Vistas of New York Part 1

Vistas of New York.

by Brander Matthews.

NOTE

In one of those romances in which Hawthorne caught the color and interpreted the atmosphere of his native New England, he declared that "destiny, it may be, the most skillful of stage managers, seldom chooses to arrange its scenes and carry forward its drama without securing the presence of at least one calm observer." It is the character of this calm observer that the writer has imagined himself to be a.s.suming in the dozen little sketches and stories garnered here into a volume. They are snapshots or flashlights of one or another of the shifting aspects of this huge and sprawling metropolis of ours.

In purpose and in method these episodes and these incidents of the urban panorama are closely akin to the experiments in story-telling which were gathered a few years ago into the pair of volumes ent.i.tled _Vignettes of Manhattan_ and _Outlines in Local Color_. The earliest of these stories in this third volume--replevined here from another collection long out of print--was written more than a quarter of a century ago; and the latest of them first saw the light only within the past few months. To each of the dozen sketches the date of composition has been appended as evidence that it was outlined in accord with the actual fact at the time it came into being, even if the metropolitan kaleidoscope has revolved so rapidly that more than one of these studies from life now records what is already ancient history. The bob-tailed car, for example, is already a thing of the past; the hansom is fast following it into desuetude; and no longer is it the fashion for family parties to bicycle through Central Park in the afternoon.

Slight as these fleeting impressions may seem, this much at least may be claimed for them--that they are the result of an honest effort to catch and to fix a vision of this mighty city in which the writer has dwelt now for more than half a century.

B. M.

_February 21, 1912._

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Young Man from the Country]

I

NEW YORK, Sept. 7, 1894.

MY Dear Miriam,--For you are mine now, all mine, and yet not so much as you will be some day--soon, I hope. You can't guess how much bolder I feel now that you are waiting for me. And it won't be so long that you will have to wait, either, for I am going to make my way here. There's lots of young fellows come to New York from the country with no better start than I've got, and they've died millionaires. I'm in no hurry to die yet, not before I've got the million, anyway; and I'm going to get it if it can be got honestly and by hard work and by keeping my eyes open. And when I get it, I'll have you to help me spend it.

I came here all right last night, and this morning I went down to the store with your father's letter. It's an immense big building Fa.s.siter, Smith & Kiddle keep store in. Mr. Kiddle was busy when I asked for him, but he saw me at last and he said anybody recommended by your father was sure to be just the sort of clerk they wanted. So he turned me over to one of his a.s.sistants and he set me to work at once. As I've come from the country, he said, and know what country people want, he's put me in the department where the storekeepers get their supplies. It isn't easy to get the hang of the work, there's so much noise and confusion; but when we quit at six o'clock he said he thought I'd do. When night came I was most beat out, I don't mind telling you. It was the noise mostly, I think. I've never minded noise before, but here it is all around you all the time and you can't get away from it. Nights it isn't so bad, but it's bad enough even then. And there isn't a let-up all day.

It seems as though it kept getting worse and worse; and at one time I thought there was a storm coming or something had happened. But it wasn't anything but the regular roar they have here every day, and none of the New-Yorkers noticed it, so I suppose I shall get wonted to it sooner or later.

The crowd is 'most as bad as the noise. Of course, I wasn't green enough to think that there must be a circus in town, but I came near it. Even on the side streets here there's as many people all day long as there is in Auburnvale on Main Street when the parade starts--and more, too. And they say it is just the same every day--and even at night it don't thin out much. At supper this evening I saw a piece in the paper saying that summer was nearly over and people would soon be coming back to town. I don't know where the town is going to put them, if they do come, for it seems to me about as full now as it will hold. How they can spend so much time in the street, too, that puzzles me. My feet were tired out before I had been down-town an hour. Life is harder in the city than it is in the country, I see that already. I guess it uses up men pretty quick, and I'm glad I'm strong.

