ALVMNVS BOOK FVND 
 
 5 J. 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 FUK1> M. 1 
 
MR. RUPERT DE RUYTER COULD NOT UK KEPT AWAY FROM HIS 
 OWN PORTRAIT" 
 
BY 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1894 
 
BOOKS BY BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 THE THEATRES OF PARIS. 
 
 FRENCH DRAMATISTS OF THE 19TH CENTURY. 
 
 THE LAST MEETING, a Story. 
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA, and Other Stories. 
 
 PEN AND INK : Essays on Subjects of More or Less Importance. 
 
 A FAMILY TREE, and Other Stories. 
 
 WITH MY FRIENDS: Tales Told in Partnership. 
 
 A TALE OF TWENTY-FIVE HOURS. 
 
 TOM PAULDING, a Story for Boys. 
 
 IN THE VESTIBULE LIMITED, a Story. 
 
 AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS, with Other Essays on Other Isms. 
 
 THE STORY OF A STORY, and Other Stories. 
 
 THE DECISION OF THE COURT, a Comedy. 
 
 STUDIES OF THE STAGE. 
 
 THIS PICTURE AND THAT, a Comedy. 
 
 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN. 
 
 THE ROYAL MARINE, an Idyl of Narra^ansett. 
 
 Copyright, 1804, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All ri jhtt reiervcd. 
 
TO 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 My dear Theodore, You knoiofor we have talked it over often 
 enough that I do not hold you to be a typical New- Yorker, since 
 you come of Dutch stock, and first saw the light 7iere on Manhattan 
 Island, whereas the typical New - Yorker is born of New England 
 parents, perhaps somewhere west of the Alleghanies. You know, 
 also, that often the typical New- Yorker is not proud of the city of 
 his choice, and not so loyal to it as we could wish. He has no abid 
 ing concern for this maligned and misunderstood town of ours; he 
 does not thrill with pride at the sight of its powerful and irregular 
 profile as he comes back to it across Hie broad rivers; nor is his 
 heart lifted up with joy at the sound of its increasing roar, so sug 
 gestive and so stimulating. But we have a firm affection for New 
 York, you and I, and a few besides; we like it for what it is; and 
 we love it for what we hope to see it. 
 
 It is because of this common regard for our strange and many- 
 sided city that I am giving myself the pleasure of proffering to you 
 this little volume of vignettes. They are not stories really, I am 
 afraid not sketches even, nor studies; they are, I think, just what 
 1 have called them vignettes. And there are a dozen of them, one 
 for every month in the year, an urban calendar of times and 
 seasons. Such as they are, I beg that you will accept them in token 
 of my friendship and esteem ; and that you will believe me, always, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 BKANDEU MATTHEWS 
 
 New York, May, 1804 
 
 4! 944 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IN THE LITTLE CHURCH DOWN THE STREET. 3 
 
 //THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY ... 13 
 
 AT A PRIVATE VIEW 25 
 
 SPRING IN A SIDE STREET 41 
 
 /V*A DECORATION-DAY RE VERY 53 
 
 IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR . . . . . 67 
 
 BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 85 
 
 A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT ....... 101 
 
 A VISTA IN CENTRAL PARK 123 
 
 / THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 135 
 
 A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 151 
 
 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE ... . 167 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "MR. RUPERT DE RUYTER COULD NOT BE KEPT 
 
 AWAY FROM HIS OWN PORTRAIT" .... Frontispiece 
 
 THE FUNERAL Facing page 4 
 
 "AND THEN SHE STARED STRAIGHT BEFORE HER" 8 
 "PEOPLE WHO THRONGED THE FLOOR WERE WELL- 
 NIGH AS VARIOUS AS THE PAINTINGS " . . " 26 
 " MR. J. WARREN PAYN, THE COMPOSER " . . . 28 
 " MR. DELANCEY JONES, THE ARCHITECT, WITH HIS 
 
 PRETTY WIFE 30 
 
 " SHE OVERHEARD TWO ART STUDENTS DISCUSSING " " 34 
 " SEEMINGLY IT WAS THE PRACTICE HOUR FOR 
 
 ONE OF THE CHILDREN NEXT DOOR" ... 44 
 
 HE WISHED HIMSELF IN THE COUNTRY .... 46 
 
 "DISTRACTED BY THE CROSSING SHOUTS OF LOUD- 
 VOICED MEN " 48 
 
 " THE BRIDE OF THAT AFTERNOON " " 50 
 
 " AT RIVINGTON STREET AND THE BOWERY " . . 68 
 
 IN MULBERRY BEND 70 
 
 MULBERRY STREET FRUIT- VENDERS " 72 
 
 ITALIAN MOTHER AND CHILD 74 
 
 " I SAW HIM NOT TEN MINUTES AGO " . . . " 82 
 
 HE BELONGED TO A "GANG" 92 
 
 "A LITTLE DRUNKER THAN USUAL" .... " 94 
 
Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " DROP THAT ! HE CRIED " Facing pagt 96 
 
 " I SIZED YOU UP WHEN YOU COME IN " . . " 102 
 
 "i DON T GO MUCH ON CIGARS " " 106 
 
 "THAT S BULLY, HE CRIED" " 108 
 
 "THAT WALL BEHIND HIM WAS BECOMING HOTTER" u 116 
 
 "THE OCCUPANT OP THE NEXT BED" .... " 120 
 
 YOUNG COUPLES SEEKING SEQUESTERED NOOKS . " 124 
 
 "TWO SLIM JAPANESE GENTLEMEN" .... " 126 
 
 U A KNOT OP LAUGHING MULATTO GIRLS " . . " 128 
 " NOWHERE ELSE WOULD A FEAST LIKE THIS BE 
 
 GRACED BY SO MANY LOVELY WOMEN 5 " . " 142 
 
 COMING FROM CHURCH " 154 
 
 " WHITE SECURED A SMALL TABLE NEAR THE 
 
 CORNER" " 160 
 
 AN IDEAL DAY FOR THE FOOT-BALL GAME ... " 162 
 
i i i I I! BJ III lil III 111 @ III 
 
)HE little church stands back from the 
 street, with a scrap of lawn on either 
 side of the path that winds from the 
 iron gate to the church door. On 
 this chill January morning the snow 
 lay a foot deep on the grass-plots, with the wa 
 ter frozen out of it by the midnight wind. The 
 small fountain on one side was sheathed with ice; 
 and where its tiny spirtle fell a glittering stalag 
 mite was rising rapidly, so the rotund sparrows 
 had difficulty in getting at their usual drinking- 
 trough. The sky was ashen, yet there was a hope 
 that the sun might break out later in the morn 
 ing. A sharp breeze blew down the street from 
 the river, bearing with it, now and again, the tin 
 kle of sleigh-bells from the Avenue, only fifty 
 yards away. 
 
 There was the customary crowd of curious 
 idlers gathered about the gate as the hearse drew 
 up before it. The pall-bearers alighted from the 
 carriages which followed, and took up their posi 
 tions on the sidewalk, while the undertaker s as 
 sistants were lifting out the coffin. Then the 
 bareheaded and gray-haired rector came from out 
 the church porch, and went down to the gate to 
 
OF MANHATTAN 
 
 meet the funeral procession. He held the prayer- 
 book open in his hand, and when he came to the 
 coffin he began to read the solemn words of the 
 order for the burial of the dead : 
 
 "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the 
 Lord : he that believeth in me, though he were 
 dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and 
 believeth in me, shall never die." 
 
 Preceding the pall - bearers the rector led the 
 way to the church, which was already filled with 
 the dead actor s comrades and with his friends, 
 and with mere strangers who had come out of 
 curiosity, and to see actresses by daylight and off 
 the stage. The interior was dusky, although the 
 gas had been lighted here and there. The Christ 
 mas greens still twined about the pillars, and still 
 hung in heavy festoons from the low arched roof. 
 As the coffin passed slowly through the porch, 
 the rector spoke again : 
 
 "We brought nothing into this world, and it 
 is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord 
 gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be 
 the Name of the Lord." 
 
 Throughout the church there was a stir, and all 
 heads were turned towards the entrance. There 
 were tears in the eyes of more than one man, for 
 the actor had been a favorite, and not a few wom 
 en were weeping silently. In a pew near the door 
 were two young actresses who had been in the 
 same company with the dead man when he had 
 made his first appearance on the stage, only three 
 
IRK FUNERAL 
 
IN THE LITTLE CI1UKCII DOWN THE STKEET 5 
 
 years before ; and now, possessed by the emotion 
 of the moment, these two sobbed aloud. By their 
 side stood a tall, handsome, fair -haired woman, 
 evidently not an actress ; she was clad in simple 
 black ; she gave but a single glance at the cof 
 fin as it passed up the aisle, half hidden by the 
 heaped-up wreaths of flowers, and then she stared 
 straight before her, with a rigid face, but with 
 out a tear in her eye. 
 
 Slowly the rector preceded the pall-bearers up 
 the central aisle of the church, while the vestured 
 choir began the stately anthem : 
 
 "Lord, let me know my end, and the number 
 of my days ; that I may be certified how long I 
 have to live. 
 
 " Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a 
 span long, and mine age is even as nothing in re 
 spect of thee ; and verily every man living is al 
 together vanity." 
 
 It was for a young man that this solemn an 
 them was being sung for a man who had died 
 in his twenty -fifth year, at the moment of his 
 first success, and when life opened temptingly be 
 fore him. He bore a name known in American 
 history, and his friends had supposed that he 
 would be called to the bar, like his father and 
 his grandfather before him. He was a handsome 
 young fellow, with a speaking eye and a rich, 
 alluring voice ; and his father s friends saw in 
 him a moving advocate. But the year he was 
 graduated from college his father had died, and 
 
6 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 his mother also, and he was left alone in the world. 
 As it happened, his father s investments were ill- 
 advised, and there was little or no income to be 
 hoped from them for years. In college he had 
 been the foremost member of the dramatic club, 
 and in the summer vacations he had taken part in 
 many private theatricals. Perhaps it had always 
 been his secret wish to abandon the bar for the 
 stage. While he was debating the course he 
 should take, chance threw in his way the offer of 
 an engagement in the company which support 
 ed a distinguished tragedian. He had accepted 
 what opportunity proffered, and it was not as a 
 lawyer but as an actor that he had made his 
 living ; it was as an actor that his funeral was 
 now being held at " the little church down the 
 street." 
 
 While the choir had been singing the anthem, 
 the coffin had been borne to the chancel and set 
 down before the rail, which was almost concealed 
 from sight by the flowers scattered about the 
 steps and clustering at the foot of the pulpit and 
 in front of the reading-desk. The thick and cloy 
 ing perfume of the lilies was diffused throughout 
 the church. 
 
 The rector had taken his place at the desk in 
 the chancel to read the appointed lesson, with its 
 message of faith and love. There were sobs to be 
 heard when he declared that this mortal shall put 
 on immortality. 
 
 " Then shall be brought to pass the saying that 
 
IN THE LITTLE CIIUKCII DOWN THE STEEET 7 
 
 is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O 
 death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy 
 victory ?" 
 
 There were those present old friends of his 
 boyhood, come from afar to give the dead man 
 the last greeting of affection who knew how 
 high had been his hopes when he went upon the 
 stage ; and they knew also how hard that first 
 year had been, with the wearisome drudgery of 
 his apprenticeship, with the incessant travelling, 
 with ambition baffled by lack of opportunity. 
 Some of them were aware how the second year 
 of his career in the theatre had seen a change in 
 his fortunes, and how discouragement had given 
 place to confidence. There had been dissensions 
 in the company to which he belonged, and the tra 
 gedian had parted with the actor who played the 
 second parts. Here was a chance for the young 
 man, and he proved himself worthy of the good- 
 fortune. No more youthful and fiery Laertes had 
 been seen for years, no more passionate Macduff, 
 no more artful and persuasive Mark Antony. He 
 had the gifts of nature youth, and manly beauty, 
 and the histrionic temperament ; and he had also 
 the artistic intelligence which made the utmost 
 out of his endowment. Before the end of his sec 
 ond season on the stage he was recognized as the 
 most promising actor of his years. He had played 
 Mark Antony for the first time only twelve months 
 before ; and now he lay there in his coffin, and 
 the little church was filled with the actors and 
 
8 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 actresses of New York who bad come to bid him 
 farewell. 
 
 When the rector had finished the reading of the 
 lesson there was a hush throughout the church. 
 A faint jingle of sleigh-bells came floating down 
 from the Avenue. 
 
 A few straggling rays of sunshine filtered 
 through the windows on the right side of the 
 little church, and stained with molten colors the 
 wood-work of the pews on the 1 eft. There was 
 a movement among the members of the vestured 
 choir, and a large and stately woman took her 
 stand before the organ ; she was the contralto of 
 a great opera company, and it was with skill and 
 power and feeling that she sang " Rock of Ages." 
 
 In a pew between the organ and the pulpit sat 
 a slight, graceful, dark -eyed and dark -haired 
 woman, young still and charming always, al 
 though the freshness had faded from her face. 
 This was the celebrated actress with whom the 
 dead man had been acting only a week before. 
 She was the ideal Juliet so the theatre-goers 
 thought and never before had she been aided 
 by so gallant and so ardent a Romeo. Nev 
 er before had the tragedy been produced with so 
 much splendor, and with dramatic effect so cer 
 tain and so abundant. Never before had " Romeo 
 and Juliet" been performed for a hundred and fifty 
 nights without interruption. And for once the 
 critics had been in accord with the public, so po 
 tent was the glamour of youth and beauty and 
 
AND THEN SHE STARED STRAIGHT BEFORE HER 
 
IN THE LITTLE CHUKCH DOWN THE STREET Q 
 
 passion. It was a joy to all discerning lovers of 
 the drama to see characters so difficult interpreted 
 so adequately. Thus it was that the tragedy had 
 been played for five months to overflowing audi 
 ences ; and its prosperity had been cut short only 
 by the death of the fiery wooer of the Romeo 
 who lay now in the coffin before the chancel, 
 while the Juliet, with the tears gliding down her 
 cheeks, sat there by the side of the middle-aged 
 merchant she was soon to marry. The young 
 actor, to catch a glimpse of whom silly school 
 girls would watch the stage door, and to whom 
 foolish women sent baskets of flowers, now lay 
 cold in death, with lilies and lilacs in a heap over 
 his silent heart. 
 
 When the final notes of the contralto s rich and 
 noble voice had died away, the rector went on 
 with the ritual : 
 
 " Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short 
 time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, 
 and is cut down, like a flower ; he fleeth as it were 
 a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." 
 
 The dead man had been the last of his line, and 
 there were no near kindred at the funeral. There 
 was no mother there, no sister, no wife. Friends 
 there were, but none of his blood, none who bore 
 his name. Yet there was a shiver of sympathy 
 as the tiny clods of clay rattled down upon the 
 coffin lid, and as the rector said "earth to earth, 
 ashes to ashes, dust to dust." 
 
 Then the service drew to an end swiftly, and 
 
10 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 the pall-bearers formed in order once again, and 
 the coffin was lifted and carried slowly down the 
 aisle. 
 
 As the sorrowful procession drew near to the 
 open door and passed before the pew where the 
 tall fair-haired woman stood, stolid, with averted 
 head, and a stare fixed on the floor, one of the 
 bearers stumbled, but recovered himself at once. 
 The woman had raised her hand, and she had 
 checked a cry of warning ; but the coffin was 
 borne before her steadily ; and they who bore 
 it little guessed that they were carrying it past 
 the dry-eyed mother of the dead man s unborn 
 child. 
 
 (1893.) 
 
,111 i HI Bl B II III H9 III III HI HI 
 
 / Owenty -ninth 
 
 of cfebzuazy 
 
HE Governor of the State and his sec 
 retary had just finished their lunch 
 in one of the private parlors of the 
 hotel. The Governor lighted his cigar 
 and leaned back in his chair as the 
 secretary went to the door and admitted an old 
 man who had been patrolling the corridor impa 
 tiently. 
 
 " The Governor will see you now, Mr. Baxter," 
 said the secretary. 
 
 The old man, tall, thin, and impetuous, strode 
 past the secretary without a word of thanks, and 
 came straight to where the Governor was sitting. 
 
 " At last !" he cried " at last I ve got a chance 
 to talk to you face to face. If you only knew 
 how I have longed for this, you would have let 
 me in before." 
 
 "Take a seat, Mr. Baxter," said the Governor, 
 kindly. 
 
 " Thank you, but I d rather stand," replied the 
 old man. "In fact, I d rather walk. I don t seem 
 to be able to sit nor to stand when I get a-talk- 
 ing about the boy. You know why I wanted 
 to see you, I suppose?" he inquired, suddenly, 
 fixing the Governor with a penetrating stare. 
 
14 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 " You wish to urge your son s pardon, I take 
 it," the Governor answered ; " and I am ready to 
 listen to you. I have all the papers here," and 
 he indicated a bundle of documents at his elbow. 
 "I have just been reading them." 
 
 "But the men who wrote those papers didn t 
 know my boy as I know him, and they can t tell 
 you about him as I can tell you. He s in jail, 
 and he s been there nearly three years, and he s 
 twenty -four years old to -day for to-day s his 
 birthday but he s only a boy for all that. He 
 isn t a man yet, to be judged as a man, and 
 to take a man s punishment. I can t tell you 
 that he didn t shoot the fellow, for he did ; but 
 he did it in his anger, and he was sorely tempted; 
 and what s more, he did it in self-defence. Oh, I 
 know that wasn t brought out on the trial, but 
 just you read this," and he tore open his coat 
 and pulled out a package of papers ; selecting 
 one of them, he thrust it into the Governor s 
 hands. " That s from the man who sold Bowles 
 a pistol and a knife on the 28th of February, the 
 day before the fight. Then you read this too," 
 and he picked out a second letter, and gave that 
 to the Governor with the same impatient and im 
 perious gesture. " That s from one of Bowles s 
 friends, the fellow who was with him just before 
 the shot was fired. He kept quiet at the trial, 
 and said as little as he could. He knew that I 
 was sick abed, and so he held his peace. But I ve 
 been at him ever since I got about again, and 
 
THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY 15 
 
 now I ve pinned him down. And there s the re 
 sult; the truth must prevail in the end always. 
 There, in that letter, he says that Bowles had 
 that pistol on his person on the morning of the 
 29th ; and that if it wasn t found on the body, it 
 was because Bowles dropped it as he fell. The 
 pistol was picked up that night under a plank in 
 the sidewalk. It was this same friend of Bowles s 
 who found it then, and he said nothing the cur! 
 Even at the trial he said nothing ! But I knew 
 he had something to say, and at last I made him 
 speak. He s telling the truth now, and the whole 
 truth. Read the letter and see if it isn t. He 
 hated my boy; and he said he wanted to see him 
 swing ; but I made him write that letter. And 
 if that isn t enough, I ll put him on the stand, 
 and I ll make him swear to every word of it." 
 
