for the good one."
I gazed indignantly at the rusty stovepipe. "Done!" said I.
I lost; I knew that I should; and the young fellow walked off with the
good hat. Then, with the relic in my hand, a waiter and myself began a
systematic search. My hat was nowhere to be found. How the deuce was I
to get up town to the club? I couldn't wear the old plug; I wasn't rich
enough for such an eccentricity. I had nothing but a silk hat at the
apartment, and I hated it because it was always in the way when I
entered carriages and elevators.
Angrily, I strode up to the cashier's desk and explained the situation,
leaving my address and the number of my apartment; my name wasn't
necessary.
Troubles never come singly. Here I had lost my girl and my hat, to say
nothing of my temper--of the three the most certain to be found again. I
passed out of the café, bareheaded and hotheaded. I hailed a cab and
climbed in. I had finally determined to return to my rooms and study. I
simply could not afford to be seen with that stovepipe hat either on my
head or under my arm. Had I been green from college it is probable that
I should have worn it proudly and defiantly. But I had left college
behind these six years.
Hang these old duffers who are so absent-minded! For I was confident
that the benevolent old gentleman was the cause of all this confusion.
Inside the cab I tried on the thing, just to get a picture in my mind of
the old gentleman going it up Broadway with my opera-hat on his head.
The hat sagged over my ears; and I laughed. The picture I had conjured
up was too much for my anger, which vanished suddenly. And once I had
laughed I felt a trifle more agreeable toward the world. So long as a
man can see the funny side of things he has no active desire to leave
life behind; and laughter does more to lighten his sorrows than
sympathy, which only aggravates them.
After all, the old gentleman would feel the change more sharply than I.
This was, in all probability, the only hat he had. I turned it over and
scrutinized it. It was a genteel old beaver, with an air of
respectability that was quite convincing. There was nothing smug about
it, either. It suggested amiability in the man who had recently
possessed it. It suggested also a mild contempt for public opinion,
which is always a sign of superior mentality and advanced years. I began
to draw a mental portrait of the old man. He was a family lawyer,
doubtless, who lived in the past and hugged his retrospections. When we
are young there is never any vanishing point to our day-dreams. Well,
well! On the morrow he would have a new hat, of approved shape and
pattern; unless, indeed, he possessed others like this which had fallen
into my keeping. Perhaps he would soon discover his mistake, return to
the café and untangle the snarl. I sincerely hoped he would. As I
remarked, my hat had cost me eight dollars.
I soon arrived at my apartments, and got into a smoking-jacket. I rather
delight in lolling around in a dress-shirt; it looks so like the
pictures we see in the fashionable novels. I picked up Blackstone and
turned to his "promissory notes." I had two or three out myself. It was
nine o'clock when the hall-boy's bell rang, and I placed my ear to the
tube. A gentleman wished to see me in regard to a lost hat.
"Send him up, James; send him up!" I bawled down the tube. Visions of
the club returned, and I tossed Blackstone into a corner.
Presently there came a tap on the door, and I flung it wide. But my
visitor was not the benevolent old gentleman. He was the Frenchman whose
absinthe had offended me. He glanced at the slip of paper in his hand.
"I have zee honaire to address zee--ah--gentleman in numbaire six?"
"I live here."
"Delight'! We have meexed zee hats, I have zee r-r-regret. Ees thees
your hat?" He held out, for my inspection, an opera-hat. "I am _so_
absent-mind'--what you call deestrait?"--affably.
I took the hat, which at first glance I thought to be mine, and went
over to the rack, taking down the old stovepipe.
"This is yours, then?" I said, smiling.
"Thousand thanks, m'sieu! Eet ees certain mine. I have zee honaire to
beg pardon for zee confusion. My compliments! Good night!"