But then I've got something to keep me up to the mark; I've got a little girl up in Auburnvale who is waiting for me to make my way. If I needed to be hearted up, that would do it. I've only got to shut my eyes tight and I can see you as you stood by the door of the school-house yesterday as the cars went by. I can see you standing there, so graceful and delicate, waving your hand to me and making believe you weren't crying.

I know, you are ever so much too good for me; but I know, too, that if hard work will deserve you, I shall put in that, anyhow.

It is getting late now and I must go out and post this. I wish I could fold you in my arms again as I did night before last. But it won't be long before I'll come back to Auburnvale and carry you away with me.

Your own

JACK.

II

NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 1894.

DEAREST MIRIAM,--I would have written two or three days ago, but when I've had supper I'm too tired to think even. It isn't the work at the store, either. I'm getting on all right there, and I see how I can make myself useful already. I haven't been living in Auburnvale all these years with my eyes shut, and I've got an idea or two that I'm going to turn to account. No, it's just the city itself that's so tiring. It's the tramp, tramp, tramp of the people all the time, day and night, never stopping. And they are all so busy always. They go tearing through the streets with their faces set, just as if they didn't know anybody. And sometimes their mouths are working, as if they were thinking aloud. They don't waste any time; they are everlastingly doing something. For instance, I've an hour's nooning; and I go out and get my dinner in a little eating-house near the rear of our store--ten cents for a plate of roast beef; pretty thin the cut is, but the flavor is all right. Well, they read papers while they are having their dinner. They read papers in the cars coming down in the morning, and they read papers in the cars going up at night. They don't seem to take any rest. Sometimes I don't believe they sleep nights. And if they do, I don't see how they can help walking in their sleep.

I couldn't sleep myself first off, but I'm getting to now. It was the pressure of the place, the bigness of it, and the roar all round me. I'd wake up with a start, and, tired as I was, sometimes I wouldn't get to sleep again for half an hour.

I've given up the place I boarded when I first come and I've got a room all to myself in a side street just off Fourth Avenue, between Union Square and the depot. It's a little bit of a house, only fifteen feet wide, I guess. It's two stories and a half, and I've got what they call the front hall-bedroom on the top floor. It's teeny, but it's clean and it's comfortable. It's quiet, too. The lady who keeps the house is a widow. Her husband was killed in the war, at Gettysburg, and she's got a pension. She's only one daughter and no son, so she takes three of us young fellows to board. And I think I'm going to like it.

Of course, I don't want to spend any more than I have to, for I've got to have some money saved up if I ever expect to do anything for myself.

And the sooner I can get started the sooner I can come back and carry away Miriam Chace--Miriam Forthright, as she will be then.

It seems a long way off, sometimes, and I don't know that it wouldn't be better to give up the idea of ever being very rich. Then we could be married just as soon as I get a raise, which I'm hoping for by New Year's, if I can show them that I am worth it. But I'd like to be rich for your sake, Miriam--very rich, so that you could have everything you want, and more too!

Your loving

JACK.

III

NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 1894.

MY DEAR MIRIAM,--I'm glad you don't want me to give up before I get to the top. I can't see why I shouldn't succeed just as well as anybody else. You needn't think I'm weakening, either. I guess I was longing for you when I wrote that about being satisfied with what I'll have if I get my raise.

But what do you want to know about the people in this house for? The landlady's name is Janeway, and she's sixty or seventy, I don't know which. As for the daughter you're so curious about, I don't see her much. Her name's Sally--at least that's what her mother calls her. And I guess she's forty if she's a day. She don't pretty much, either. Her hair is sort of sandy, and I don't know what color eyes she has. I never knew you to take such an interest in folks before.

You ask me how I like the people here--I suppose you mean the New-Yorkers generally. Well, I guess I shall get to like them in time.

They ain't as stuck up as you'd think. That sa.s.sy way of theirs don't mean anything half the time. They just mind their own business and they haven't got time for anything else. They don't worry their heads about anybody. If you can keep up with the procession, that's all right; and they're glad to see you. If you drop out or get run over, that's all right, too; and they don't think of you again.