 The Governor adjusted his glasses, and began 
 to read the letters thus forcibly placed in his 
 hands. 
 
 In his eagerness to be heard, the old man could 
 not brook even this delay, and as the Governor 
 laid down the first letter, he broke forth again : 
 "To-day s his birthday, the first he s had since 
 the shooting, the first that he s ever spent away 
 from me. He was born on the 29th of February, 
 and he A has a birthday only once in four years ; 
 and it was just four years ago to-day that he got 
 into this scrape, and fired the shot that caused us 
 all this trouble. He was twenty years old that 
 morning, for he was born in 1864 ; that was the 
 
16 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 year when General Grant was getting ready to 
 smash Jeff Davis and the rebels ; that s why we 
 called him Grant out of gratitude for the sav 
 ing of the country. Sometimes I think it s a pity 
 he hadn t been born twenty years before, so that 
 he could have died at Cold Harbor like a man, 
 without ever having seen the inside of a jail. 
 But it was to be, I suppose. Our lives are laid 
 out for us, I suppose. Maybe a boy born on the 
 29th of February is different from other boys ; I 
 don t know. He was loved more than most boys ; 
 I know that well enough. I was raised on Cape 
 Cod, and my father never gave me a caress ; 
 though I guess he loved me, too, in his way. But 
 I moved out to Lake Erie when I was married, 
 and out by the edge of the lake we waited, my 
 wife and I, for a man-child to be born to us. And 
 we waited a score of years and more ; and when 
 Grant came at last, he was our only child. Both 
 his sisters had died in their cradles. So he was 
 the son of our old age. Maybe we spoiled him. 
 Surely we spared the rod. Why, we loved him 
 too much ever to say a hard word to him. In 
 the main he was a good boy, too wild at times, 
 and skittish but always loving and easily led. 
 His mother had only to look, and he d jump to 
 serve her. So we let him do as he pleased, and 
 most generally he pleased us. Perhaps I gave 
 him too much rope ; I ve often thought so, now 
 I see how near he came to hanging himself. But 
 he was a good boy, and devoted to his mother 
 
THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY 17 
 
 always. And she loved him oh ! how she loved 
 him! more than she loved her husband, I know, 
 fond as she was of me." 
 
 Here the old man paused in his vehement 
 speech, and turned away abruptly. 
 
 " Is Mrs. Baxter with you here in the city ?" 
 the Governor asked, gently. 
 
 " Here in the city ?" cried the old man, facing 
 about sharply. " She s at home in the cemetery ! 
 That s where she is. She drooped as soon as ever 
 he was arrested, but she bore up till the trial was 
 over, hoping that he might get off somehow, not 
 believing that her boy could be found guilty. 
 But when he was sent off to Auburn to serve fif 
 teen years for manslaughter, why, then there 
 wasn t anything left for her to live for any long 
 er, with all the joy of her life locked up in a 
 stone cell. So she took to her bed, and she died. 
 She faded away; she had lost her interest in life, 
 and so she gave up. Now the boy s all I have, 
 and I want you to give him back to me. That s 
 what I ve come down here for. That s what I ve 
 been pursuing you for these six months. The boy 
 is all I have. I want to see him back at the old 
 home on the lake before I die and I can t live 
 much longer, I guess. I m seventy now, and for 
 all I look hale and hearty, there s something the 
 matter with my heart, the doctors say, and I may 
 go out any time, like a candle in a gale of wind. 
 Well, give me back the boy, and I m ready to 
 die. Let me see him at home once more, a free 
 
 2 
 
18 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 man, and I ll carry the good news to the old 
 woman whenever the call conies, and gladly." 
 
 He paused for a moment, and his impassioned 
 speech had lost a little of its fierce fire. 
 
 The Governor took up the second letter and 
 began to read it. The movement of the Gov 
 ernor s hand as he raised the paper aroused the 
 old man again. 
 
 "If the District Attorney had done his duty 
 by the people of the State it wouldn t have been 
 left for me to wring the truth out of that coward 
 whose letter you are reading. Sometimes I half 
 think this cur was at the bottom of the whole 
 thing. It was he who introduced Grant to the 
 woman. You know that the wedding was to 
 have taken place that very night the night of 
 the shooting ? Yes, it all came out on the trial. 
 Grant only had one birthday in four years, as 
 I ve been telling you, and so he persuaded the 
 girl to set it as the wedding-day too. And he 
 was just twenty a mere boy. It was no wonder 
 they took advantage of him. If you ve read the 
 report you can see how she deceived him. Even 
 the District Attorney admitted that, bitter as he 
 was against the boy. Ah ! if I could only have 
 been in court at the trial ! If I had only been in 
 town the day when the boy discovered the truth, 
 he wouldn t have shot that villain, for I d have 
 done it myself." 
 
 " Then who would have come to me to ask for 
 your pardon ?" inquired the Governor, smiling 
 
THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY 19 
 
 kindly. " I have read these letters, but they con 
 tain nothing that is new to me, and " 
 
 " Nothing new ?" interrupted the old man, vio 
 lently. "That letter shows that Grant fired in 
 self-defence, since the fellow had a pistol in his 
 hand. Isn t that something new ?" 
 
 " Not to me, for the District Attorney against 
 whom you seem to have a prejudice, Mr. Baxter 
 had already informed me of this." 
 
 "If you ve been listening to him, I suppose 
 there isn t much hope of my getting what I m 
 after," the old man returned, hotly ; " for no man 
 ever spoke more unfairly against another than 
 that man did against my boy." 
 
 "You do him injustice," the Governor said, 
 firmly. "He did his duty at the trial in pressing 
 for sentence, and he has done his duty now in 
 laying before me this newly discovered evidence. 
 He has even gone further : he has urged me to 
 accede to your request for your son s pardon." 
 
 " The District Attorney ?" cried the old man in 
 surprise. 
 
 " Yes," the Governor replied. 
 
 " Then his conscience has pricked him at last." 
 
 "And it is chiefly in consequence of his recom 
 mendation that I have decided to pardon your 
 son," the Governor continued. 
 
 " I don t care on whose urging it is, so long as 
 it s done," the old man rejoined. "When can 
 the boy come out ?" he asked, eagerly. 
 
 "I will let you bear the pardon to him," said 
 
20 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 the Governor, and lie unfolded one of the papers 
 which lay on the table by his side and signed it. 
 "Here it is." 
 
 The old man seized the paper with a convul 
 sive clutch. His knees trembled as his eyes read 
 the pardon swiftly. 
 
 The door of the parlor opened, and the secre 
 tary returned. 
 
 The old man grasped his hat. " Do you know 
 when the next train leaves for Auburn ?" he in 
 quired, hastily. 
 
 " There s one art four o clock, I think," the sec 
 retary answered. 
 
 "I shall be in time," said the old man ; and 
 then, the pardon in his twitching fingers, he left 
 the parlor without another word. He passed 
 quickly through the corridors of the hotel, down 
 the stairs, and out into the street. When he 
 reached the pavement he stood still for a moment 
 and bared his head, quite unconscious of the rain 
 storm which had broken but a minute before. 
 
 A small boy came running to him across the 
 street, crying, "Evening papers four o clock 
 Gazette!" 
 
 Seemingly the old man did not hear him. 
 
 " Terrible loss of life !" the newsboy shrilled 
 out, as he moved away. "Riot at Auburn ! At 
 tempted escape of the prisoners !" 
 
 Then a clutch of iron was fastened on the 
 newsboy s arm, and the old man towered above 
 him, asking hoarsely: " What s that you say ? A 
 
THE TWENTY-NINTH OP FEBRUARY 21 
 
 loss of life in the prison at Auburn ? Give me 
 the paper !" 
 
 He seized it. On the first page was a despatch 
 from Auburn stating that there had been a ris 
 ing of the convicts at the State-prison, which the 
 wardens had been able to repress after it had 
 gained headway. The prisoners had yielded and 
 gone back to their cells only after the wardens 
 had fired on them, wounding half a dozen and 
 killing the ringleader, who had fought desperate 
 ly. He was a young man from one of the lake 
 villages, sentenced to fifteen years for manslaugh 
 ter ; his name was Grant Baxter. 
 
 As the old man read this, the paper slipped 
 from his fingers, and he fell on the sidewalk dead, 
 still tightly grasping the pardon. 
 
 (1889.) 
 
Vi 
 
 ew 
 
the Spring Exhibition opened, 
 March had thrown off its lion s skin, 
 and stood revealed as a lamb. There 
 was no tang to the wind that swept 
 the swirling dust down the broad 
 street ; and the moonlight which silvered the Re 
 nascence front of the building had no longer a 
 wintry chill. Flitting clouds were thickening, and 
 threatened rain ; but the carriages, rolling up to 
 the canvas tunnel which had been extemporized 
 across the sidewalk, brought many a pretty wom 
 an who had risked a spring bonnet. Not a few 
 of the ladies who had been bidden to the Private 
 View were in evening dress; and it was a brill 
 iant throng which pressed down the broad corri 
 dor, past the dressing-rooms, and into the first 
 gallery, where the President of the Society, sur 
 rounded by other artists of renown, stood ready 
 to receive them. 
 
 Beyond the first gallery, and up half a dozen 
 steps, was a smaller saloon, with a square room 
 yet smaller to its right and to its left. Still far 
 ther beyond, and up a few more steps, was the 
 main gallery, a splendid and stately hall, lofty 
 and well proportioned, and worthy of the many 
 
26 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 fine paintings which lined its walls two and 
 three deep. In the place of honor, facing the 
 entrance, was Mr. Frederick Olyphant s startling 
 picture, "The Question of the Sphinx," which 
 bore on its simple frame the bit of paper declar 
 ing that it had received a silver medal at the 
 Salon of the summer before. In a corner was 
 another painting by the same artist, a portrait of 
 his friend Mr. Laurence Laughton ; and balancing 
 this, on the other side of a landscape called " A 
 Sunset at Onteora," was a portrait of Mr. Rupert 
 de Ruyter, the poet, by a young artist named 
 Renwick Brashleigh, painted vigorously yet sym 
 pathetically, and quite extinguishing the impres 
 sionistic " Girl in a Hammock," which hung next 
 to it. Here and there throughout the spacious 
 room there were statuettes and busts ; one of the 
 latter represented Astroyd, the amusing comedian. 
 Landscapes drenched with sunshine hung by the 
 side of wintry marines ; and delicate studies of 
 still life set off purely decorative compositions 
 painted almost in monochrome. 
 
 The people who thronged the floor were well- 
 nigh as various as the paintings which covered 
 the walls. There were artists in plenty, men of 
 letters and men about town, women who lived 
 for art and women who lived for society, visitors 
 of both sexes who came to see the exhibition, and 
 visitors of both sexes who came to be seen them 
 selves. There were art-students and art-critics, 
 picture-buyers and picture-dealers, poets and nov- 
 
^!&m.,i^ ,,. >: . 
 
 "PEOPLE wno THRONGED THE FLOOR WERE WELLNIGH AS VARI 
 OUS AS THE PAINTINGS" 
 
AT A PEIVATE VIEW 27 
 
 elists, stock - brokers and clergymen. Among 
 them were Mr. Robert White, of the Gotham 
 Gazette, and Mr. Harry Brackett, formerly at 
 tached to that journal ; Mr. Rupert de Ruyter, 
 who could not be kept away from his own por 
 trait ; Mr. Delancey Jones, the architect, with his 
 pretty wife ; Mr. J. Warren Payn, the composer ; 
 Mr. and Mrs. Martin, of Washington Square ; and 
 Miss Marlenspuyk, an old maid, who seemed to 
 know everybody and to be liked by everybody. 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk lingered before Olyphant s 
 portrait of Laurence Laughton, whom she had 
 known for years. She liked the picture until she 
 overheard two young art-students discussing it. 
 
 " It s a pity Olyphant nasn t any idea of color, 
 isn t it ?" observed one. 
 
 " Yes," assented the other ; " and the head is 
 hopelessly out of drawing." 
 
 "The man has a paintable face, too," the first 
 rejoined. "I d like to do him myself." 
 
 " Olyphant s well enough for composition," the 
 second returned, " but when it comes to portraits, 
 he simply isn t in it with Brashleigh. Seen his 
 two yet ?" 
 
 " Whose ?" inquired the first speaker. 
 
 " Brashleigh s," was the answer. " Biggest 
 things here. And as different as they make em. 
 Best is a Wall Street man Poole, I think, his 
 name is." 
 
 " I know," the first interrupted. " Cyrus Poole ; 
 he s president of a big railroad somewhere out 
 
28 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 West. Lots of money. I wonder how Brashleigh 
 got the job ?" 
 
 "Guess he did Rupert de Ruyter for nothing. 
 You know De Ruyter wrote him up in one of the 
 magazines." 
 
 The two young art -students stood before the 
 portrait a few seconds longer, looking at it in 
 tently. Then they moved off, the first speaker 
 saying, " That head s out of drawing too." 
 
 It gave Miss Marlenspuyk something of a shock 
 to learn that the heads of two of her friends were 
 out of drawing ; she wondered how serious the 
 deformity might be ; she felt for a momer f . al 
 most as though she were acquainted with two of 
 the startlingly abnormal specimens of humanity 
 who are to be seen in dime museums. As these 
 suggestions came to her one after the other, she 
 smiled gently. 
 
 " I don t wonder that you are laughing at that 
 picture, Miss Marlenspuyk," said a voice at her 
 right. " It s no better than the regulation Sun 
 set on the Lake of Chromo, that you can buy on 
 Liberty Street for five dollars, with a frame worth 
 twice the money." 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk turned, and recognized Mr. 
 Robert White. She held out her hand cordially. 
 
 " Is your wife here ?" she asked. 
 
 "Harry Brackett is explaining the pictures to 
 her," White answered. "He doesn t know any 
 thing about art, but he is just as amusing as if he 
 did." 
 
MR. J. WARREN PAYN, THE COMPOSER " 
 
AT A PRIVATE VIEW 29 
 
 " I like Mr. Brackett," the old maid rejoined. 
 " He s a little well, a little common, I fear ; but 
 then he is so quaint and so individual in his views. 
 And at my time of life I like to be amused." 
 
 "I know your fondness for a new sensation," 
 White returned. " I believe you wouldn t object 
 to having the devil take you in to dinner." 
 
 " Why should I object ?" responded Miss Marlen- 
 spuyk, bravely. " The devil is a gentleman, they 
 say ; and besides, I should be so glad to get the 
 latest news of lots of my friends." 
 
 " Speaking of the gentleman who is not as black 
 as he is painted," said White, " have you seen the 
 portrait of Cyrus Poole yet ? It is the best thing 
 here. I didn t know Brashleigh had it in him to 
 do anything so good." 
 
 " Where is it?" asked Miss Marlenspuyk. " I ve 
 been looking at this Mr. Brashleigh s portrait of 
 Mr. De Ruyter, and " 
 
 "Pretty little thing, isn t it?" White inter 
 rupted. "Perhaps a trifle too sentimental and 
 saccharine. But it hits off the poet to the life." 
 
 "And life is just what I don t find in so many 
 of these portraits," the lady remarked. " Some 
 of them look as though the artist had first made 
 a wax model of his sitter and then painted that." 
 
 They moved slowly through the throng towards 
 the other end of the gallery. 
 
 " Charley Vaughn, now, has another trick," said 
 White, indicating a picture before them with a 
 slight gesture. " Since he has been to Paris and 
 
30 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 studied under Carolus he translates all his sit 
 ters into French, and then puts the translation on 
 canvas." 
 
 The picture White had drawn attention to rep 
 resented a lady dressed for a ball, and standing 
 before a mirror adjusting a feather in her hair. 
 It was a portrait of Mrs. Delancey Jones, the wife 
 of the architect. 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk raised her glasses, and looked 
 at it for a moment critically. Then she smiled. 
 " It is the usual thing, now, I see," she said " in 
 timations of immorality." 
 
 White laughed, as they resumed their march 
 around the hall. 
 
 " If you say that of Charley Vaughn s picture," 
 he commented, "I wonder what you will say of 
 Ren wick Brashleigh s. Here it is." 
 
 And they came to a halt before the painting 
 which had the place of honor in the centre of the 
 wall on that side of the gallery. 
 
 "That is Cyrus Poole," White continued. 
 "President of the Niobrara Central, one of the 
 rising men of the Street, and now away in Europe 
 on his honeymoon." 
 
 The picture bore the number 13, and the cata 
 logue declared it to be a "Portrait of a Gentle 
 man." It was a large canvas, and the figure was 
 life size. It represented a man of barely forty 
 years of age, seated at his desk in his private 
 office. On the wall beyond him hung a map of 
 the Niobrara Central Railroad with its branches. 
 
MR. DELANCEY JONES, THE ARCHITECT, WITH HIS PRETTY WIFE " 
 
AT A PRIVATE VIEW 31 
 
 The light came from the window on the left, 
 against which the desk was placed. The pose was 
 that of a man who had been interrupted in his 
 work, and who had swung around in his chair to 
 talk to a visitor. He was a man to be picked out 
 of a crowd as unlike other men, rather spare, 
 rather below medium height, rather wiry than 
 muscular. Beyond all question he was energetic, 
 untiring, determined, and powerful. The way he 
 sat indicated the consciousness of strength. So 
 did his expression, although there was no trace of 
 conceit to be detected on his features. His hair 
 was dark and thick and straight, with scarce a 
 touch of gray. He had a sharp nose and pierc 
 ing eyes, while his lips were thin and his jaw 
 massive. 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk looked at the picture with 
 interest. " Yes," she said, " I don t wonder this 
 has made a hit. There is something striking 
 about it something novel. It s a new note; 
 that s what it is. And the man is interesting 
 too. He has a masterful chin. Not a man to be 
 henpecked, I take it. And he s a good provider, 
 too, judging by the eyes and the mouth ; I don t 
 believe that his wife will ever have to turn her 
 best black silk. There s something fascinating 
 about the face, but I don t see how " 
 
 She interrupted herself, and gazed at the picture 
 again. 
 
 " Is it a good likeness ?" she asked at last, with 
 her eyes still fixed on the portrait. 
 
32 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 " It s so like him that I wouldn t speak to it," 
 White answered. 
 
 "I see what you mean," the old lady responded. 
 " Yes, if the man really looks like that, nobody 
 would want to speak to him. I wouldn t have 
 this artist what s his name? Mr. Brashleigh? 
 I wouldn t have him paint my portrait for the 
 world. Why, if he did, and my friends once saw 
 it, there isn t one of them who would ever dare 
 to ask me to dinner again." 
 
 White smiled, and quickly responded, "As I 
 said before, you know, even the gentleman you 
 wanted to take you in to dinner is probably not 
 as black as he is painted." 
 
 " But I wouldn t want that man to take me in 
 to dinner," returned Miss Marlenspuyk, promptly, 
 indicating the portrait with a wave of her hand. 
 " Paint is all very well ; besides, it is only on the 
 outside, and women don t mind it ; but it is that 
 man s heart that is black. It is his inner man 
 that is so terrible. He fascinates me yes but 
 he frightens me too. Who is he ?" 
 
