American Adventures Part 2

Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a "messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark shadows; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness here or there; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they--as I do--delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide, bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on pa.s.sing street cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world?

For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as these--who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an inclination of at least mildly fantastic character--I am profoundly sorry. The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing with the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination.

Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks near where they cross Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station and Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick houses, standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of honorable age, and, in some cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies that in many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be found, or, if not that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood sofa, and the tall, narrow mirror between the two front windows of the drawing room.

Through the gla.s.s panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn window shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow as of illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun to disappear, indicating--or so, at all events, I chose to believe--that certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with old lace fichus held in place by ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly, rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats.

At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street performs a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while Chase Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection, but does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies, as though exhausted by its own contortions.

Here, in a region of malformed city blocks--some of them pentagonal, some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped--Howard Street sets forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street, then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important thoroughfare.

Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my attention was arrested by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in which antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of the location of this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of a feather bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking together in Howard Street, as window displays, faintly visible, informed me.

Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further.

Baltimore--as I found out later--is probably the headquarters for the South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank, located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail, accepting his a.s.surance that some article which I have not seen is, nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."

At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the a.s.sortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment, when I was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.

However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again, perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such factories exist.

What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from p.r.o.nouncing a machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine antique," will a.s.sure you--and not always with a strict regard for truth--that it is "practically as good as new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the horse dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to some venerable quadruped--let alone a three-year-old--and discoursing upon its merits in some such manner as the following:

"This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my possession. Just look at it, sir! The farmer of whom I bought it a.s.sured me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the _Mayflower_. The place where I found it was used as Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently sat on this very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a large man and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and--"

But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten mixed. However, you know what I meant to indicate. I merely meant to show that a horse dealer wouldn't talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about a chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by the Father of his Country, the dealer won't stress the point. You can't get him to admit that a horse has reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one hundred and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference between the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques which keeps us in the dark to-day as to exactly which horses Washington rode and which he didn't ride; although we know every chair he ever sat in, and every bed he ever slept in, and every house he ever stopped in, and how he is said to have caught his death of cold.

Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk.

Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw about me--the conglomerate a.s.sortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers, bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores--that here was the center of the city's nighttime life.

Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very s.p.a.cious and somewhat ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went with a ticket for standing room.

Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with ta.s.seled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions, dust, and the possibility of fire and panic.

After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls itself--thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or serving as a monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which many monuments have been erected--as is indeed the pleasing fact. My pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"

and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the details.

In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River--here practically an arm of Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United States cartel ship _Minden_ (used by the government in negotiating exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend, Dr. William Beanes, of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was held captive on a British vessel, Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of the _Minden_, and when he perceived "by the dawn's early light" that the flag still flew over the fort, he was moved to write his famous poem.

Later it was printed and set to music; it was first sung in a restaurant near the old Holliday Street Theater, but neither the restaurant nor the theater exists to-day. It is sometimes stated that Key was himself a prisoner, during the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a mistake.

By a curious coincidence, only a few minutes after my pamphlet had reminded me of the origin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" here in Baltimore, I heard the air played under circ.u.mstances very different from any which could have been antic.i.p.ated by the author of the poem, or the composer who set it to music.

The entertainment at the Academy that night was supplied by an elaborate "show" of the burlesque variety known as "The Follies," and it so happened that in the course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy, scenery, song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number" in which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent to resemble rulers of various lands, marched successively to the front of the stage, preceded in each instance by a small but carefully selected guard wearing the full-dress-uniform of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists princ.i.p.ally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the different nations being indicated, usually, by means of color combinations and various types of soldiers' hats. No arms are presented save those provided by nature.

The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar, the Mikado, the British Monarch, the President of France, the King of the Belgians, the Kaiser (for the United States had not then entered the war), and, I think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied by his Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate national air.

Apprehending that this symbolic travesty must, almost inevitably, end in a grand orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the place before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid fascination held me there to watch the working up of "patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap, stage tricks.

Presently, of course, the supreme moment came. When all the potentates had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the orchestra struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner," fortissimo, and with a liberal sounding of the bra.s.ses. Upon this appeared at the back a counterfeit President of the United States, guarded on either side by a female militia--or were they perhaps secret-service agents?--in striking uniforms consisting of pink fleshings partially draped with thin black lace.

As this incongruous parade proceeded to the footlights, American flags came into evidence, and, though I forget whether or not Columbia appeared, I recollect that a beautiful young woman, habited in what appeared to be a light pink union suit of unexceptionable cut and material, appeared above the head of the pseudo-chief executive, suspended at the end of a wire. Never having heard that it was White House etiquette to hang young ladies on wires above the presidential head, I consulted my program and thereby learned that this young lady represented that species of poultry so popular always with the late Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, and so popular also at one time with the President himself: namely, the Dove of Peace.