That's one thing I've found out already. A man's let alone in a big city--ever so much more than he is in a village. There isn't anybody watching him here; and his neighbors don't know whether it's baker's bread his wife buys or what. Fact is, in a big city a man hasn't any neighbors. He knows the boys in the store, but he don't know the man who lives next door. That's an extraordinary thing to say, isn't it? I've been in this house here for a fortnight and I don't even know the names of the folks living opposite. I don't know them by sight, and they don't know me. The man who sleeps in the next house on the other side of the wall from me--he's got a bad cold, for I can hear him cough, but that's all I know about him. And he don't know me, either. We may be getting our dinners together every day down-town and we'll never find out except by accident that we sleep side by side with only a brick or two between us. It's thinking of things like that that comes pretty near making me feel lonely sometimes; and I won't deny that there's many a night when I've wished I had only to go down street to see the welcome light of your father's lamp--and to find Somebody Else who was glad to see me, even if she did sometimes fire up and make it hot for me just because I'd been polite to some other girl.

If you were only here you'd have such lots of sharp things to say about the sights, for there's always something going on here. Broadway beats the circus hollow. New York itself is the Greatest Show on Earth. You'd admire to see the men, all handsomed up, just as if they were going to meeting; and you'd find lots of remarks to pa.s.s about the women, dressed up like summer boarders all the time. And, of course, they are summer boarders really--New York is where the summer boarders come from. When they are up in Auburnvale they call us the Natives--down here they call us Jays. Every now and then on the street here I come across some face I seem to recognize, and when I trace it up I find it's some summer boarder that's been up in Auburnvale. Yesterday, for instance, in the car I sat opposite a girl I'd seen somewhere--a tall, handsome girl with rich golden hair. Well, I believe it was that Miss Stanwood that boarded at Taylor's last June--you know, the one you used to call the Gilt-Edged Girl.

But the people here don't faze me any more. I'm going in strong; and I guess I'll come out on top one of these fine days. And then I'll come back to Auburnvale and I'll meet a brown-haired girl with dark-brown eyes--and I'll meet her in church and her father will marry us! Then we'll go away in the parlor-car to be New-Yorkers for the rest of our lives and to leave the Natives way behind us.

I don't know but it's thinking of that little girl with the dark-brown eyes that makes me lonelier sometimes. Here's my love to her.

Your own

JACK.

IV

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,--You mustn't think that I'm lonely every day. I haven't time to be lonely generally. It's only now and then nights that I feel as if I'd like to have somebody to talk to about old times. But I don't understand what you mean about this Miss Stanwood. I didn't speak to her in the car that day, and I haven't seen her since. You forget that I don't know her except by sight. It was you who used to tell me about the Gilt-Edged Girl, and her fine clothes and her city ways, and all that.

This last week I've been going to the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, where there's a fine library and a big reading-room with all sorts of papers and magazines--I never knew there were so many before. It's going to be a great convenience to me, that reading-room is, and I shall try to improve myself with the advantages I can get there. But whenever I've read anything in a magazine that's at all good, then I want to talk it over with you as we used to do. You know so much more about books and history than I do, and you always make me see the fine side of things.

I'm afraid my appreciation of the ideal needs to be cultivated. But you are a good-enough ideal for me; I found that out ages ago, and it didn't take me so very long, either. You weren't meant to teach school every winter; and it won't be so very many winters before you will be down here in New York keeping house for a junior partner in Fa.s.siter, Smith & Kiddle--or some firm just as big.

I can write that way to you, Miriam, but I couldn't say anything like that down at the store. It isn't that they'd jeer at me, though they would, of course--because most of them haven't any ambition and just spend their money on their backs, or on the races, or anyhow. No, I haven't the confidence these New-Yorkers have. Why, I whisper to the car conductors to let me off at the corner, and I do it as quietly as I can, for I don't want them all looking at me. But a man who was brought up in the city, he just glances up from his paper and says "Twenty-third!" And probably n.o.body takes any notice of him, except the conductor. I wonder if I'll ever be so at home here as they are.