 "I told you," White answered. "He is Mr. 
 Cyrus Poole, the president of the Niobrara Cen 
 tral Railroad, and one of the coming men in the 
 Street. He turned up in Denver ten years ago, 
 and when he had learned all that Denver had to 
 teach him he went to Chicago. He graduated 
 from the Board of Trade there, and then came to 
 New York ; he has been here two years now, and 
 already he has made himself felt. lie has engi- 
 
AT A PRIVATE VIEW 33 
 
 neered two or three of the biggest things yet seen 
 in the Street. As a result there are now two 
 opinions about him." 
 
 " If this portrait is true," said the old maid, " I 
 don t see how there can be more than one opin 
 ion about him." 
 
 "There were three at first," White rejoined. 
 "At first they thought he was a lamb ; now they 
 know better. But they are still in doubt whether 
 he is square or not. They say that the deal by 
 which he captured the stock of the Niobrara Cen 
 tral and made himself president had this little 
 peculiarity, that if it hadn t succeeded, instead of 
 being in Europe on his honeymoon, Cyrus Poole 
 would now be in Sing Sing. Why, if half they 
 said about him at the time is true instead of 
 hanging here on the line, he ought to have been 
 hanged at the end of a rope. But then I don t 
 believe half that I hear." 
 
 " I could believe anything of a man who looks 
 like that," Miss Marlenspuyk said. "I don t 
 think I ever saw a face so evil, for all it appears 
 frank and almost friendly." 
 
 "But I have told you only one side," White 
 went on. "Poole has partisans who deny all 
 the charges against him. They say that his only 
 crime is his success. They declare that he has 
 got into trouble more than once trying to help 
 friends out. While his enemies call him unscru 
 pulous and vindictive, his friends say that he is 
 loyal and lucky." 
 
34 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk said nothing for a minute or 
 more. She was studying the portrait with an in 
 terest which showed no sign of flagging. Sud 
 denly she looked up at White and asked, "Do 
 you suppose he knows how this picture affects 
 us?" 
 
 "Poole?" queried White. "No, I imagine 
 not. He is a better judge of values as they are 
 understood in Wall Street than as they are inter 
 preted at the Art Students League. Besides, 
 I ve heard that he was married and went to Eu 
 rope before the picture was quite finished. Brash- 
 leigh had to paint in the background afterwards." 
 
 " The poor girl !" said Miss Marlenspuyk. 
 " Who was she ?" 
 
 " What poor girl ?" asked the man. " Oh, you 
 mean the new Mrs. Cyrus Poole ?" 
 
 " Yes," responded the old lady. 
 
 " She was a Miss Cameron," White answered ; 
 " Eunice Cameron, I think her name was. I be 
 lieve that she is a cousin of Brashleigh s. By-the- 
 way, I suppose that s how it happened he was 
 asked to paint this portrait. He is one of the 
 progressive painters a Wall Street man wouldn t 
 be Jikely to appreciate off-hand. But it couldn t 
 have been given to a better man, could it ?" 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk smiled. 
 
 " Well," said White, " Brashleigh has a mar 
 vellous insight into character ; you can see that 
 for yourself. Or at least he paints portraits as 
 if he had ; it s hard to tell about these artists, of 
 
" 
 
 ; SHE OVERHEARD TWO ART STUDENTS DISCUSSING 
 
AT A PRIVATE VIEW 35 
 
 course, and it s easy to credit them with more 
 than they have. They see so much more than 
 they understand ; they have the gift, you know, 
 but they can t explain ; and half the time they 
 don t know what it is they have done." 
 
 The old lady looked up and laughed a little. 
 
 " I think the man who painted that," she said, 
 "knew what he was about." 
 
 "Yes," White admitted, "it seems as though 
 no one could do a thing with the astounding vig 
 or of this, unconsciously. But, as like as not, 
 what Brashleigh thought about chiefly was his 
 drawing and his brush-work and his values; 
 probably the revelation of the sitter s soul was 
 an accident. He did it because he couldn t help 
 it." 
 
 " I don t agree with you, for once," Miss Mar- 
 lenspuyk replied. "I find in this portrait such 
 an appreciation of the possibilities of human vil- 
 lany. Ob, the man must have seen it before he 
 painted it !" 
 
 "It s lucky I m not a painter by trade," re 
 turned White, " or I should feel it my duty to an 
 nihilate you on the spot by the retort that laymen 
 always look at painting from the literary side." 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk did not respond for a minute. 
 She was looking at the portrait with curious in 
 terest. She glanced aside, and then she gazed at 
 it again. 
 
 " Poor girl !" she said at last, with a gentle 
 sigh. 
 
36 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 " Meaning Mrs. Poole ?" White inquired. 
 
 " Yes," the old lady answered. " I m sorry for 
 her, but I think I understand how she had to give 
 in. I can feel the sinister fascination of that face 
 myself." 
 
 Above the babble of many tongues which filled 
 the gallery there was to be heard a rumble of 
 thunder, and then the sharp patter of rain on the 
 huge skylight above them. 
 
 "Excuse me, Miss Marlenspuyk," said White, 
 hastily, "but my wife is always a little nervous 
 about thunder now. I must look her up. I ll 
 send you Harry Brackett." 
 
 " You needn t mind about me," she answered, 
 as he moved away. "I ve taken care of myself 
 for a good many years now, and I think I m still 
 equal to the task." 
 
 The hall was densely crowded by this time, and 
 it was becoming more and more difficult to make 
 one s way in any given direction. The rain fell 
 heavily on the roof, and dominated the rising 
 murmur of the throng, and even the shrill voices 
 now and again heard above it. 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk drifted aimlessly with the 
 crowd, looking at the pictures occasionally, and 
 listening with interest to the comments and the 
 fragmentary criticisms she could not help hearing 
 on all sides of her. She found herself standing 
 before Mr. Charles Vaughn s "Judgment of 
 Paris," when she was accosted by Harry Brackett. 
 
 "I ve been looking for you everywhere, Miss 
 
AT A PRIVATE VIEW 37 
 
 Marlenspuyk," he began. " White said you were 
 here or hereabouts, and I haven t seen you for 
 many moons." 
 
 They chatted for a few minutes about their last 
 meeting, and the friends at whose house they had 
 dined. 
 
 Then Harry Brackett, looking up, saw the huge 
 painting before them. 
 
 " So Charley Vaughn s Judgment of Paris is 
 a Salon picture, is it ?" he asked. " It looks to 
 me better fitted for a saloon. It s one of those 
 nudes that Renwick Brashleigh says are offensive 
 alike to the artist, the moralist, and the voluptu 
 ary." 
 
 Miss Marlenspuyk smiled ; and her smile was 
 one of her greatest charms. 
 
 "Do you know Mr. Brashleigh?" she asked. 
 
 " I ve known him ever since he came back from 
 Paris," Brackett answered. " And he s a painter, 
 he is. He isn t one of those young dudes who 
 teach society girls how to foreshorten the moon. 
 You don t catch him going round to afternoon 
 teas and talking about the Spontaneity of Art." 
 
 " Have you seen his portrait of this Mr. Poole ?" 
 she inquired. 
 
 " Not yet," he replied, "but they tell me it s a 
 dandy. I ve never met Poole, but I used to know 
 his wife. She was Eunice Camercfn, and she s a 
 cousin of Brashleigh s. Come to think of it, his 
 first hit was a portrait of her at the Academy 
 three years ago." 
 
38 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 " What sort of a girl is she ?" Miss Marlenspuyk 
 asked. 
 
 "For one thing, she s a good-looker," he re 
 sponded, " although they say she s gone off a little 
 lately ; I haven t seen her this year. But when 
 Brashleigh introduced me to her she was a mighty 
 pretty girl, I can tell you." 
 
 The pressure of the crowd had carried them 
 along, and now Miss Marlenspuyk found herself 
 once more in front of the " Portrait of a Gentle 
 man," and once more she was seized by the power 
 and by the evil which the artist had painted on 
 the face of Cyrus Poole. 
 
 " They used to say," Harry Brackett went on, 
 not looking at the picture, " that Brashleigh was 
 in love with her. I think somebody or other once 
 told me that they were engaged." 
 
 There was a sudden gleam of intelligence in 
 Miss Marlenspuyk s eyes. 
 
 "But of course there wasn t any truth in it," he 
 continued. 
 
 The smile came back to the old maid s mouth 
 as she gazed steadily at the portrait before her 
 and answered, " Of course not." 
 
 (1893.) 
 
& & A HI M & 
 
the city the spring comes earlier 
 than it does in the country, and the 
 horse-chestnuts in the sheltered squares 
 sometimes break into blossom a fort 
 night before their brethren in the open 
 fields. That year the spring came earlier than 
 usual, both in the country and in the city, for 
 March, going out like a lion, made an April-fool 
 of the following month, and the huge banks of 
 snow heaped high by the sidewalks vanished in 
 three or four days, leaving the gutters only a lit 
 tle thicker with mud than they are accustomed 
 to be. Very trying to the convalescent was the 
 uncertain weather, with its obvious inability to 
 know its own mind, with its dark fog one morn 
 ing and its brisk wind in the afternoon, with its 
 mid-day as bright as June and its sudden chill de 
 scending before nightfall. 
 
 Yet when the last week of April came, and the 
 grass in the little square around the corner was 
 green again, and the shrubs were beginning to 
 flower out, the sick man also felt his vigor re 
 turning. His strength came back with the spring, 
 and restored health sent fresh blood coursing 
 through his veins as the sap was rising in the 
 
42 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 branches of the tree before his window. He had 
 had a hard struggle, he knew, although he did 
 not suspect that more than once he had wrestled 
 with death itself. Now his appetite had awak 
 ened again, and he had more force to withstand 
 the brooding sadness which sought to master 
 him. 
 
 The tree before his window was but a shabby 
 sycamore, and the window belonged to a hall bed 
 room in a shabby boarding-house down a side 
 street. The young man himself lay back in the 
 steamer chair lent him by one of the few friends 
 he had in town, and his overcoat was thrown over 
 his knees. His hands, shrunken yet sinewy, lay 
 crossed upon a book in his lap. His body was 
 wasted by sickness, but the frame was well knit 
 and solid. His face was still white and thin, al 
 though the yellow pallor of the sick-bed had gone 
 already. His scanty boyish beard that curled 
 about his chin had not been trimmed for two 
 months, and his uncut brown hair fell thickly on 
 the collar of his coat. His dark eyes bore the 
 mark of recent suffering, but they revealed also a 
 steadfast soul, strong to withstand misfortune. 
 
 His room was on the north side of the street, and 
 the morning sun was reflected into his window, as 
 he lay back in the chair, grateful for the warmth. 
 A heavy cart lumbered along slowly over the 
 worn and irregular pavement ; it came to a stand 
 at the corner, and a gang of workmen swiftly 
 emptied it of the steel rails it contained, drop- 
 
SPEING IN A SIDE STREET 43 
 
 ping them on the sidewalk one by one with a 
 loud clang which reverberated harshly far down 
 the street. From the little knot of men who 
 were relaying the horse-car track came cries of 
 command, and then a rail would drop into posi 
 tion, and be spiked swiftly to its place. Then 
 the laborers would draw aside while an arrested 
 horse - car urged forward again, with the regular 
 footfall of its one horse, as audible above the 
 mighty roar of the metropolis as the jingle of 
 the little bell on the horse s collar. At last there 
 came from over the house-tops a loud whistle of 
 escaping steam, followed shortly by a dozen sim 
 ilar signals, proclaiming the mid-day rest. A rail 
 or two more clanged down on the others, and 
 then the cart rumbled away. The workmen re 
 laying the track had already seated themselves 
 on the curb to eat their dinner, while one of them 
 had gone to the saloon at the corner for a large 
 can of the new beer advertised in the window by 
 the gaudy lithograph of a frisky young goat bear 
 ing a plump young goddess on his back. 
 . The invalid was glad of the respite from the 
 more violent noises of track - lay ers, for his head 
 was not yet as clear as it might be, and his nerves 
 were strained by pain. He leaned forward and 
 looked down at the street below, catching the eye 
 of a young man w r ho was bawling " Straw-b rees ! 
 straw-b rees !" at the top of an unmelodious voice. 
 The invalid smiled, for he knew that the street 
 venders of strawberries were an infallible sign of 
 
44 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 spring an indication of its arrival as indisputa 
 ble as the small square labels announcing that 
 three of the houses opposite to him were "To 
 Let." The first of May was at hand. He won 
 dered whether the flower-market in Union Square 
 had already opened ; and he recalled the early 
 mornings of the preceding spring, when the girl 
 he loved, the girl who had promised to marry 
 him, had gone with him to Union Square to pick 
 out young roses and full-blown geraniums worthy 
 to bloom in the windows of her parlor looking 
 out on Central Park. 
 
 He thought of her often that morning, and 
 without bitterness, though their engagement had 
 been broken in the fall, three months or more be 
 fore he was taken sick. He had not seen her since 
 Christmas, and he found himself wondering how 
 she would look that afternoon, and whether she 
 was happy. His revery was broken by the jan 
 gling notes of an ill-tuned piano in the next house, 
 separated from his little room only by a thin 
 party -wall. Some one was trying to pick out 
 the simple tune of " Wait till the Clouds roll 
 by." Seemingly it was the practice hour for one 
 of the children next door, whose playful voices 
 he had often heard. Seemingly also the task was 
 unpleasant, for the piano and the tune and the 
 hearer suffered from the ill-will of the childish 
 performer. 
 
 A sudden hammering of a street rail in the 
 street below notified him the nooning was over, 
 
SEEMINGLY IT WAS THE PRACTICE-HOUR FOR ONE OF THE 
 CHILDREN NEXT DOOR* 
 

SPRING IN A SIDE STREET 45 
 
 and that the workmen had gone back to their la 
 bors. Somehow he had failed to hear the stroke 
 of one from the steeple of the church at the cor 
 ner of the Avenue, a short block away. Now he 
 became conscious of a permeating odor, and he 
 knew that the luncheon hour of the boarding- 
 house had arrived. He had waked early, and his 
 breakfast had been very light. He felt ready for 
 food, and he was glad when the servant brought 
 him up a plate of cold beef and a saucer of prunes. 
 His appetite was excellent, and he ate with relish 
 and enjoyment. 
 
 When he had made an end of his unpretending 
 meal, he leaned back again in his chair. A turbu 
 lent wind blew the dust of the street high in the 
 air and set swinging the budding branches of the 
 sycamore before the window. As he looked at 
 the tender green of the young leaves dancing be 
 fore him in the sunlight he felt the spring-time 
 stir his blood ; he was strong again with the 
 strength of youth ; he was able to cope with all 
 morbid fancies, and to cast away all repining. 
 He wished himself in the country somewhere 
 where there were brooks and groves and grass 
 somewhere where there were quiet and rest and 
 surcease of noise somewhere where there were 
 time and space to think out the past and to plan 
 out the future resolutely somewhere where there 
 were not two hand-organs at opposite ends of the 
 block vying which should be the more violent, 
 one playing " Annie Laurie " and the other " An- 
 
46 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 nie Rooney." He winced as the struggle between 
 the two organs attained its height, while the child 
 next door pounded the piano more viciously than 
 before. Then he smiled. 
 
 With returning health, why should he mind 
 petty annoyances ? In a week or so he would be 
 able to go back to the store and to begin again to 
 earn his own living. No doubt the work would 
 be hard at first, but hard work was what he need 
 ed now. For the sake of its results in the future, 
 and for its own sake also, he needed severe labor. 
 Other young men there were a plenty in the thick 
 of the struggle, but he knew himself as stout of 
 heart as any in the whole city, and why might not 
 fortune favor him too ? With money and power 
 and position he could hold his own in New York ; 
 and perhaps some of those who thought little of 
 him now would then be glad to know him. 
 
 While he lay back in the steamer chair in his 
 hall room the shadows began to lengthen a little, 
 and the long day drew nearer to its end. When 
 next he roused himself the hand-organs had both 
 gone away, and the child next door had given over 
 her practising, and the street was quiet again, save 
 for the high notes of a soprano voice singing a 
 florid aria by an open window in the Conservatory 
 of Music in the next block, and save also for an 
 unusual rattle of vehicles drawing up almost in 
 front of the door of the boarding-house. With 
 an effort he raised himself, and saw a line of car 
 riages on the other side of the way, moving slowly 
 
v 
 
 "HE WISHED HIMSELF IN THE COUNTRY 
 
SPRING IN A SIDE STREET 47 
 
 towards the corner. A swirling sand-storm sprang 
 up again in the street below, and a simoom of dust 
 almost hid from him the faces of those who sat in 
 the carriages young girls dressed in light colors, 
 and young men with buttoned frock-coats. They 
 were chatting easily ; now and again a gay laugh 
 rang out. > 
 
 He wondered if it were time for the wedding. 
 With difficulty he twisted himself in his chair and 
 took from the bureau behind him an envelope con 
 taining the wedding-cards. The ceremony was 
 fixed for three. He looked at his watch, and he 
 saw that it lacked but a few minutes of that hour. 
 His hand trembled a little as he put the watch 
 back in his pocket ; and he gazed steadily into 
 space until the bell in the steeple of the church 
 at the corner of the Avenue struck three times. 
 The hour appointed for the wedding had arrived. 
 There were still carriages driving up swiftly to 
 deposit belated guests. 
 
 The convalescent young man in the little hall 
 bedroom of the shabby boarding-house in the 
 side street was not yet strong enough to venture 
 out in the spring sunshine and to be present at 
 the ceremony. But as he lay there in the rickety 
 steamer chair with the old overcoat across his 
 knees, he had no difficulty in evoking the scene 
 in the church. He saw the middle-aged groom 
 standing at the rail awaiting the bride. He heard 
 the solemn and yet joyous strains of the wedding- 
 march. He saw the bride pass slowly up the aisle 
 
48 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 on the arm of her father, with the lace veil scarce 
 ly lighter or fairer than her own filmy hair. He 
 wondered whether she would be pale, and whether 
 her conscience would reproach her as she stood at 
 the altar. He heard the clergyman ask the ques 
 tions and pronounce the benediction. He saw the 
 new-made wife go down the aisle again on the 
 arm of her husband. He sighed wearily, and lay 
 back in his chair with his eyes closed, as though 
 to keep out the unwelcome vision. He did not 
 move when the carriages again crowded past his 
 door, and went up to the church porch one after 
 another in answer to hoarse calls from conflicting 
 voices. 
 
