It was a very wonderful sight last night, looking down from that
height at the black pool of New York specked with star-like lights--a
pool of darkness, where three million people slept, or tried to sleep;
but it was like looking into a cup of ink to read destinies. Now,
twelve hours afterwards, let us step down below into the centre of the
city, when the limelight of a glaring, cloudless sun is turned full on
it--when the living microcosm of its active life is thrown on the
magic-lantern screen of our retina. Now we are at the base of these
high buildings, and no city in Europe can show anything like them. It
is difficult to know what to compare them to. We cannot compare
Broadway to an avenue of poplars in stone, for the poplars are out of
proportion to the avenue--far too high and far too irregular. There is
no regular design, no continuous outline; immense, costly, new, they
sprout upwards--sprout as if under the drawing-up power of a tropical
sun, sprout as if fed with the superabundant fecundity of virgin soil.
Unless they were as high, there would not be room for the people down
at this crowded end of the wedge-shaped town. The want of finality
about them is no less apparent in their irregularity of size than in
their sides, generally blank of windows, in expectancy of buildings
going up beside them probably higher still. Some of them are to be
seen with white marble façades crowned with Corinthian pilasters, and
the sides are of red or yellow brick, on which is probably some huge,
ugly advertisement announcing that some fine five-cent cigar is
"generously good," or holding out hope of relief in the shape of a
pill to liver-troubled humanity. Parenthetically, I may remark that
this city is, if anything, rather worse than London in the way of
placards that scar the face of it. The goblin-like advertisements that
spit soap and other things at unoffending eyes at night in Trafalgar
Square are bad enough, but the advertisements in New York are worse
still. There is a fine square here called Madison, in the centre of
which trees rise from fountain-watered grass, and statued figures of
people who were men in their day and did things, palatial buildings,
dignifying commerce, form the square. Yet while I have been here I
have watched, right over a house on one side of it, a huge white
hoarding being erected, and have watched a great vulgar advertisement
of cigarettes being daubed upon it. A beastly, ugly smear on one of
the beauty-spots of the city.
[Illustration: Artillery Crossing A Drift Near Ladysmith.]
Bang-bang; bang-bang; bang--loud, insistent; ping-ping--sharp,
piercing; the first from the trolly-car, the second from a
steam-trailing automobile; a booming roar from the ground
accompanying the first, a buzzing rattle the second. Just a block away
a far louder rattle still comes from the elevated railway. Here, down
town, the streets are paved with cobble stones, and the severity of
the climate in the winter is given as the excuse for the irregularity
of the surface. Heavy lorries and wheels of horsed vehicles jangle
over them, but the general uproar is so great that the bells on the
horses' collars are inaudible, and sight is the only sense that makes
their approach perceptible. The stream of trolly-cars passes and
re-passes, perpetually making short pauses for the passengers to nip
in quickly or--get left. Across from where I write is a restaurant
with a legend above it, "Quick Lunch." This, I think, is rather
peculiar to New York; in other cities it would be either "Good Lunch,"
or "Cheap Lunch;" here the attraction is that it is "quick." It is
only necessary to watch the way that the customers hurry in and hurry
out to see the significance of it. The day is not half long enough
for the workers down here, and the work is at such high pressure that
time for feeding can hardly be spared; it is not feeding or taking a
meal, it is just stoking the human engine, and quick stoking at that.
The streets of London, even in the City, are calm and peaceful in
comparison with those here in New York. The very ground throbs with
vibration, the air throbs with the medley of noises, the buildings
throb with both. It is not quite obvious why the streets should be so
noisy. All the bells and gongs and danger-signals, one would think,
would be equally effectual if they were not so loud, but now the
competition of sounds is so great that any warning must almost be
explosive in its violence to be audible at all. It is no wonder that
we find in this city so many people suffering from nerves; it is quite
surprising the number of men I have met who dare not drink coffee, men
who have had to give up smoking, men and women who were too nervous
to travel in a hansom, and who at frequent intervals have to retire to
the country owing to various kinds of nervous trouble. There seems to
be no question but that this suffering from nervous disorders is on
the increase; it would be surprising if it were otherwise, considering
the pace at which these people live; and when one sees thin, pallid,
spectacle-wearing little children, one sees specimens of the rising
generation who are destined to be still greater sufferers. As against
this, and off-setting it, the taste for outdoor games seems to be on
the increase, and for young business men who have little time for
taking exercise nothing can be more admirable than clubs such as the
athletic and the racquet clubs here, which give opportunities of
taking indoor exercise on a scale unapproached by any similar
institution in London.
When I left London in August and came here, it would be difficult to
determine in which city the streets were more torn up. The
construction of the underground railway here is in evidence all over
the city; explosions from blasting are to be heard at intervals
throughout the day, and in various directions huge caverns yawn, at
the bottom of which hundreds of men and steel drills are hard at work.
I have noticed within the last few years how the power of the street
policeman has increased for regulating traffic. In return for the
potatoes which Ireland originally received from America, she has ever
since been supplying this country with policemen and politicians, and
these former great burly, beltless Milesians now despotically rule the
traffic as effectually as the London bobbies. It is characteristic
that the youngsters about the streets should be keener, sharper, more
active even than the youngsters of London. The lithe, thin,
cigarette-smoking _gamins_ that sell newspapers down town are a study
in themselves as they dart and double through the traffic and the
crowded sidewalks, selling innumerable editions of voluminous papers
throughout the day.
Early in the morning going down town, during the luncheon hour, or
going up town in the evening, one is struck by the enormous number of
women workers who now find employment in this great city--in some
offices hundreds of women, forming almost the entire staff, are
employed. Their competition must make it harder still for the male
clerks. Independent, self-reliant, business-like, a curious type is
being developed of these bread-earners--a type that suggests the
evolution of a neutral sex. Perhaps it is not altogether to be
wondered at, and is only a manifestation of the idea of equality, that
in the down-town cars the man no longer gives up his seat to the woman
who stands holding on to the leather strap over her head in the
crowded car, and does not remove his hat in the elevator when a woman
enters.
Now a black-plumed vehicle comes spinning round the street corner,
followed by three or four carriages with the crape-wearing drivers:
apparently it is only the denseness of the traffic that prevents the
hearse galloping and compels the driver to be content with a quick
trot. Quick lunch, rapid life, fast funeral, devouring cremation, or
else the weary toiler is laid down to have a first try at a real long
sleep in the quivering bosom of the City of Unrest.