The applause was thunderous. At the sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner"

a few members of the audience arose to their feet; others soon followed--some of them apparently with reluctance--until at last the entire house had risen. Meanwhile the members of the company lined up before the footlights: the mock president smirking at the center, the half-clad girls posing, the pink young lady dangling above, the band blaring, the Stars and Stripes awave. It was a scene, in all, about as conducive to genuine or creditable national pride as would be the scene of a debauch in some fabulous harem.

The difference between stupidity and satire lies, not infrequently, in the intent with which a thing is done. Presented without essential change upon the stage of a music hall in some foreign land, the scene just described would, at that time, when we were playing a timid part amongst the nations, have been accepted, not as a glorification of the United States, but as having a precisely opposite significance. It would have been taken for burlesque; burlesque upon our country, our President, our national spirit, our peace policy, our army, and perhaps also upon our women--and insulting burlesque at that.

Some years since, it was found necessary to pa.s.s a law prohibiting the use of the flag for advertising purposes. This law should be amended to protect it also from the even more sordid and vulgarizing a.s.sociations to which it is not infrequently submitted on the American musical-comedy stage.

In the morning, before I was awake, my companion arrived at the hotel, and, going to his room, opened the door connecting it with mine. Coming out of my slumber with that curious and not altogether pleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me, and noticed immediately about him the air of virtuous superiority which is a.s.sumed by all who have risen early, whether they have done so by choice or have been shaken awake.

"h.e.l.lo," I said. "Had breakfast?"

"No. I thought we could breakfast together if you felt like getting up."

Though the phraseology of this remark was unexceptionable, I knew what it meant. What it really meant was: "Shame on you, lying there so lazy after sunup! Look at _me_, all dressed and ready to begin!"

I arose at once.

For all that I don't like to get up early, it recalled old times, and was very pleasant, to be away with him again upon our travels; to be in a strange city and a strange hotel, preparing to set forth on explorations. For he is the best, the most charming, the most observant of companions, and also one of the most patient.

That is one of his greatest qualities--his patience. Throughout our other trip he always kept on being patient with me, no matter what I did. Many a time instead of pushing me down an elevator shaft, drowning me in my bath, or coming in at night and smothering me with a pillow, he has merely sighed, dropped into a chair, and sat there shaking his head and staring at me with a melancholy, ruminative, hopeless expression--such an expression as may come into the face of a dumb man when he looks at a waiter who has spilled an oyster c.o.c.ktail on him.

All this is good for me. It has a chastening effect.

Therefore in a spirit happy yet not exuberant, eager yet controlled, hopeful yet a little bit afraid, I dressed myself hurriedly, breakfasted with him (eating ham and eggs because he approves of ham and eggs), and after breakfast set out in his society to obtain what--despite my walk of the night before--I felt was not alone my first real view of Baltimore, but my first glimpse over the threshold of the South: into the land of aristocracy and hospitality, of mules and mammies, of plantations, porticos, and proud, flirtatious belles, of colonels, cotton, chivalry, and colored cooking.

CHAPTER III

WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET

Here, where the climates meet, That each may make the other's lack complete--

--SIDNEY LANIER.

Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on seven hills, and because trains run under it instead of through, the pa.s.sing traveler sees but little of the city, his view from the train window being restricted first to a suburban district, then to a black tunnel, then to a glimpse upward from the railway cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I think, combine to leave upon his mind an impression which, if not actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly he has obtained no just idea of the metropolis of Maryland.

Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore is not in any sense to be regarded as a suburb of Washington. Indeed, considering the two merely as cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes, according to the standards by which American cities are usually compared, the more important city of the two, being greater both in population and in commerce. In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the commercial half of Washington. And while Washington, as capital of the United States, has certain physical and cosmopolitan advantages, not only over Baltimore, but over every other city on this continent, it must not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other city has one vast advantage over Washington, namely, a comparative freedom from politicians. To be sure, Congress did once move over to Baltimore and sit there for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British approached the Delaware in the days before the pork barrel was invented.

As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics. Though south of Mason and Dixon's Line, and though sometimes referred to as the "metropolis of the South" (as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which partakes of the qualities of both; where, in the words of Sidney Lanier, "the climates meet," and where northern and southern thought and custom meet, as well.

This has long been the case. Thus, although slaves were held in Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong abolitionist society was formed there during Washington's first Administration, and the sentiment of the city was thereafter divided on the slavery question. Thus also, while the two candidates of the divided Democratic party who ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln himself was nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864.

Speaking of the blending of North and South in Baltimore, you will, of course, remember that the Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts Regiment was attacked by a mob as it pa.s.sed through the city on the way to the Civil War. The regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President Street Station, which was then the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now used as a freight station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of _Harper's Weekly_. It was the custom in those days to hitch horses to pa.s.senger coaches which were going through and draw them across town to the Baltimore & Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to transport the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked the Pratt Street bridge over Jones's Falls, forcing the soldiers to leave the cars and march through Pratt Street, along the water front, where they were attacked. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown of Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted to stop the rioting.