 He lay there for a long while motionless and 
 silent. He was thinking about himself, about his 
 hopes, which had been as bright as the sunshine of 
 spring, about his bitter disappointment. He was 
 pondering on the mysteries of the universe, and 
 asking himself whether he could be of any use to 
 the world for he still had high ambitions. He 
 was wondering what might be the value of any 
 one man s labor for his fellow-men, and he thought 
 harshly of the order of things. He said to him 
 self that we all slip out of sight when we die, and 
 the waters close over us, for the best of us are 
 soon forgotten, and so are the worst, since it 
 makes little difference whether the coin you throw 
 into the pool is gold or copper the rarer metal 
 does not make the more ripples. Then, as he saw 
 the long shafts of almost level sunshine sifting 
 
" DISTRACTED BY THE CROSSING SHOUTS OF LOUD-TOICED MEN " 
 
SPKING IN A SIDE STREET 49 
 
 through the tiny leaves of the tree before his 
 window, he took heart again as he recalled the 
 great things accomplished by one man. He gave 
 over his mood of self-pity; and he even smiled at 
 the unconscious conceit of his attitude towards 
 himself. 
 
 He was recalled from his long revery by the 
 thundering of a heavy fire-engine, which crashed 
 its way down the street, with its rattling hose- 
 reel tearing along after it. In the stillness that 
 followed, broken only by the warning whistles 
 of the engine as it crossed avenue after avenue 
 farther and farther east, he found time to re 
 member that every man s struggle forward helps 
 along the advance of mankind at large ; the hum 
 ble fireman who does his duty and dies serves the 
 cause of humanity. 
 
 The swift twilight of New York was almost 
 upon him when he was next distracted from his 
 thoughts by the crossing shouts of loud-voiced 
 men bawling forth a catchpenny extra of a third- 
 rate evening paper. The cries arose from both 
 sides of the street at once, and they ceased while 
 the fellows sold a paper here and there to the 
 householders whose curiosity called them to the 
 door-step. 
 
 The sky was elear, and a single star shone out 
 sharply. The air was fresh, and yet balmy. The 
 clanging of rails had ceased an hour before, and 
 the gang of men who were spiking the iron into 
 place had dispersed each to his own home. The 
 
50 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 day was drawing to an end. Again there was an 
 odor of cooking diffused through the house, herald 
 ing the dinner-hour. 
 
 But the young man who lay back in the steamer 
 chair in the hall bedroom of the boarding-house 
 was unconscious of all except his own thoughts. 
 Before him was a picture of a train of cars speed 
 ing along moonlit valleys, and casting a hurrying 
 shadow. In this train, as he saw it, was the bride 
 of that afternoon, borne away by the side of her 
 husband. But it was the bride he saw, and not 
 the husband. He saw her pale face and her lu- 
 minbus eyes and her ashen -gold hair; and he 
 wondered whether in the years to come she would 
 be as happy as if she had kept her promise to 
 marry him. 
 
 (1893.) 
 
^*w 
 
 "THE BRIDE OF THAT AFTERNOON" 
 
, III ffll i ffl I 19) HI til III III III HL 
 
 Jjecozation-day cJoevezu 
 
(HERE had been a late spring, set off 
 by frequent rain; and when Decora 
 tion Day dawned there was a fresh 
 fairness of foliage, as though Nature 
 were making ready her garlands for 
 our honored dead. When at length the march be 
 gan, the sunshine sifted through the timid verd 
 ure of the trees in the square, and fell softly on 
 the swaying ranks that passed beneath. The 
 golden beams glinted from the slanting bayonets, 
 and seemed to keep time with the valiant old 
 war -tunes as they swelled up from the frequent 
 bands. There was a contagion of military ardor 
 in the air, and even the small boy who had 
 climbed up into the safe eyry of a dismantled 
 lamp-post had within him inarticulate stirrings of 
 warlike ambition. In the pauses of the music 
 fifes shrilled out, and the roll and rattle of drums 
 covered the rhythmic tramping of the soldiers. 
 I lingered for a while near the noble statue of 
 the great admiral, who stood there firm on his 
 feet, with the sea-breeze blowing back the skirt 
 of his coat, and so presented by the art of the 
 sculptor that the motionless bronze seemed more 
 alive than most of the ordinary men and women 
 
54 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 who clustered about its base. Here, I thought, 
 was the fit memorial of the man who had done 
 his duty in the long struggle, to the heroes of 
 which the day was sacred; and I was glad that 
 the marching thousands should pass in review 
 before that mute image of the best and bravest 
 our country can bring forth. At that moment 
 a detachment of sailors swung into view, and 
 cheers of hearty greeting broke forth on all 
 sides. 
 
 As I loitered, musing, a battalion of our little 
 army strode by us in turn, with soldierly bearing, 
 clad in no gaudy garb, but ready for their bloody 
 work ; ready with cold steel to give a cold wel 
 come to the invading foreigner, ready with a 
 prompt volley to put an end to lawless strife at 
 home. After an interval came the first ranks 
 of the citizen soldiery, trim in their workmanlike 
 uniforms, with stretchers, with ambulances, with 
 Gatling-guns. One after another advanced the 
 regiments of the city militia, and no man need 
 doubt that they would be as swift now to go for 
 ward to battle as were their former fellow-mem 
 bers whose deeds gave them the right to bear 
 flags emblazoned with more than one battle as 
 hard fought as Marathon or Philippi, Fontenoy 
 or Waterloo. As they swept on down the Avenue 
 in the morning sunlight, with the strident music 
 veiled now and again by ringing cheers, my 
 thoughts went back to the many other thousands 
 I had seen go down that Avenue, now more than 
 
A DECORATION-DAY REVERY 55 
 
 a quarter of a century ago, coining from the pine 
 forests and the granite hills of New England, and 
 going to the silent swamps and the dark bayous 
 of the South. In those drear days of doubt I had 
 watched the ceaseless tramp of the troops down 
 that Avenue, a thousand at a time young, earn 
 est, ardent; and I remembered that I had seen 
 them return but a scant hundred or two, it may 
 be, worn and ragged, foot-sore and heart-sick, but 
 resolute yet and full of grit. Death, like the 
 maddened peasants in the strife of the Jacquerie, 
 fights with a scythe ; and for four long years 
 Time held a slow glass and Death mowed a broad 
 swath. There is many a house now where an old 
 woman cannot hear the trivial notes of " Tramp, 
 tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," without a 
 sharp pain in the throat and a sudden vision of 
 the prison-pen at Andersonville. No doubt there 
 is many another woman south of that Mason and 
 Dixon s line which was washed out in the blood 
 of the war where the sentimental strains of " My 
 Maryland" have an equal poignancy and an equal 
 tenderness. Shiloh and Malvern Hill and Get 
 tysburg are names made sacred forever by the 
 deeds done there, and by the dead who lie there 
 side by side in a common grave, where the gray 
 cloth and the blue have faded into dust alike, and 
 there is now naught to tell them apart. It is 
 well that a spring day, fresh after rain and fair 
 with blossoms, should help to keep their memory 
 sweet. 
 
56 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 Down the Avenue regiment after regiment went 
 on briskly, with the easy pace of health and en 
 joyment. After the young men of the militia 
 came the veterans, with flowers for their fallen 
 comrades. Some of the older men were in car 
 riages, with here and there a crutch across the 
 seat ; but for the most part they walked, keeping 
 time, no doubt, though with a shorter stride. As 
 a handful of brave men filed before us, bearing 
 aloft the tattered remnant of a battle-flag, I raised 
 my hat with instinctive reverence. For a moment 
 the gesture shielded my eyes from the rays of the 
 sun, and I caught sight of a group in the window 
 of a house opposite. A lady, tall and stately, 
 wearing a widow s cap above her gray hair as 
 though it were a crown, stood in the centre with 
 her hands on the shoulders of two young men 
 her sons, beyond all question stalwart young 
 fellows, with features at once fine and strong, 
 bearing themselves with manly grace. I looked, 
 and I recognized. When I lowered my eyes again 
 to the procession I saw another set of faces that I 
 knew by sight. In a carriage sat a man of some 
 fifty years, stout, vulgar, with a cigar alight in 
 the coarse hand which rested on the door of the 
 vehicle. He had a shock of hair, once reddish 
 and now grizzling to an unclean w r hite. He wore 
 in his button-hole the button of the G ;and Army 
 of the Republic. In the open barouche with him 
 were three youngish men, noisy in laughter ap 
 parently professional politicians of the baser sort. 
 
A DECOKATION-DAY KEVERY 57 
 
 The man bowed effusively, with a broad and 
 unctuous smile, when he saw a friend on the side 
 walk ; and the crowd about me recognized him, 
 and called him by name one to another ; and a 
 little knot of young fellows on the corner raised 
 a cheer. 
 
 I knew both groups, the unclean creature in the 
 carriage and the noble lady in the window above 
 him. I knew that both were survivals of the war. 
 
 As the procession passed on, I could hear an 
 occasional cheer run along the line of spectators 
 when one or another recognized the politician. I 
 was not surprised, for the man s popularity with 
 a portion of the people is patent to all of us. He 
 was a soldier who had never fired a shot, a colo 
 nel who had never seen the enemy. His tactical 
 skill had been shown in the securing of a detail 
 for himself where there was chance of profit with 
 no risk of danger. His strategy had been to se 
 cure the good word of those who dispensed the 
 good things of life. 
 
 While others were battling for the country he 
 was looking out for himself. When the war was 
 over he presented his claims for recognition, and 
 he was sent as consul to the Orient. In due time 
 there came across the ocean rumors of scandals, 
 and an investigation was ordered ; whereupon he 
 resigned, and the matter was never probed. Then 
 he went into politics : he was ready of speech and 
 loud-mouthed ; he flattered the mob, believing 
 that in politics the blarney-stone is the stepping- 
 
58 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 stone to success. He never paused to weigh his 
 words when he assailed an opponent, believing 
 that in politics billingsgate is the gate of success. 
 He was prompt to set people by the ears that he 
 might lead them by the nose the more readily. 
 As though to make up for his delinquencies dur 
 ing the struggle, he was now untiring in his abuse 
 of the Southern people, and his denunciation of 
 them was always violent and virulent. In every 
 election he besought his fellow-citizens to vote as 
 they had shot. He was unfailingly bitter in his 
 abuse of those who had fought for the cause of 
 the South. He was, in short, a specimen of the 
 scum which may float on the surface whenever 
 there is an upheaval of the deep. 
 
 Brutal in political debate and brazen in politi 
 cal chicanery, he was a fit leader for the band of 
 hirelings he had organized with no small skill. 
 His position was not unlike that of the condottieri 
 of the foreign mercenaries in the mediaeval quar 
 rels of the Italian republics. Like them, he led a 
 compact body, prompt to obey orders so long as 
 it received the pay and had hopes of the plunder 
 for which it was organized. Although he be 
 longed nominally to one of the two great parties 
 which contended for the control of the nation, he 
 was always ready to turn his forces against it if 
 his pay and his proportion of the spoils of office 
 failed to satisfy himself and his men-at-arms ; or 
 even in revenge for a slight, and in hope of higher 
 remuneration from the other side. 
 
A DECORATION-DAY KEVEKY 59 
 
 For me, as I stood on the corner under Farra- 
 gut s statue and watched the veterans file past, 
 the knowledge of this man s career, and the sight 
 of his presence among those who had fought a 
 good fight for a high motive, seemed to tarnish 
 the sacred occasion and to stain the glory of the 
 morning. Again I looked up at the window 
 where I had seen the lady with her two sons. 
 She was still there, leaning forward a little, as 
 though in involuntary excitement, and one hand 
 clinched the arm of the soldierly young fellow at 
 her right. The sight of those three refreshed me, 
 for I knew who they were, and what they stood 
 for in the history of our country a shining ex 
 ample in the past and a beacon of hope for the 
 future. The widow s cap which crowns the brow 
 of that mother brought up before me the memory 
 of a deed as noble as it was simple. 
 
 A fife-and-drum corps of boys dressed as sailors 
 preceded a model of a monitor mounted on wheels 
 and artfully adorned with flowers and wreaths. 
 Behind this came the scanty score of old sailors 
 who had formed themselves into Post Rodman R. 
 Hardy. When they came abreast of the window 
 where the lady stood with her two sons, they 
 looked up and cheered. The eyes of Captain 
 Hardy s widow had filled with tears when she 
 caught sight of his old comrades ; and when they 
 cheered her and her boys her face flushed and 
 the arm which rested on her son s trembled. She 
 bowed, the two young men raised their hats, and 
 
GO VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 the Post passed on down the Avenue to perform 
 their sad office ; though they might not deck with 
 flowers the grave of their old commander, for he 
 lies buried at the bottom of the sea, and great 
 guns were firing many a salute with shot and shell 
 when his body was lowered into its everlasting 
 resting-place. 
 
 I have heard it said that a soldier s trade is 
 learning how to kill and how to die, and that how 
 he lives is little matter. Captain Hardy lived like 
 a man, like a gentleman, like a Christian ; and he 
 died like a hero. He came of a generation of 
 sailors. His great-grandfather had sailed with the 
 fleet under Amherst when Louisburg was taken 
 in 1758. His grandfather had been a midship 
 man with Paul Jones in the Boiihomme, Richard. 
 His father served on " Old Ironsides " when the 
 Constitution captured the Guerriere. He him 
 self had gone to sea in time to take part in the 
 siege of Vera Cruz. When the war broke out he 
 had been married but three years. He was on 
 the Cumberland when the Merrimac sank her. 
 While the new monitors were building he had a 
 few brief weeks with his wife and his two baby 
 boys. When the Onteora was finished he was a 
 captain, and he was appointed to take com 
 mand. 
 
 And there was no monitor which did better ser 
 vice or had more hard work than the Onteora. 
 Just before the grand attack on Fort Davis he ran 
 under the guns of a Confederate battery to shell 
 
A DECOKATION-DAY EEVERY 61 
 
 a cruiser which had retreated up the river behind 
 the strip of land on which the earthworks stood. 
 Regardless of the fire from the battery, which 
 bade fair to hammer his ship till it might become 
 unmanageable, he trained his guns on the cruiser. 
 He had no more than got the range when a fog 
 settled down and hid the combatants from each 
 other. The battery ceased firing or aimed wildly 
 a few chance shots. The monitor, relying on the 
 accuracy of its gunners, continued to send shell 
 after shell through the thick wall of fog to the 
 invisible place where the enemy s ship lay. When 
 the fog lifted, the cruiser was on fire ; and then 
 the monitor fell back out of the range of the guns 
 of the battery, having done the work Captain 
 Hardy had set it to do. 
 
 The next day came the grand assault on Fort 
 Davis. The admiral ordered the Onteora to fol 
 low the flag-ship in the attack. The channel was 
 defended not only by the cannon of the fort itself 
 and of its supporting earthworks and by a flotilla 
 of gunboats, but also by hidden torpedoes, the 
 position of which was wholly unknown even to 
 the pilots, Union men of the port who had volun 
 teered to guide our vessels through the tortuous 
 windings of the entrance. The iron ship was 
 made ready for battle ; its deck was sunk level 
 with the surface of the sea ; and nothing pro 
 jected but the revolving turret, with its two huge 
 guns. In the little box of a pilot-house Captain 
 Hardy took his place with the pilot. The admiral 
 
62 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 gave the signal to advance, and the Onteora fol 
 lowed in the wake of the flag-ship. 
 
 The first turning of the channel was made safe 
 ly, and the monitor was at last full under the 
 fire of the fort. The turret revolved slowly, and 
 both guns were discharged against a pert gun 
 boat which had ventured out beyond the protec 
 tion of the fort. The second shot struck the 
 steam-chest of the gunboat, and it blew up and 
 drifted at the mercy of the current. Still the ad 
 miral advanced, and the Onteora followed. Then 
 a sudden shock was felt, there was a dull roar, 
 the monitor shivered from stem to stern, and be 
 gan to settle. A torpedo had blown a hole in 
 the bottom of the boat, and the Onteora was 
 sinking. Almost at the same time a shot from 
 Fort Davis struck the turret, and a fragment 
 smote Captain Hardy and tore off his right arm. 
 In the scant seconds after the explosion of the 
 torpedo, before the shuddering ship lurched down, 
 half a score of men escaped from the turret and 
 flung themselves into the river. The captain had 
 barely time to climb into the open air when his 
 ship went down beneath him. When he arose 
 from the vortex of whirling waters his unwound- 
 ed hand grasped a chance fragment of wood, 
 which served to sustain him despite the weakness 
 from his open wound. He found himself by the 
 side of the pilot, who was struggling vainly with 
 the waves, his strength almost spent. 
 
 " Can t you swim ?" asked Captain Hardy. 
 
A DECOKATION-DAY KEVERY 63 
 
 "Only a little," answered the pilot; "and I am 
 almost gone now, I fear." 
 
 " Take this bit of wood," said the sailor. 
 
 The pilot reached out his arm and with de 
 spairing fingers gripped the broken plank. It 
 was too small to support two men, and Captain 
 Hardy released his hold. He sought to sustain 
 himself with one hand, and for a little he succeed 
 ed. Then his strength failed him, and at last he 
 went under almost where the Onteora had sunk 
 beneath him. The battle raged above; shell 
 from ship after ship answered shell from the fort 
 and the batteries; another ironclad took up the 
 work of the Onteora; brave hearts and quick 
 heads were at work on sea and on shore; but 
 Rodman Hardy was dead at the bottom of the 
 river, leaving to his widow and his sons the 
 heritage of a manly death. 
 
 The widow s cap which the young wife took 
 that night she has never discarded to this day. 
 His sons she has brought up to follow in their 
 father s footsteps. One has already begun to 
 make his mark in the navy, having been gradu 
 ated from Annapolis, high up in his class. The 
 other is a lawyer, who is solving for himself the 
 problem of the scholar in politics. Although not 
 yet thirty, he has spent two terms in the Legis 
 lature of the State, where he has done yeoman 
 service for the city. 
 
 The parade was over at last for the Rod 
 man R. Hardy Post had been one of the latest in 
 
64 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 line and I turned away across the square. 
 The sight of the widow with her two sons had 
 cleansed the atmosphere from the miasma that 
 trailed behind the politician as he rode by me in 
 his vulgar barouche. The memory of a great 
 deed is an oasis in the vista of life, and the rec 
 ollection of Captain Hardy s death made the day 
 seem fairer. The sunshine flooded the streets 
 with molten gold. A pair of young sparrows 
 flitted across the park before me and alighted on 
 a bough above my head. From over the house 
 tops came floating echoes of "John Brown s 
 Body" and "Marching through Georgia." 
 
 (1890.) 
 
Gm &eazch of 
 (oo tor- 
 
novelist stood at the corner of Riv- 
 ington Street and the Bowery, trying 
 to find fit words to formulate his im 
 pression of the most characteristic of 
 New York streets as it appeared on 
 a humid morning in June. The elevated trains 
 clattered past over his head and he gave no heed 
 to them, so intent was he in making a mental 
 record of the types which passed before him. 
 Suddenly he was almost thrown off his feet. A 
 young man, slipping on the peel of a banana cast 
 away carelessly upon the sidewalk, had stumbled 
 heavily against him. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," cried the young man as 
 he recovered himself. "I why, Mr. De Ruyter !" 
 he exclaimed, recognizing the author. 
 
 "John Suydam !" returned Rupert de Ruyter, 
 holding out his hand cordially. " Well, this is 
 good-fortune ! Do you know, I was on my way 
 to the University Settlement to look you up." 
 
 "You would have found me there in ten min 
 utes," Suydam answered. " This is my week to 
 be in residence ; in fact, I think I shall be here 
 for the summer now. You see, I passed my A.M. 
 examination at Columbia last week " 
 
68 VIGNETTES OP MANHATTAN 
 
 " So they examine you for it now, eh ?" the 
 novelist queried. "In my time we got it almost 
 for the asking at least, I did and that was only 
 twenty years ago. What are you going to do 
 with it, now you ve got it ? I heard you were to 
 study for the ministry." 
 
 " I had thought of the Church," answered Suy- 
 dam. He was a tall, spare young fellow, with 
 straight brown hair and a resolute chin. "But I 
 don t know now what I shall do. I have a little 
 money, you know enough to live on, if I choose. 
 So I may stay here at the Settlement ; the work 
 is very interesting." 
 
 "No doubt," the novelist responded, readily; 
 "you must see many curious cases. I wish I 
 could cut loose for a while, and spend a month 
 with you here." 
 
 "Why don t you?" suggested Suydam, eagerly. 
 
 "Oh, I have too much on hand," De Ruyter 
 replied. "I ve got to read the Phi Beta Kappa 
 poem at Harvard next week ; and besides, I ve 
 promised to finish a series of New York stories 
 for the Metropolis. That is why I was on my 
 way to find you this morning. I want you to 
 help me." 
 
 " But I never wrote a story in my life," said 
 the young man, promptly. 
 
 "I don t want you to write the stories," De 
 Ruyter retorted. " Of course I can do that for 
 myself. But I thought that you could help me 
 to a little local color." 
 
RIVINGTON STREET AND THE BOWERY 
 
IN SEARCH OP LOCAL COLOR 69 
 
 "Local color?" echoed Suydam, doubtfully. 
 
 "Yes," the novelist went on, "local color 
 that s what I want fresh impressions." 
 
 "I cfon t quite see " the young man began, 
 hesitatingly. 
 
 " Oh, I can explain what I want," Rupert de 
 Ruy ter interrupted. " You see, I m a New-Yorker 
 born, as you are, and I ve lived here all my life, 
 and I know the city pretty well that is, I know 
 certain aspects of it thoroughly. I can do the 
 Patriarchs, or a Claremont tea, or any other func 
 tion of the smart set ; I know the way men talk 
 in clubs ; I ve studied the painters and the liter 
 ary men and the journalists ; I can describe a 
 first night at the theatre or a panic in the 
 Street ; but I ve pretty nearly exhausted the 
 people I know, and I thought I would come 
 down here and get introduced to a set I didn t 
 know." 
 
 "I shall be glad to take you to the Settlement," 
 Suydam responded, " and " 
 
 "It isn t the Settlement I want, thank you," 
 De Ruyter interrupted. " The people in the Set 
 tlement are variants of types I know already. 
 The people I want to meet are people I don t 
 know anything about the very poor people, the 
 tenement-house people, the people who work for 
 the sweaters. Do you know any of those ?" 
 
 "Yes," Suydam answered, "I know many of 
 them. But they are not half so picturesque and 
 so pathetic as the sensational newspapers make 
 
70 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 them out. Wouldn t you rather go and see the 
 Chinese quarter ?" 
 
 " That isn t what I want," the novelist made 
 answer. "The Chinese quarter is barbarous ; it 
 is exotic ; it is extraneous ; it is a mere accidental 
 excrescence on New York. But the tenement- 
 house people have come to stay ; they are an in 
 tegral and a vital part of the city. I don t care 
 about Chinatown, and I do care about Mulberry 
 Bend. Now, Suydam, you know Mulberry Bend, 
 don t you ?" 
 
 " Yes," Suydam returned. " I know Mulberry 
 Bend." 
 
 "Do you know any tenement -house in the 
 Bend, or near it, which is characteristic which 
 is typical of the worst that the Bend has to 
 show?" De Ruyter asked. 
 
 "Yes," Suydam responded again. "I think I 
 could find a tenement of that kind." 
 
 " Then take me there now, if you can spare me 
 an hour or two," said the novelist. 
 
 " I can put off my errand till this afternoon," 
 the young man answered. " I think I can show 
 you what you want. Come with me." 
 
 They had been standing where they had met, at 
 the corner of the Bowery and Rivington Street. 
 Now, under John Suydam s guidance, they walked 
 a little way up the Bowery, beneath the single 
 track of the elevated railroad. Then they turned 
 into a side street, and pushed their way west 
 ward. 
 
IN MULBERRY BEND 
 
IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR 71 
 
 Whenever they came to a crossing De Ruyter 
 remarked that three of the corners always, and 
 four of them sometimes, were saloons. The broad 
 gilt signs over the open doors of these bar-rooms 
 bore names either German or Irish, until they 
 came to a corner where one of the saloons called 
 itself the Caffe Cristoforo Colombo. A wooden 
 stand, down the side street, and taking up a third 
 of the width of the walk, had a sign announcing 
 ice-cold soda-water at two cents a glass with fruit 
 syrups ; with chocolate and cream, the price was 
 three cents. Right on the corner of the curb 
 stood a large wash-tub half filled with water, 
 in which soaked doubtful young cabbages and 
 sprouts ; its guardian was a thin slip of a girl 
 with a red handkerchief knotted over her head. 
 
 At this corner Suydam turned out of the side 
 street, and went down a street no wider perhaps, 
 but extending north and south in a devious and 
 hesitating way not common in the streets of New 
 York. The sidewalks of this sinuous street were 
 inconveniently narrow for its crowded popula 
 tion, and they were made still narrower by tol 
 erated encroachments of one kind or another. 
 Here, for instance, from the side of a small shop 
 projected a stand on which unshelled pease wilted 
 under the strong rays of the young June sun. 
 There, for example, were steps down to the low 
 basement, and in a corner of the hollow at the 
 foot of these stairs there might be a pail with 
 dingy ice packed about a can of alleged ice- 
 
72 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 cream, or else a board bore half a dozen tough 
 brown loaves, also proffered for sale to the chance 
 customer. Here and there, again, the dwellers in 
 the tall tenements had brought chairs to the com 
 mon door, and were seated, comfortably convers 
 ing with their neighbors, regardless of the fact 
 that they thus blocked the sidewalk, and com 
 pelled the passer-by to go out into the street it 
 self. 
 
 And the street was as densely packed as the 
 sidewalk. In front of Suydain and De Ruyter as 
 they picked their way along was a swarthy young 
 fellow with his flannel shirt open at the throat 
 and rolled up on his tawny arms; he was pushing 
 before him a hand-cart heaped with gayly colored 
 calicoes. Other hand-carts there were, from which 
 other men, young and old, were vending other 
 wares fruit more often than not; fruit of a most 
 untempting frowziness. Now and then a huge 
 wagon came lumbering through the street, heaped 
 high with lofty cases of furniture from a rum 
 bling and clattering factory near the corner. And 
 before the heavy horses of this wagon the chil 
 dren scattered, waiting till the last moment of 
 possible escape. There were countless children, 
 and they were forever swarming out of the houses 
 and up from the cellars and over the sidewalks 
 and up and down the street. They were of all 
 ages, from the babe in the arms of its dumpy, 
 thick-set mother to the sweet-faced and dark-eyed 
 girl of ten or twelve really, though she might 
 
V 
 
 A 
 
 MULHKRRY STRKKT FRUIT-VENDERS 
 
IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR 73 
 
 seem a precocious fourteen. They ran wild in 
 the street; they played about the knees of their 
 mothers, who sat gossiping in the doorways; they 
 hung over the railing of the fire-escapes, which 
 gridironed the front of every tall house. 
 
 Everywhere had the Italians treated the bal 
 cony of the fire-escape as an out-door room added 
 to their scant accommodation. They adorned it 
 with flowers growing in broken wooden boxes; 
 they used its railings to dry their parti-colored 
 flannel shirts; they sat out on it as though it were 
 the loggia of a villa in their native land. 
 
 Everywhere, also, were noises and smells. The 
 roar of the metropolis was here sharpened by 
 the rattle of -near machinery heard through open 
 windows, and by the incessant clatter and shrill 
 cries of the multitude in the street. The rancid 
 odor of ill-kept kitchens mingled with the miti 
 gated effluvium of decaying fruits and vegetables. 
 
 But over and beyond the noises and the smells 
 and the bustling business of the throng, Rupert 
 de Ruyter felt as though he were receiving an im 
 pression of life itself. It was as if he had caught 
 a glimpse of the mighty movement of existence, 
 incessant and inevitable. What he saw did not 
 strike him as pitiful ; it did not weigh him down 
 with despondency. The spectacle before him 
 was not beautiful; it was not even picturesque; 
 but never for a moment, even, did it strike him as 
 pathetic. Interesting it was, of a certainty un 
 failingly interesting. 
 
74 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 "I haven t found anything so Italian as this 
 for years," he said to his guide, as they picked 
 their way through a tangle of babies sprawling 
 out of a doorway. " I remember seeing nothing 
 more Italian in my first walk in Italy up the 
 hill-side at Menaggio, after we landed from the 
 boat to Como. Some of the faces here are of a 
 purer Greek type than any you meet in northern 
 Italy. Did you see that young mother we passed 
 just now ?" 
 
 "The one nursing the infant?" Suydam re 
 turned. 
 
 " Yes," De Ruyter went on. " She had the oval 
 face and the olive complexion the Greeks left be 
 hind them in Sicily. She was not pretty, if you 
 like, but she had the calm beauty of a race of 
 sculptors. Her profile might have come off a 
 Syracusan coin. And to see such a face here, in 
 the city that was New Amsterdam and is New 
 York !" 
 
 " We haven t time down here to think of Syra 
 cuse and New Amsterdam," said Suydam; "we 
 are too busy thinking about New York. And if 
 we ever do think of Sicily it is only to remember 
 that the Sicilians we have here are the hottest 
 tempered of all the Italians, the most revengeful 
 and vindictive." 
 
 "If I didn t know," the novelist remarked, 
 " that the Italians had developed their mercantile 
 faculty at the expense of all their artistic impulses, 
 I should wonder how it was that scions of the 
 
I 
 
 
 ITALIAN MOTHER AND CHILD 
 
IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOK 75 
 
 race of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci 
 and Raffael of Urbino could now be willing to 
 live in a house as hideous as that!" and with a 
 sweep of his hand he indicated a lofty double 
 tenement, made uglier by much misplaced orna 
 ment. "It isn t even picturesque by decay. In 
 fact, this whole region is in better repair than I 
 had expected." 
 
 "Look at the house behind you," answered his 
 companion. 
 
 The house behind them was one of the oldest 
 tenements in the street. The balconies of its fire- 
 escape were as cluttered as those of the neighbor 
 ing dwellings; and every window gave signs that 
 the room behind was inhabited. Yet the building, 
 as a whole, seemed neglected. 
 
 "This house does seem out at elbows and di 
 shevelled," De Ruyter admitted. " It looks like a 
 tramp, doesn t it ?" 
 
 "It does not look very clean," said Suydam. 
 "And the back building is dirtier yet. That s 
 where we are going, if you like." 
 
 "Well," De Ruyter answered, "if there is 
 local color to be found anywhere round here, I 
 guess we shall find a fair share of it in this place." 
 
 "This way, then," Suydam said, plunging into 
 a covered alleyway, which extended under the 
 house, and led into a small yard paved with un 
 even flag-stones, and shut in on all four sides by 
 the surrounding buildings. Even on that sunny 
 pure morning there was a dank chill in the air, 
 
76 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 and there were patches of moisture here and there 
 on the pavement. 
 
 "The new building laws don t allow back 
 buildings of this sort," Suydam explained. "But 
 there are thousands of them in the city, put up 
 before the new laws went into effect. Perhaps 
 we had better try the basement first." 
 
 In one corner of the yard half a dozen steps 
 led down into the basement of the back build 
 ing. Followed by the novelist, the young man 
 from the University Settlement went down these 
 steps and into the cellarlike room, which occupied 
 about half the space under the back building. 
 
 The air in this room was so foul that De Ruy- 
 ter held his breath for a moment. The room 
 was not more than twelve feet square ; its walls 
 were unplastered, showing the coarse foundation- 
 stones ; its floor was of earth, trodden to hard 
 ness, except where the drippings from the beer- 
 cans had moistened it ; the beams of the floor 
 above seemed rotten. In the damp heat of this 
 room ten or a dozen men and boys were seated 
 on old chairs and on broken boxes, smoking, play 
 ing cards by the light of a single foul and flaring 
 kerosene-lamp, and drinking the dregs of beer- 
 kegs collected in old cans. 
 
 The inhabitants of the cellar looked up as Suy 
 dam and De Ruytcr entered, and then they re 
 sumed their previous occupations, with no further 
 attention to the intruders. 
 
 The man nearest to the door was a powerfully 
 
IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR 77 
 
 built fellow of fifty, with gray hair cropped close 
 to his head. He was playing cards. He had a 
 knife thrust in his leathern belt. 
 
 " Good-morning, Giacomo," said Suydam to this 
 grizzled brute. "I haven t heard of you for a 
 long while now. When did you get off the 
 Island?" 
 
 " Las week," was the gruff answer. 
 
 "And where is your wife now?" the young 
 man asked. 
 
 " She work," answered Giacomo. 
 
 Suydam did not pursue the conversation fur 
 ther. Judging that the novelist had seen enough, 
 he turned and went up the rickety steps again, 
 followed by his friend. 
 
 " Ouf !" said De Ruyter, drawing a long breath, 
 as they stood again in the cramped yard. "I 
 don t see how they can breathe that air and live." 
 
 "They don t live," answered Suydam "at 
 least, the weaker are soon pushed to the wall and 
 die, leaving only the tougher specimens you saw. 
 Now we will go up-stairs, if you like." 
 
 " I m ready," De Ruyter responded. " This is 
 exactly what I came to see." 
 
 In the centre of the back building there was 
 an entry. The door was off its hinges. Just in 
 side the passage were the stairs, with the railing 
 broken, and many of the steps dangerously de 
 cayed. There was little light as they went up, 
 and a rank odor of decaying fish accompanied 
 them. 
 
78 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 At the head of the stairs there was a door on 
 either hand. Suydam knocked at them in turn, 
 and then tried to open them ; but they were 
 locked, and there was no response to the repeated 
 hammerings. 
 
 "I say," remarked the novelist, as they went 
 up to the floor above, "do these people like to 
 have us intrude on them in this way ?" 
 
 "Some don t," Suydam answered, promptly, 
 " and of course I try never to intrude. But most 
 of them don t mind. Most of them have no sense 
 of home. Most of them don t know what privacy 
 means. How could they ?" 
 
 "True," echoed the novelist. "How could 
 they?" 
 
 " Here is an exemplification of what I mean," 
 said the young man from the Settlement as they 
 came to the next landing. 
 
 The door leading into the room on the right 
 was open. The room was perhaps ten feet square ; 
 it contained two beds. On one of the beds a 
 man sat cross-legged sewing ; he glanced up for 
 a moment only as the two visitors darkened the 
 doorway, and then he went on with his work. 
 On the other bed were two little children, half 
 naked and asleep ; one was a boy of three, the 
 other a girl of nearly two. On the edge of this 
 bed sat a tall boy of seventeen, also sewing. 
 In the narrow alley between the two beds were 
 two sewing-machines, one tended by a girl of fif 
 teen or sixteen perhaps, a thin, stunted child, with 
 
IN SEAKCII OF LOCAL COLOR 79 
 
 bent shoulders. The other machine was operated 
 by the mother of these children, a large-framed 
 woman of forty, with the noble head so often seen 
 among the Trasteverines. 
 
 She knew Suydam, and she smiled. 
 
 " Good-mornin ," she said. 
 
 " Good-morning," responded Suydam. " I am 
 showing a friend over the building. You seem a 
 little crowded here." 
 
 "Not crowd now," she answered. " Only one 
 boarder now," and she indicated the man seated 
 cross-legged on the bed. "Last week two." 
 
 "Where is your husband?" asked the young 
 man. 
 
 " Oh, he got another girl," she replied, with a 
 vague gesture, apparently of disapproval. 
 
 Suydam and De Ruyter went a floor higher, 
 glancing into the rooms which were open. Suy 
 dam knew most of the inhabitants, and they 
 seemed glad to see him. Evidently they looked 
 on him as a friend. 
 
 On the top floor, under the steps which led to 
 the roof, was a den scarce six feet by eight. 
 Small as it was, this room had better furniture 
 than most of those De Ruyter had seen; it con 
 tained evidences of a desire to make a home. 
 There were violent chromos pinned to the wall. 
 The bed had a parti-colored coverlet. The sole 
 inhabitant was a tall, dark Italian with fiery eyes. 
 He was cooking macaroni with ropy cheese over 
 an oil-lamp. His door was ajar only. 
 
80 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 "Good -morning, Pietro," said Suydam, cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 Pietro obeyed his first impulse, and shut the 
 door swiftly. Then he changed his mind, for he 
 opened the door and peered out suspiciously. 
 Recognizing Suydam, he was about to throw it 
 wide, when he caught sight of De Ruyter. There 
 was a moment of hesitancy, and then he took his 
 hand from the knob of the door and went on with 
 his cooking. 
 
 "I am showing my friend over the building," 
 explained Suydam. 
 
 The Italian said nothing. Apparently his cook 
 ing absorbed all his attention. But he gave De 
 Ruyter a searching glance. 
 
 Suydam turned to the novelist. " This is Pie 
 tro Barretti," he said; "he is one of the most ex 
 pert layers of mosaic in America. He is from 
 Naples; that s the reason he cooks macaroni so 
 well, I suppose." 
 
 "Certainly I haven t seen macaroni cooked 
 that way since I was in Naples last," the nov 
 elist remarked, for the sake of talk, not know 
 ing just what to make of the Italian s man 
 ner. 
 
 " Your wife not here ?" asked Suydam. 
 
 "No," the Italian answered, abruptly. 
 
 " Where is she ?" persisted the young man. 
 
 "She mort," responded Barretti. 
 
 "Dead?" Suydam cried. "That is very sad. 
 When did she die ?" . 
 
IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR 81 
 
 " Ten days," the Italian replied. 
 
 When Suydam and De Ruyter had made an 
 end of their visit, and were going down the stairs 
 cautiously, the young man from the University 
 Settlement asked the novelist if he had seen any 
 thing interesting. 
 
 " Oh yes," was the answer. " I ve got lots of 
 color; just what I wanted. And that Italian 
 whose wife was mort he s copy, I m sure." 
 
 " Copy ?" queried Suydam. 
 
 "I mean I can use him in one of my sketches 
 for the Metropolis" the novelist explained. " I 
 wish I knew what his wife was like." 
 
 " She was a pretty girl dark-haired, dark-eyed, 
 with a lively smile," Suydam said. " He was 
 very jealous of her. I ve been told they used to 
 quarrel bitterly." 
 
 " I shouldn t Ijke to have that fellow for an en 
 emy," De Ruyter declared, as they passed through 
 the alleyway and came out in the open air. " He 
 has an eye like a glass stiletto." 
 
 The novelist and the young man from the Uni 
 versity Settlement walked up the street together. 
 As they drew near to a police-station, jealously 
 guarded by its green lamps, three officers came 
 out and turned down the street. 
 
 When the policemen were abreast of the two 
 friends, one of them stepped aside and accosted 
 the young man from the Settlement. 
 
 "Mr. Suydam," he said, "you gentlemen from 
 the Settlement sometimes know what s going on 
 
 6 
 
82 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 better than we do. Have you seen Pietro Barrett! 
 lately the one they call Italian Pete ?" 
 
 "I saw him not ten minutes ago in his own 
 room," Suydam answered. 
 
 "He s all right, boys," cried the policeman. 
 " He s there." 
 
 " Do you want him ?" asked Suydam. 
 
 "Don t we?" the policeman replied, promptly. 
 " We ve got to bring him in." 
 
 "What has he done?" De Ruyter inquired. 
 
 " Oh, he s done enough !" responded the officer. 
 " He murdered his wife last week, that s what 
 he s done." 
 
 Suydam looked at De Ruyter. 
 
 "Yes," said De Ruyter, "that completes the 
 picture. I can get a good mot de la fin now." 
 
 (1893.) 
 
" I SAW HIM NOT TEN MINUTES AGO 
 
tkes cJBzea/i of 
 
IHE lived in a little wooden house on 
 the corner of the street huddled in the 
 shadow of two towering tenements. 
 There are a few frail buildings of 
 this sort still left in that part of the 
 city, half a mile east of the Bowery and half a mile 
 south of Tompkins Square, where the architecture 
 is as irregular, as crowded, and as little cared for 
 as the population. Amid the old private houses 
 erected for a single family, and now violently al 
 tered to accommodate eight or ten amid the tall 
 new tenements, stark and ugly here and there 
 one can still find wooden houses built before the 
 city expanded, half a century old now, worn and 
 shabby and needlessly ashamed in the presence of 
 every new edifice no better than they. With the 
 peak of their shingled roofs they are pathetic sur 
 vivals of a time when New York still remembered 
 that it had been New Amsterdam, and when it did 
 not build its dwellings in imitation of the poly 
 glot loftiness of the Tower of Babel. It was in 
 one of these little houses with white clapboarded 
 walls, ashen gray in the paling moonlight, that 
 Maggie O Donnell lay fast asleep, when the bell 
 in a far-off steeple tolled three in the morning of 
 the day that was to be the Fourth of July. 
 
86 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 She was asleep in the larger of the two little 
 rooms over the saloon. In that part of the city 
 there are saloons on every corner almost, and 
 sometimes two and three in a block. The signs 
 over the doors of most of these saloons and over 
 the doors of the groceries and of the bakeries and 
 of the other shops bear strangely foreign names. 
 The German quarter of the city is not far off, nor 
 is the Italian, nor the Chinese ; but hereabouts the 
 houses are packed with Poles chiefly, and chiefly 
 Jews industrious, docile, and saving. Not until 
 midnight had the whir of the sewing-machines 
 ceased in the tenements which occupied the three 
 other corners. The sign over the door of the sa 
 loon above which Maggie lay fast asleep bore an 
 Irish name, the name of her husband, Terence 
 O Donnell. But the modest boards which dis 
 played his name were overawed by the huge 
 signs that flanked them, filling a goodly share 
 of the wall on either street and proclaiming the 
 " McGown s Pass Brewery, Kelly & Company." 
 
 These brewer s signs were so large that they 
 made the little house seem even smaller than it 
 was and it was not more than twenty feet 
 square. The doors of the saloon were right at the 
 corner, of course, to catch trade. On one street 
 there were two windows, and on the other one 
 window and a door over which was the sign " Fam 
 ily Entrance." This door opened into a little pas 
 sage, from which access could be had to the sa 
 loon, and from which also arose the narrow stairs 
 
BEFOKE THE BREAK OF DAY 87 
 
 leading to the home of Terence O Donnell and 
 Maggie, his wife, on the floor above. The saloon 
 filled the whole ground -floor except the space 
 taken up by this entry and the stairs. A single 
 jet of gas had burned dimly over the bar ever 
 since Terry had locked up a little after midnight. 
 The bar curved across the saloon, and behind it 
 the sideboard with, its bevelled - edge mirrors 
 lined the two inner walls. The sideboard glit 
 tered with glasses built up in tiers, and a lemon 
 lay yellow at the top of every pyramid. The 
 beer-pumps were in the centre under the bar ; at 
 one end was the small iron safe where Terence 
 kept his money ; and at the other end, against the 
 wall, just behind the door which opened into the 
 Family Entrance, was a telephone. 
 
 Up-stairs there were two little rooms and a 
 closet or two. The smaller of the rooms Maggie 
 had turned into a kitchen and dining-room. The 
 larger the one on the corner was their bed 
 room, and here Maggie lay asleep. The night 
 was close and warm, and though the windows were 
 open, the little white curtains hung limp and mo 
 tionless. The day before had been hot and cloud 
 less, so the brick buildings on the three other cor 
 ners had stored up heat for fifteen hours, and had 
 been giving it out ever since the sun had set. Sti 
 fling as it was, Maggie O Donnell slept heavily. 
 It was after midnight when Terry had kissed her 
 at the door, and she had been asleep for three 
 hours. Already there were faint hints of the com- 
 
88 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 ing day, for here in New York the sun rises early 
 on the Fourth of July at half-past four. A breeze 
 began to blow lazily up from the East River and 
 fluttered the curtains feebly. Maggie tossed un 
 easily, reached out her hand, and said " Terry." 
 
 Suddenly she was wide awake. For a moment 
 she looked stupidly at the empty place beside her, 
 and then she remembered that Terry would be 
 gone all night, working hard on the boat and the 
 barges making ready for the picnic. She turned 
 again, but sleep had left her. She lay quietly in 
 bed listening ; she could catch nothing but the 
 heavy rumble of a brewery wagon in the next 
 street and the hesitating toot of a Sound steamer. 
 Then she heard afar off three or four shots of a 
 revolver, and she knew that some young fellow 
 was up early, and had already begun to celebrate 
 the Fourth on the roof of the tenement where he 
 lived. 
 
 She tried to go to sleep, but the effort was 
 hopeless. She was awakened fully, and she knew 
 that there was small chance of her. dropping off 
 into slumber again. More than once she had 
 wakened like this in the middle of the night, an 
 hour or so before daybreak, and then she had to 
 lie there in bed quietly listening to Terry s reg 
 ular breathing. She lay there now alone, think 
 ing of Terry, grateful for his goodness to her, 
 and happy in his love. She lay there alone, won 
 dering where she would be now if Terry had not 
 taken pity on her. 
 
BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 89 
 
 Then all at once she raised herself in bed, and 
 held her breath and listened. For a second she 
 thought she heard a noise in the saloon below 
 
 O 
 
 her. She was not nervous in the least, but she 
 wished Terry had not left so much money in the 
 safe; and this was the first night he had been 
 away from her since they had been married 
 nearly two years ago. She strained her ears, but 
 the sound was not repeated. She sank back on 
 the pillow again, making sure that it was a rat 
 dropping down from the bar, where he had been 
 picking up the crumbs of cheese. There were 
 many rats in the cellar, and sometimes they vent 
 ured up even to the bedroom and the kitchen 
 next door. 
 
 Time was when it would have taken a loud 
 noise to wake the girl who was now Terence 
 O Donnell s wife out of a sound sleep. After her 
 mother died, when Maggie was not five years old, 
 her father had moved into one of the worst ten 
 ements in the city, a ram-shackle old barrack just 
 at the edge of Hell s Kitchen ; and there was 
 never any quiet there, day or night, in the house 
 or in the street. There was always a row of some 
 sort going on, whatever the hour of the day ; 
 if profanity and riot could keep a girl awake 
 she would never have had any sleep there. But 
 Maggie did not recall that she had been a wake 
 ful child; indeed, she remembered that she could 
 sleep at any time and anywhere. On the hot 
 summer nights, when her father came home in- 
 
90 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 toxicated, she would steal away and climb up 
 to the roof and lie down there, slumbering as 
 healthily as though she were in their only room. 
 
 Even then her father used to get drunk often, 
 on Saturday night always, and frequently once or 
 twice in the middle of the week. And when he 
 had taken too much he was mad always. If he 
 found her at home he beat her. She could recall 
 distinctly the first time her father had knocked 
 her down, but the oaths that had accompanied 
 the blow she had forgotten. He had not knocked 
 her down often, but he had sworn at her every 
 day of her life. The vocabulary of profanity 
 was the first that her infant ears had learned to 
 distinguish. 
 
 Her father quit drinking for a month after he 
 married again. They moved away from Hell s 
 Kitchen to a better house near the East River. 
 All went well for a little while, and her step 
 mother was good to her. But her father went 
 back to his old ways again, and soon his new 
 wife turned out to be no better. When the fit 
 was on they quarrelled with each other, and they 
 took turns in beating Maggie, if she were not 
 quick to make her escape. It was when aiming 
 a blow at Maggie one Saturday night that her 
 father pitched forward and fell down a flight of 
 the tenement-house stairs, and was picked up dead. 
 The neighbors carried him up to the room where 
 his wife lay in a liquorish stupor. 
 
 Maggie was nearly fourteen then. She went 
 
BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 91 
 
 on living with her step-mother, who got her a 
 place in a box-factory. Th6 first days of work 
 were the happiest of Maggie s girlhood. She re 
 membered the joy which she felt at her ability 
 to earn money ; it gave her a sense of being her 
 own mistress, of being able to hold her own in 
 the world. And she made friends among the 
 other girls. One of them, Sadie McDermott, had 
 a brother Jim, who used to come around on Satur 
 day night and tease his sister for money. Jim 
 belonged to a gang, and he never worked if he 
 could help it. He had no trade. Maggie remem 
 bered the Saturday night when she and Sadie 
 had walked home together, and when Jim got 
 mad because his sister would not divide her 
 wages with him. He snatched her pocket-book 
 and started to run. When Maggie reproved him 
 with an oath and caught him by one arm, he 
 threw her off so roughly that she fell and struck 
 her head on a lamp-post so hard that she fainted. 
 As Maggie lay in her bed that Fourth of July 
 morning, while her past life unrolled itself before 
 her like a panorama, she knew that the scar on the 
 side of her head was not the worst wound Jim 
 McDermott had dealt her. As she looked back, 
 she wondered how she had ever been friendly 
 with him; how she had let him follow her about; 
 how she had allowed him to make love to her. 
 It was on Jim McDermott s account that she had 
 had the quarrel with her step -mother. Having 
 robbed a drunken man of five dollars, Jim had in- 
 
92 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 vited Maggie to a picnic; and the step -mother, a 
 little drunker than usual that evening, had said 
 that if Maggie went with him she would not be 
 received again. Maggie was not one to take a 
 dare, and she told Jim she would go with him in 
 the morning. The step-mother cursed her for an 
 ungrateful girl; and when Maggie returned with 
 him from the picnic late the next night, and came 
 to the door of the room where she and her step 
 mother lived, they found it locked against her, 
 and all Maggie s possessions tied in a bundle, and 
 scornfully left outside on the landing. 
 
 It had not taken Jim long that night to per 
 suade Maggie to go away with him ; and she had 
 not seen her step-mother since. A week later, but 
 not before he and Maggie had quarrelled, Jim was 
 arrested for robbing the drunken man ; he was 
 sent up to the Island. Since the picnic Maggie 
 had not been back to the factory. Jim had taken 
 her with him one night to a dance-hall, and there 
 she went without him when she was left alone in 
 the world. There she had met Terry a month 
 later. When she first saw Terry the thing plain 
 est before her was the Morgue; she was on the 
 way there, and she was going fast, and she knew 
 it. Although winter had not yet come, she had 
 already a cough that racked her day and night. 
 
 And as she lay there in her comfortable bed, 
 and thought of the chill of the Morgue from which 
 Terry had saved her, she closed her eyes to keep 
 out the dreadful picture, and she clinched her 
 
HE BELONGED TO A "GANG 
 
BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 93 
 
 fists across her forehead. Then she smiled as she 
 remembered the way Terry had thrashed Jim, 
 who had got off the Island somehow before his 
 time was up. Jim said he had a pull with the 
 police, and he came to her for money, and he 
 threatened to have her taken up. It was then 
 Terry had the scrap with him, and did him up. 
 Terry had had a day off, for his boss kept closed 
 on Sundays; at that time Terry was keeping bar 
 at a high-toned cafe near Gramercy Park. 
 
 When he thrashed Jim that was not the first 
 time Terry had been good to her. Nor was it the 
 last. A fortnight later he took her away from 
 the dance-hall, and as soon as he could get a day 
 off he married her. They went down to the Tombs, 
 and the judge married them. The judge knew 
 Terry, and when he had kissed the bride he con 
 gratulated Terry, and said that the new-made 
 husband was a lucky man, and that he had got a 
 good wife. 
 
 A good wife Maggie knew she had been, and 
 she was sure she brought Terry luck. When the 
 man who had been running the house which 
 now bore the name of Terence O Donnell over its 
 door got into trouble and had to skip the country, 
 the boss had put Terry in charge, and had let 
 Maggie go to house-keeping in the little rooms 
 over the saloon; and when the boss died suddenly, 
 his widow knew Terry was honest, and sold out 
 the place to him, cheap, on the instalment plan. 
 That was a year and a half ago, and all the instal- 
 
94 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 ments had been paid except the last, which was 
 not due for a week yet, though the money for it 
 lay all ready in the safe down-stairs. And Terry 
 was doing well; he was popular; his friends would 
 come two blocks out of the way to get a drink at 
 his place; and he had just had a chance to go into 
 a picnic speculation. He was sure to make money; 
 and perhaps in two or three years they might be 
 able to pay off the mortgage on the fixtures. Then 
 they would be rich ; and perhaps Terry would 
 get into politics. 
 
 Suddenly the current of Maggie s thoughts 
 was arrested. From the floor below there came 
 sounds, confused and muffled, and yet unmistak 
 able. Maggie listened, motionless, and then she 
 got out. of bed quickly. She knew that there 
 was some one in the saloon down-stairs; and at 
 that hour no one could be there for a good pur 
 pose. Whoever was there was a thief. Perhaps 
 it was some one of the toughs of the neighbor 
 hood, who knew that Terry was away. 
 
 She had no weapon of any kind, but she was 
 not in the least afraid. She stepped cautiously 
 to the head of the stairs, and crept stealthily 
 down, not delaying to put on her stockings. The 
 sounds in the saloon continued ; they were few 
 and slight, but Maggie could interpret them plain 
 ly enough ; they told her that a man having got 
 into the house somehow, had now gone behind the 
 bar. Probably he was trying to steal the change 
 in the cash-drawer; she was glad that Terry had 
 
U A LITTLK DKUNKEU THAN USUAL" 
 
BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 95 
 
 locked all his money in the safe just before he 
 went off. 
 
 When Maggie had slipped down the stairs gen 
 tly, and stood in the little passageway with the 
 door into the saloon ajar before her, she felt a 
 slight draught, and she knew that the thief had 
 entered through a window, and had left it open. 
 Yet there was no use in her calling for assistance. 
 The only people within reach of her voice were 
 the poor Poles, who were too poor - spirited to 
 protest even if they saw her robbed in broad day 
 light ; they were cowardly creatures all of them; 
 and she could not hope for help from them as 
 she would if they were only white men. The 
 policeman might be within reach of her cry; but 
 he .had a long beat, and there was only a slim 
 chance that he was near. 
 
 Her head was clear, and she thought swiftly. 
 The thing to do, the only thing, was to make use 
 of the telephone to summon assistance. The in 
 strument was within two feet of her as she stood 
 in the passage, but it was on the other side of the 
 door at the end of the bar, and therefore in full 
 view of any one who might be in the saloon. 
 And it would not be possible to ring up the cen 
 tral office and call for help without being heard 
 by the robber. 
 
 Having made up her mind what it was best for 
 her to do, Maggie did not hesitate a moment; she 
 pushed the door gently before her and stepped 
 silently into the saloon. As the faint light from 
 
96 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 the single dim jet of gas burning over the bar fell 
 upon her, she looked almost pretty, with the aure 
 ole of her reddish hair, and with her firm young 
 figure draped in the coarse white gown. She 
 glanced around her, and for a second she saw no 
 one. The window before her was open, but the 
 man who had broken in was not in sight. 
 
 As she peered about she heard a scratching, 
 grating noise, and then she saw the top of a 
 man s head just appearing above the edge of the 
 bar behind which his body was concealed. She 
 knew then that the thief was trying to get into 
 the safe where Terry s money was locked up. 
 
 Leaving the door wide open behind her, Mag 
 gie took the two steps that brought her to the 
 telephone, and rapidly turned the handle. Then 
 she faced about swiftly to see what the man 
 would do. 
 
 The first thing he did was to bob his head sud 
 denly under the bar, disappearing wholly. Then 
 he slowly raised his face above the edge of the 
 bar, and Maggie found herself staring into the 
 shifty eyes of Jim McDermott. 
 
 " Hello, Maggie !" he said, as he stood up. "Is 
 that you ?" 
 
 She saw that he had a revolver in his right 
 hand. But she put up her hand again and re 
 peated the telephone call. 
 
 " Drop that !" he cried, as he raised the re 
 volver. "You try to squeal and I ll shoot 
 see?" 
 
" DROP THAT! HE CRIED" 
 
BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 97 
 
 " Where did you steal that pistol, Jim McDer- 
 mott ?" was all she answered. 
 
 " None o your business where I got it," he re 
 torted. " I got it good and ready for you now. 
 I kin use it too, and don t you forget it ! You 
 quit that telephone or you ll see how quick I can 
 shoot. You hear me ?" 
 
 She did not reply. She was waiting for the 
 central office to acknowledge her call. She looked 
 Jim McDermott square in the eyes, and it was he 
 who was uncomfortable and not she. 
 
 Then the bell of the telephone rang, and she 
 turned and spoke into the instrument clearly and 
 rapidly and yet without flurry. " This is 31 Chat 
 ham. There s a burglar here. It s Jim McDer 
 mott. Send the police quick." 
 
 This was her message ; and then she faced 
 about sharply and cried to him, " Now shoot, and 
 be damned !" 
 
 He took her at her word, and fired. The bullet 
 bored a hole in the wooden box of the telephone. 
 
 Maggie laughed tauntingly, and slipped swiftly 
 out of the door, but not swiftly enough to avoid 
 the second bullet. 
 
 Five minutes later when the police arrived, just 
 as the day was beginning to break, they found Jim 
 McDermott fled, the window open, the safe unin 
 jured, and Maggie O Donnell lying in the pas 
 sageway at the foot of the stairs, her night-gown 
 stained with blood from a flesh wound in her arm. 
 
 (1893.) 
 T 
 
, in i 
 
 @ m M HI HI HI @ in 
 
 C/foiclduminer 
 
( FTER three years service at sea on 
 the flag-ship of the White Squadron, 
 Lieutenant John Stone had a long 
 leave of absence. It was late in the 
 afternoon of one of the hottest days of 
 August when he left the navy-yard and took the 
 ferry to New York. The street-car in which he 
 rode across town crawled along, the horses seem 
 ing to be exhausted by the wearing weather of 
 the preceding fortnight, and the driver had no 
 energy to keep them up to their work. 
 
 It mattered little to John Stone how slowly 
 they went ; he was in no hurry ; he had nothing 
 to do ; he had nobody waiting for him. At forty 
 he was alone in the world, without a blood-rela 
 tion anywhere or any nearer than a second cousin, 
 without a home, without an address, except " Care 
 of the Navy Department, Washington, D.C." He 
 was almost without ambition even in the service 
 now, for he had not yet had a command, and he 
 would not get his step for three or four years 
 more. He was fond of his profession, and of late 
 he had been working lovingly at its early history. 
 He had come to New York now to look up in the 
 libraries a few missing links in an account of the 
 
OF MANHATTAN 
 
 rise and fall of Carthage as a sea power. To be 
 near the books he had to consult, he was going to 
 stay at a hotel within two or three blocks of 
 Washington Square. 
 
 When he had registered at the hotel, the clerk, 
 reading his name upsidedown, said, courteously: 
 " I m sorry we can t do better for you, Mr. Stone, 
 but I shall have to put you on the sixth floor. 
 You see, we are overrun with our Southern and 
 Western trade now ; they have found out that 
 New York is the finest summer resort in the 
 country. The best I can do for you is to give 
 you a room on the Avenue, with a bath-room 
 attached." 
 
 " That will do very well," Stone answered. 
 
 "Front !" called the clerk. "Show Mr. Stone 
 up to 313." 
 
 When the naval officer reached room 313 it 
 was nearly six o clock. He threw open the win 
 dow and looked down at the street below. Even 
 at that height the heat welled up from the stone 
 sidewalks and from the brick walls opposite. To 
 his ear it seemed almost as though the mighty 
 roar of the metropolis rose to him muffled and 
 made more remote by the heat. , He lighted a 
 cigar and leaned out of the window, and won 
 dered how many people there were in all the city 
 whom he knew by sight, and how very few there 
 were who could call him by name. 
 
 A sweltering wind from the west swayed the 
 thick and dusty branches of the trees which lined 
 
I SIZED YOU UP WHEN YOU COME IN 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 103 
 
 the curb far down below him. He threw his ci 
 gar away half smoked. Then he took a cold 
 bath, and went down to the dining-room some 
 what refreshed. 
 
 At the table to which the head waiter waved 
 him there was already one man sitting, a tall, 
 handsome young fellow of twenty-five, perhaps. 
 Stone liked the man s face, and he liked the way 
 the flannel shirt was cut so as to leave the full 
 throat free. The manner in which the simple 
 scarf was knotted and its ends tucked into the 
 shirt he noticed also ; and he saw that the young 
 fellow had insisted on bringing his black slouch 
 hat with him into the dining-room, having hung 
 it on the back of the next chair. When this seat 
 was given to Stone, the hat was promptly trans 
 ferred to the chair on the other side of the own 
 er. Stone made up his mind that his neighbor 
 was a ranchman of some sort, who had come East 
 on business. 
 
 It does not take long for two lonely men to 
 get acquainted ; and before he had eaten his 
 green corn, Stone knew all about his neighbor at 
 table, and the neighbor knew something about 
 him. 
 
 "I sized you up when you come in," the young 
 fellow said, "an I took stock in you from the 
 start. Somehow I kind o thought you was one 
 of Uncle Sam s boys, though o course I didn t 
 low you was a sailor. I never see a sailor till 
 this mornin , when I went down on the dock to 
 
104 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 get news of this Touraine steamer, an the sailor 
 down there was a Frenchman, an not like you, 
 not by a jugful. I suppose, now, Uncle Sam s 
 sailors are like his other boys I ve seen at home 
 often. There s Dutchmen that ain t bad men, an 
 I ve seen Dagoes you could tie to, and sometimes 
 a greaser, now and then not but what they s 
 powerful skase, greasers you can trust but Un 
 cle Sam s boys are white men every time." 
 
 The young fellow was Clay Magruder. He 
 was a cowboy, as Stone had supposed, and he was 
 in New York on a mission of the highest impor 
 tance to himself. He was waiting for the girl he 
 wanted to marry, and she was expected to arrive 
 the next morning on the French steamer. 
 
 "The grub here ain t so bad, is it?" Magruder 
 said, as the repast drew to an end. " O course 
 it ain t like what we get at home. I don t find 
 nowhere no beef that s equal to the beef we ve 
 been gettin right along now for two years, ever 
 since I ve been with Old Man Pettigrew. The 
 Hash-knife Outfit always has the best cookin on 
 the trail. It s jest notorious for it. Things here 
 in New York is good enough, but the flavor don t 
 take hold of you like it does at home ; an their 
 coffee East is poor stuff, ain t it ? It don t bite 
 you like coffee should." 
 
 After dinner they went into the smoking-room 
 of the hotel, and Stone offered a cigar to his new 
 friend. 
 
 " No, thank you," he responded, taking a small 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 105 
 
 brier-wood pipe out of his trousers-pocket. " I 
 don t go much on cigars ; I can git more solid 
 comfort out of a pipe, I reckon." After he had 
 filled his pipe and pulled at it half a dozen times, 
 he said to Stone, suddenly : " Say ! is there any 
 show in town to-night ? I ve got a night off, you 
 know, and I ve allus heerd that for shows New 
 York could lay over everything in sight. You ve 
 been to this town before, haven t you ?" 
 
 Stone admitted that this was not his first visit 
 to New York. 
 
 "I reckoned so," was Clay Magruder s com 
 ment. "An* so you know your way here, an I 
 don t ; there s too many trails crossin for me to 
 keep to the road. Suppose we go to the show 
 together ef there is a show in town ?" 
 
 Stone bought an evening paper, and looked 
 over the list of amusements. He wondered what 
 would best suit the tastes of his new friend. 
 
 " There s Deadwood Dick s Wild Western Ex 
 hibition at Niblo s " he began. 
 
 " Deadwood Dick ?" interrupted the cowboy, 
 in great contempt ; "he s a holy show, he is. 
 He s a fraud ; that s what he is. An is he the 
 only thing we can take in to-night?" 
 
 "Oh no," the sailor replied. "There are half 
 a dozen other things to see. There s a comic 
 opera at the Garden Theatre, with a variety show 
 up in the roof garden afterwards." 
 
 " A comic opera singing, and funny business, 
 and pretty girls, I suppose ?" said the Westerner. 
 
106 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 "I reckon we d might as well go there unless 
 you d rather go somewhere else." 
 
 " The comic opera and the roof garden will just 
 suit me," Stone responded. 
 
 They were fortunate in getting good seats at 
 the theatre, where they arrived as the curtain was 
 rising on the first act of " Patience." Even in mid 
 summer the attire of Stone s new friend attracted 
 some attention, and a group of pretty girls in the 
 row behind them nudged each other as he came 
 in and giggled. In their hearts they were glad 
 to look at so handsome a man. 
 
 During the first act Magruder s face was a 
 study for Stone. It was evident that the cowboy 
 failed wholly to understand the narrow and in 
 sular satire of " Patience." When the curtain fell 
 at last, he could contain himself no longer. 
 
 " I never see such a fool play," he said. " There 
 ain t no sense in makin believe that one fellow 
 could round up a bunch of girls that way. It s 
 the plumb-stupidest show I ve seen for years and 
 years. It s bad as Deadwood Dick most. Pa 
 tience they call it ? Well, I ain t got none to 
 see no more of it. What s this roof garden you 
 told me about ?" 
 
 So Stone took him up to the roof garden, and 
 they were glad to get again into the open air, 
 baked as the atmosphere" was even at the top of 
 the building. They had a drink and a smoke 
 while they listened to the music. 
 
 When the variety show began on the little 
 
I DON T GO MUCH ON CIGARS 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 107 
 
 stage, Stone went forward in time to secure ad 
 vantageous positions for Magruder and himself. 
 Early on the programme was a French song by a 
 highly-colored young lady wearing an enormous 
 hat. 
 
 "That s a good enough song," the cowboy de 
 clared, " but what sort of a lingo is it she s sing- 
 in it in ? Why isn t plain United States good 
 enough for songs ? Not but what she s a pretty 
 girl, too, and lively on her feet." 
 
 The part of the performance which excited 
 Clay Magruder s warmest appreciation was the 
 serpentine dance of Mademoiselle filoise. When 
 he beheld the coiling draperies of that graceful 
 young woman curving about in picturesque and 
 unexpected convolutions, and heightened in effect 
 by the changing colors of the lime-lights directed 
 upon the stage, his enthusiasm rose to a height. 
 
 "That s some/" he cried. "It reminds me of 
 an Eyetalian gal I saw dance once in Cheyenne. 
 She was a daisy, too ; but this is bigger. They s 
 no doubt about it, this is a heap bigger." 
 
 Magruder joined in accomplishing the inevi 
 table recall and the repetition of a part of the 
 dance. Perhaps this was the reason why the 
 next two or three numbers of the programme 
 seemed to him to be less interesting. At all 
 events, both the cowboy and the sailor tired of 
 the entertainment. So they made their way 
 through the crowd and down to the street. 
 
 As they walked back to the hotel Magruder 
 
108 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 told Stone what had brought him to New York. 
 It was to meet the Touraine on her expected ar 
 rival in the morning, and to persuade one of the 
 passengers to marry him. 
 
 " She s jest got to marry me," he said, earnest 
 ly. "I can t get along without her any longer. 
 She s a sort of governess to Old Man Pettigrew s 
 sister s kids learns them to read and play the 
 pianner. They was all in Miles City last winter, 
 and that was when I first see her. I made up my 
 mind right off on the spot that there was Mrs. 
 Clay Magruder if I could get her. And I m here 
 now to get her if I can. She s as pretty as a pict 
 ure better n that, too, for I never see no chromo 
 half as good - lookin as her. Once last winter 
 they was most a blizzard ; leastways the wind 
 set back on its hind -legs and howled. You 
 ought to have seen her then, with the color in her 
 cheeks ! An everything was froze stiff, and she 
 was skeered of fallin . Why, she teetered along 
 jest like a chicken with a jag." And he laughed 
 out loud at the recollection. " She ll be here in 
 the mornin , and you shall see her. I m goin to 
 be down on that dock good an early to-morrow, 
 and no French sailor ain t goin to stand me off." 
 
 As they drew near to the hotel, Magruder re 
 marked : " Say ! ain t they a jag-factory some- 
 wheres round here ? Come in and have one with 
 me." 
 
 Stone went with him, and they drank the young 
 lady s health, Magruder expatiating on her charms 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 109 
 
 and on the happiness that awaited him when he 
 should marry her. Then they crossed the street 
 to the hotel and went up to their rooms. 
 
 As it happened, the room of Clay Magruder 
 was exactly opposite John Stone s, so it was at 
 their own doors that they parted for the night 
 with a hearty grasp of the hand. 
 
 The sailor found the air of his room stifling. 
 He threw wide the window and stood for a while 
 looking out over the heated city as it lay around 
 him in the darkness. He wondered what the girl 
 was like whom Magruder had come East to meet, 
 and he caught himself almost envying the cow 
 boy. Then he sighed unconsciously and made 
 ready for bed. As he wound up his watch he 
 saw that it wa"s nearly half - past eleven. Five 
 minutes afterwards he was asleep. 
 
 He had been asleep but five minutes, as it 
 seemed to him, when he was waked slowly with a 
 slight difficulty in breathing, and with the feeling 
 that all was not well. While he was still drowsy, 
 he was conscious of a crackling sound like the 
 snapping of dry twigs. When he opened his 
 eyes he found that they smarted. The first long 
 breath that he drew filled his lungs with thin 
 smoke. In an instant he was wide awake. The 
 meaning of the crackling and the snapping was 
 not doubtful. The hotel was on fire. 
 
 He sprang out of bed and opened the door of 
 his room. The corridor was full of smoke, and 
 the sound of the flames was louder. At the bend 
 
110 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 in the hall where the stairs were, sharp tongues 
 of flame were licking around the corner. Stone 
 saw that his retreat that way was cut off, and 
 that he must rely on the windows for escape. He 
 crossed to the door opposite, pounded at it heavi 
 ly, and cried " Fire ! Fire ! Get up at once !" till 
 Clay Magruder answered. The floor of the corri 
 dor was hot beneath his feet as he went back to 
 his own room, closed the door, and dressed him 
 self as swiftly as he could, the murmur of the fire 
 growing nearer and nearer. 
 
 When he was still in his shirt-sleeves he stepped 
 again to the corridor and called across to Ma 
 gruder. 
 
 The door opposite opened, and the cowboy ap 
 peared in it, half-dressed. 
 
 "The stairs are on fire," cried Stone; "we 
 can t get out that way. We must try the win 
 dows. Take your sheets and your blankets and 
 come in here." 
 
 "I wish I d a couple of lariats here," said Ma 
 gruder, as he went back for the bed-linen. 
 
 The air in the hall was now thick and suffocat 
 ing, and the stairs at the corner were a furnace 
 of fierce flames. Here and there thin threads of 
 smoke were rising from the floor of the corridor. 
 
 The cowboy reappeared in his doorway, with 
 his arms full of bedclothes. 
 
 " Come in here quick, so that I can get this 
 door shut and keep out the smoke," said the sailor, 
 standing back to leave the doorway open. 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT HI 
 
 As Magruder stepped out of his room, the floor 
 of the corridor gave way with a crash, and a red- 
 hot gulf yawned between the two rooms. Stone 
 leaned far forward to try and save his new friend. 
 But the falling of the floor was too sudden, and 
 Magruder went down into the roaring furnace 
 below, from which the flames sprang up fiercely. 
 In a moment he was lost to sight in the seeth 
 ing fire. Stone stood stock-still for a second, 
 bent over the blazing opening, with his arm out 
 stretched until the heat scorched it. Then he 
 rose to his feet swiftly and shut the door behind 
 him. 
 
 His own room was now full of smoke, and he 
 knew that the door would be on fire in less than 
 a minute. He threw open the window and looked 
 down, seeing at once that his bedding alone would 
 be useless, as it would take him down two stories 
 at the most, while the fire had already broken out 
 at the front of the building. He discovered that 
 there was a ledge or narrow cornice running 
 around the house just on the end of his floor. He 
 stepped out upon this, and closed the window be 
 hind him. As he did so, the flames burst through 
 from the corridor into his room. 
 
 Standing outside of his window on the narrow 
 ledge, which gave him a scant foothold, he saw 
 in front of him on his right what he had not be 
 fore observed a tall tower with an illuminated 
 clock face. The hands pointed to four minutes 
 past midnight. From the street below there arose 
 
112 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 a confused murmur of noises shouts and cries 
 of command, the rattle of heavy wheels as the 
 engines rushed up, the regular rhythmic beat of 
 the pumps as they got into play, the hissing of 
 steam as a dozen streams of water curved upward 
 and smote the burning building. The foliage of 
 the trees which lined the curb was so thick that 
 Stone could not see the sidewalk just below him, 
 and apparently those in charge of operations had 
 not seen him. 
 
 The sailor had faced death before he had 
 weathered many a fierce gale at sea ; he had been 
 at Samoa during the hurricane ; he had been over 
 board for an hour once in the Bay of Biscay and 
 he was not afraid to die. He recalled his sensa 
 tions when he believed himself to be drowning, 
 and he remembered that his dominant thought 
 had been that such a death then and there was 
 needless and served no purpose. On that occa 
 sion he was more or less passive, being spent with 
 the struggle against the waves ; at present he was 
 strong and ready to make a fight for his life. 
 Then he had to contend with water, and now he 
 knew that water was his chief hope. 
 
 At that moment there came a louder roar from 
 far down in the street below : the water-tower 
 had arrived. It was speedily erected and in ser 
 vice, and from its long trunk a thick stream of 
 water was forced into the blazing hotel perhaps 
 fifty feet from where Stone was standing. He 
 watched it at work, and then he raised his eyes 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 113 
 
 and again caught sight of the illuminated dial, 
 whereon the hands now pointed to seven minutes 
 after midnight. 
 
 Stone wondered whether the firemen would be 
 able to get the better of the flames. He doubted 
 it, but he wished that he could take part in the 
 fight. It was rather the helplessness of his position 
 than its f earf ulness that he felt most keenly. He 
 was in danger, and the danger was deepening with 
 every minute of delay, but he could do nothing. 
 The ledge on which he was standing was barely 
 a foot wide, and it was perhaps ten feet long. 
 Its length measured the width of his room, which 
 projected a yard or more beyond the main line of 
 the building. Stone moved cautiously to the right 
 till he came to the end of the ledge, in the hope 
 that it continued around the side, and that by 
 following it he might pass along the whole front 
 of the hotel, and perhaps find some way to escape 
 to the roof of the house next door. 
 
 But the hope was futile, for the slight cornice 
 shrank away as it turned back till it was barely 
 an inch wide. The sailor was used to an insecure 
 footing at a great height, and his nerves were 
 steady ; but he knew that it was certain destruc 
 tion for him to try to advance in that direction. 
 With his back pressed tight to the wall, he glided 
 along to the window, now lighted up by the flames 
 which filled his room. He pushed past it to the 
 left until he came to the end of the ledge on that 
 side, finding that the projection ceased on the one 
 
114 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 hand as it had on the other. He felt himself 
 a prisoner, held fast, with little hope of rescue ; 
 neither to the right nor to the left could he move; 
 behind him was the wall of the blazing hotel, and 
 before him was a sheer drop of sixty feet to the 
 street below. He glanced down for an instant, 
 and then raised his head again. To the right, in 
 the distance, was the clock-tower, and it was now 
 nine minutes past twelve. He wondered if the 
 clock had stopped suddenly, for it seemed to him 
 nearly an hour since he had awaked to find him 
 self in peril of his life. 
 
 He thought of Magruder, and he wondered why 
 the man who had hopes and joys before him 
 should be cut off, while the man who had little 
 to live for should be given a chance for his life. 
 That the cowboy had perished in the flames he 
 had no doubt ; and in a flash his imagination bore 
 him outside of the exigencies of the moment, and 
 he had a vision of the Touraine making her way 
 past Sandy Hook, and drawing near to Staten 
 Island and anchoring there, too far from the city 
 for its passengers to see the glare of the confla 
 gration. Yet the fire was one to be seen from 
 afar, for there was a sullen roar, and the roof of 
 a wing of the hotel fell in. A myriad of sparks 
 was blasted upward, and the crowd in the street 
 raised a loud shout of warning. Stone looked 
 down, and he saw a woman at a window of the 
 floor below him ; she was shrieking with terror, 
 and at last she gave a wild spring forward. He 
 
A MLDSUHMEK MIDNIGHT 115 
 
 beheld her crash through the branches of the 
 trees, and he heard her body strike the sidewalk. 
 There was a yell of horror from the crowd, and 
 then silence. A few seconds later Stone caught 
 the quick clang of an ambulance bell in the side 
 street. He counted the strokes automatically un 
 til they died away in the distance. His ear was 
 so strained to catch this sound that he heard the 
 rattle of a train stopping at the station of the ele 
 vated railroad only a block away, and he seized 
 even the shrill squeak of the brakes as they grated 
 against the wheels. Then he aroused himself, and 
 wondered why he had noted such trifles. Turn 
 ing his head, he found the single eye of the clock- 
 tower still beaming at him. He blinked stupidly 
 before he saw that it was now thirteen minutes 
 after twelve. 
 
 More engines had arrived in the street below, 
 and another hook-and-ladder truck. Several small 
 ladders had been put up to the lower windows, 
 and women and children had been carried down 
 in safety. Stone watched while the firemen tried 
 to raise one of the taller ladders which might reach 
 to the third or fourth floor. The branches of the 
 trees were so close that the men found it impos 
 sible to get this longer ladder into position. A 
 man was sent up into the tree, and he was cutting 
 away the branches, when flames burst out of the 
 nearest window. A torrent of water was at once 
 directed into the window, while a second stream 
 splashed down upon the tree and made a watery 
 
116 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 shield for the fireman, who went on lopping off 
 the limbs. He labored swiftly, but the fire was 
 swifter still. At almost the same time the flames 
 burst forth from three or four other of the lower 
 windows. 
 
 Stone had been noting every effort of the men 
 below. At first he had not been seen. But after 
 the man had cut away a few of the branches of 
 the tree, two or three of the firemen caught sight 
 of the sailor. They shouted to him, but in the 
 roar of the fire behind him arid below him he 
 could not make out their words. A captain gave 
 a sudden command, and two men sprang forward 
 with short scaling-ladders, which they succeeded 
 in hooking to the second-story window immedi 
 ately below the ledge on which he was standing. 
 Looking down, he could see the heads of these 
 men as they climbed the ladders, their bodies 
 being foreshortened into invisibility. The men 
 could not get above the second story, for the fire 
 was gushing forth as though the window were the 
 mouth of hell. The smoke rose black and dense, 
 enshrouding Stone. 
 
 He saw that it was useless to hope that they 
 could now get a ladder up to him ; the flames 
 would not give them time. The wall behind him 
 was becoming hotter, and the heat had broken 
 the glass of the window of his room. The fire 
 was creeping along the roof above his head, and 
 every now and again it peered over the edge at 
 him, as though seeing how far it had still to go 
 
"THE WALL BEHIND HIM WAS 
 COMING HOTTEK" 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 117 
 
 before it could grasp him. The smoke from be 
 low was thickening, and threatened to choke him. 
 Through its haze he could see the cyclops eye of 
 the clock-tower gloating over his inevitable fate. 
 The hands on the illuminated dial had slowly 
 crept forward, and it was now nearly twenty min 
 utes past twelve. 
 
 Stone knew that his position was untenable for 
 many seconds longer. At any moment the wall 
 might fall back and bury him in the blazing ruins. 
 To remain was impossible ; and there seemed no 
 way of escape. A crash shook the building, and 
 then another ; and he guessed that two of the 
 floors had fallen in. He slid along again to the 
 end of the narrow ledge and tried to peer around 
 the corner, in the vague hope that there might 
 be some possible means of escape. He found that 
 he could not twist his head far enough to see any 
 thing while his back was flat against the wall. 
 To turn was to risk a fall to the pavement below. 
 He looked down fearlessly, and calculated his 
 chances if he missed his footing. Immediately 
 beneath him the tree was taller than its fellows, 
 and its foliage was thicker ; it was barely possi 
 ble that the branches might break his fall ; but 
 the chance was slim. The smoke poured heavily 
 from the window three feet from him. He hesi 
 tated no longer, but turned slowly and steadily. 
 His nerves were unshaken, and he executed the 
 mano3uvre in safety. Standing with his face to 
 the wall which rose sheer above him, and which 
 
118 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 gave him no hold for his hands he was able to 
 thrust out his head sideways and to look around 
 the corner. What he saw gave him a thrill of 
 hope. 
 
 His room projected perhaps a yard beyond 
 the main line of the building, forming what 
 might be termed a square bay-window. From 
 his position on the narrow shelf of marble, which 
 ran around the front of the hotel on every floor, 
 he thought he could reach forward and touch 
 the main wall of the building. And here was 
 his one possible chance of escape. In the corner 
 formed by the junction of the projection and the 
 main line there was the leader which conducted 
 the rain-water from the roof. It was of tin only, 
 and in the eyes of the sailor gazing at it with 
 upspringing hope it seemed frail, insecurely fas 
 tened, perhaps rotten. But it offered a chance, 
 and the only chance, of life, and therefore it was 
 welcome. Stone prepared to make the best of it. 
 
 He gave a final glance around before he made 
 the irrevocable move. He caught sight of the 
 clock, and he saw that it was twenty -two min 
 utes after midnight. He reached forward, and 
 he found that the space was wider than he had 
 thought. It was with the tips of his fingers only 
 that he could touch the tin pipe ; it was beyond 
 the reach of his grasp. Yet to seize it was the 
 one way to the street below. He did not hesi 
 tate. He stood on his left foot on the very end 
 of the ledge, with his right foot dangling in 
 
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT H9 
 
 space. He made a carefully measured plunge 
 forward, and he griped the leader with his left 
 hand and then instantly with his right. It yield 
 ed under the sudden strain, but it did not part. 
 With the habit of a sailor, he clasped his legs 
 about it, and so eased the pressure. Then he be 
 gan slowly to slide down, gaining velocity as he 
 descended. 
 
 At every floor there was a shelf of stone like 
 that on which he had stood outside his window, 
 and through which the tin tube passed. Stone 
 had therefore to release his feet, and by his 
 hands alone to cling to the pipe, which spread 
 from the wall with the weight of his body. Then 
 he clasped his legs again below the ledge and let 
 go one hand after the other. The tin was broken 
 and jagged here and there, and Stone s flesh was 
 cut to the bone. But he did not notice this in 
 the tension of his swift descent. 
 
 When he came to the first floor and tried to 
 take a fresh grip with his legs, he found nothing 
 to clasp with his knees. From there to its con 
 nection with the gutter the pipe went inside the 
 building. Stone hung from the ledge by his 
 hands, not knowing how far he was above the 
 sidewalk. The smoke was pouring up from the 
 cellar grating beneath him, and in a minute he 
 would have suffocated. So he let go. 
 
 The drop was ten feet or more, and he came 
 down on a trunk which had been thrown out of a 
 window. From this he pitched to the sidewalk 
 
120 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 with a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. He 
 was dimly conscious of being lifted gently, and 
 of a brief but painful ride. The sharp clang of 
 the ambulance bell lie felt as though it were a 
 physical blow. 
 
 When he came to himself again it was morn 
 ing, and he was in bed in a long room with a row 
 of cots on both sides of it, under the slanting 
 sunbeams. 
 
 He lay still, wondering. 
 
 The occupant of the next bed was unfolding a 
 newspaper, and Stone heard him say to the nurse, 
 with an Alsacian accent : " Ve re goin have nod- 
 der hot day ; I vonder how dhose people yust 
 back from Paris on dhe Douraine vill like dot ?" 
 
 (1892.) 
 
m 1 I ffl II Mi ! * i JILJ!LJ!! S 
 
 
 
 n (oentzai 
 

>T was the last Sunday in September, 
 and the blue sky arched above the 
 Park, clear, cloudless, unfathomable. 
 The afternoon sun was hot, and high 
 overhead. Now and then a wandering 
 breeze came without warning and lingered only 
 for a moment, fluttering the broad leaves of the 
 aquatic plants in the fountain below the Terrace. 
 At the Casino, on the hill above the Mall, men 
 and women were eating and drinking, some of 
 them inside the dingy and sprawling building, 
 and some of them out-doors at little tables set in 
 curving lines under the gayly colored awnings, 
 which covered the broad walk bending away from 
 the door of the restaurant. From the band 
 stand in the thick of the throng below came the 
 brassy staccato of a cornet, rendering " The Last 
 Rose of Summer." Even the Ramble was full of 
 people ; and the young couples, seeking seques 
 tered nooks under the russet trees, were often 
 forced to share their benches with strangers. Be 
 neath the reddening maples lonely men lounged 
 on the grass by themselves, or sat solitary and 
 silent in the midst of chattering family groups. 
 The crowd was cosmopolitan and unhurried. 
 
124 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 For the most part it was good-natured and well- 
 to-do. There was not a beggar to be seen ; there 
 was no appealing poverty. Fathers of families 
 there were in abundance, well-fed and well-clad, 
 with their wives and with their sons wives and 
 with their sons children. Maids in black dresses 
 and white aprons pushed baby-carriages. Young 
 girls in groups of three and four giggled and gos 
 siped. Young men in couples leaned over the 
 bridge of the Lake, smoking and exchanging opin 
 ions. There was a general air of prosperity glad 
 ly displaying itself in the sunshine ; the misery 
 and the want and the despair of the great city 
 were left behind and thrust out of mind. 
 
 Two or three yards after a portly German with 
 a little boy holding each of his hands while a 
 third son still younger rode ahead astride of his 
 father s solid cane, there came two slim Japanese 
 gentlemen, small and sallow, in their neatly cut 
 coats and trousers. A knot of laughing mulatto- 
 girls followed, arm in arm ; they, too, seemed ill- 
 dressed in the accepted costume of civilization, 
 especially when contrasted with half a dozen Ital 
 ians who passed slowly, looking about them with 
 curious glances ; the men in worn olive velveteens 
 and with gold rings in their ears, the women with 
 bright colors in their skirts and with embroidery 
 on their neckerchiefs. Where the foot-path 
 touched the carriage-drive there stood a plain but 
 comfortably plump Irishwoman, perhaps thirty 
 years of age ; she had a baby in her arms, and a 
 
a. 
 
 
 "YOUNG COUPLES SEEKING SEQUESTERED NOOKS 
 
A VISTA IN CENTRAL PARK 125 
 
 little girl of scant three held fast to her patched 
 calico dress ; with her left hand she was proffer 
 ing a basket containing apples, bananas, and 
 grapes; two other children, both under six, played 
 about her skirts ; and two more, a boy and a girl, 
 kept within sight of her the girl, about ten years 
 old, having a basket of her own filled with thin 
 round brown cakes ; and the boy, certainly not 
 yet thirteen, holding out a wooden box packed 
 with rolls of lozenges, put up in red and yellow 
 and green papers. Now and again the mother or 
 one of the children made a sale to a pedestrian 
 on his way to the music. The younger children 
 watched, with noisy glee, the light leaps of a gray 
 squirrel bounding along over the grass behind the 
 path and balancing himself with his horizontal 
 tail. 
 
 The broad carriage -drive was as crowded as 
 any of the foot-paths. Bicyclists in white sweat 
 ers and black stockings toiled along in groups of 
 three and four, bent forward over the bars of their 
 machines. Politicians with cigars in the corners 
 of their mouths held in impatient trotters. Park 
 omnibuses heavily laden with women and chil 
 dren drew up for an instant before the Terrace, and 
 then went on again to skirt the Lake. Old-fash 
 ioned and shabby landaus lumbered along with 
 strangers from the hotels. Now and then there 
 came in sight a hansom cab with a young couple 
 framed in the front of it, or a jolting dog-cart, on 
 the high seat of which a British - looking young 
 
126 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 man was driving tandem. Here and there were 
 other private carriages coupes and phaetons, for 
 the most part, with once and again a four-in-hand 
 coach rumbling heavily on the firmly packed 
 road. 
 
 A stylish victoria sped along, spick and span, 
 with its glistening harness and its jingling steel 
 chains, with its stalwart pair of iron-gray step 
 pers and with two men on the box, correct and im 
 passive. Suddenly, as it passed close to the walk 
 at the end of the Terrace, the coachman drew up 
 sharply, pulling his horses back on their haunches 
 and swearing inaudibly at the plump Irishwoman 
 who had dropped her basket of fruit just in time 
 to rescue one of her children from being run 
 over. 
 
 "It s more careful ye ought to be !" cried the 
 mother, as she stood again on the walk with her 
 daughter clasped to her waist. 
 
 " We are very sorry, indeed," said the lady in 
 the victoria, leaning forward. " It was an ac 
 cident." 
 
 "An accident, was it?" returned the Irishwom 
 an. " An it s an accident, then, ye wouldn t like 
 if it was yer own children ye were runnin over 
 like that." 
 
 The childless couple in the carriage looked at 
 each other for a moment only ; and then the hus 
 band said, swiftly, " Drive on, John !" 
 
 He was a man of fifty, spare in frame and 
 round-shouldered ; he had a keen glance, and a 
 
TWO SUM JAPANKSK GKNTI.KMKN 
 
A VISTA IN CENTRAL PAKK 127 
 
 weary smile came and went on his lips, not 
 bidden by his sparse gray moustache. His wife 
 was a woman of perhaps thirty, tall, dark, with 
 passionate eyes and a full figure. 
 
 She was still leaning forward, clinching the 
 side of the carriage as it turned northward and 
 rolled along by the side of the Lake. Her 
 voice showed that her excitement had not sub 
 sided, as she faced her husband again and said : 
 "John is getting very careless. That is the 
 third time this week he has nearly run over a 
 child !" 
 
 "He has not quite run over one yet. It will 
 be time enough to discharge him when he does," 
 her husband answered, calmly. "That little girl 
 there is none the worse for her fright. She seemed 
 a pretty little thing, and she has been saved to 
 grow up in a tenement-house and to go to the 
 devil ten years from now. So her mother has 
 cause to be thankful." 
 
 His wife looked at him indignantly. "I sup 
 pose," she said, "you mean that it is a pity that 
 John didn t run over the child and kill her." 
 
 " I didn t mean that exactly," he responded. 
 "But perhaps it is true enough. Death is not 
 the worst thing in this world, you know." 
 
 "You are always talking of dying," returned 
 his young wife, impatiently. " I wonder you 
 don t commit suicide." 
 
 " I have thought of it," he answered, looking 
 at her with a tolerant smile. " But life amuses 
 
128 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 me still I have so much curiosity, you know. 
 But I might do it, if I were sure I could have the 
 privilege of coming back to see what you will be 
 up to when I m gone." 
 
 She looked straight before her and made no 
 answer, keeping her lips firmly compressed. 
 
 There was a touch of tenderness in his tone as 
 he went on, a curious cynical tenderness, quite 
 characteristic of him. "Don t let some rascal 
 marry you for my money. That would annoy 
 me, I confess. And yet, I don t know why I 
 should suggest the possibility of such a thing, for 
 you will be a most fascinating widow." 
 
 She gazed ahead steadily and said nothing, but 
 she had joined her hands together, and her fingers 
 kept moving. 
 
 "Still," he continued, "I m afraid I m good for 
 ten years more. We re a hardy stock, you know. 
 My father lived to be eighty, and he was fifty 
 when I was born. Besides, you take such good 
 care of me always." 
 
 He held out his hand to her, and she took it 
 and clasped it tight in both of hers, while the 
 tears brimmed her eyes. 
 
 " But perhaps you are letting me stay out too 
 long this afternoon," he said. "It is balmy, I 
 know, but I m getting tired already." 
 
 "John," she cried, hastily, "you may turn now, 
 and go home." 
 
 "I don t want you to lose this lovely September 
 afternoon," her husband declared. " Take me 
 
U A KNOT OF LAUGHING MULATTO GIRLS " 
 
A VISTA IN CENTUAL PAKK 129 
 
 home, and come back to the Park here for an 
 hour, while I have a nap, if I can." 
 
 Just then there was a break in the stream of 
 vehicles, and the coachman took advantage of it 
 and turned the horses heads southward. In five 
 minutes the victoria swerved to the westward, 
 leaving the Lake behind, and making for the 
 Riverside Drive. 
 
 The Lake was gay with boats. Black gondolas 
 with white canopies and brilliant American flags 
 were propelled adroitly by their standing boat 
 men. Light canoes were paddled briskly in and 
 out of the bays and channels, where the ducks 
 and swans swam lazily about. Young fellows in 
 their shirt-sleeves tugged inexpertly at the oars 
 of row-boats laden down with young women. By 
 regular and easy strokes the Park watermen rowed 
 the capacious barges, with their striped awnings, 
 in the prescribed course around the Lake. The 
 oars flashed in the flickering sunlight, and the 
 sunshine gilded the prows of the distant canoes 
 as they shot across the vista. The yellow leaves 
 of the maples high on the bank over the oppo 
 site shore fluttered loosely away on the doubtful 
 breeze, and at last fell languidly into the water. 
 To the west a towering apartment-house lifted 
 itself aloft over the edge of the Park, and seemed 
 to shorten the space between. To the east the 
 gilded dome of a new synagogue rose over the 
 tree-tops. Above all was the blue concave of 
 the calm and illimitable sky. 
 
130 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 When the victoria, with its two men on the 
 box and with its pair of high-stepping horses, re 
 turned to the Park, and skirted the Lake again, 
 and approached the Terrace, the lady sat in it 
 alone. As she came in sight of the Mall she bent 
 forward, eagerly looking for the little girl whom 
 they had almost run over half an hour earlier. 
 
 Near the Terrace she saw the pleasant-faced 
 Irishwoman, with her basket of fruit in one hand 
 and the baby in the other arm; the three little 
 children were playing about their mother s feet, 
 while the elder boy and girl were only a few 
 yards away. 
 
 The lonely woman in the victoria bade the 
 coachman draw up. 
 
 Seeing the carriage stop at the side of the road 
 the Irishwoman came forward, proffering her 
 fruit. Then she recognized the lady and checked 
 her approach, hesitating. 
 
 The handsome woman in the carriage smiled, 
 and said, " Which is the little girl we almost ran 
 over ?" 
 
 " That s the one," answered the mother, indi 
 cating the slip of a child who was now clasping 
 the edge of the fruit-basket while staring at the 
 strange lady with wide-open eyes. 
 
 " What a pretty child she is !" said the lady. 
 " I hope she is none the worse for her fright ?" 
 
 "Ye didn t break any bones, if that s what ye 
 mean," the mother responded. 
 
 " And how old is she ?" was the next question. 
 
A VISTA IN CENTRAL PARK 131 
 
 "She ll be three years old come Christmas," 
 was the answer. 
 
 The lady in the carriage felt in her pocket, and 
 brought out her purse and looked through it. 
 
 " Here," she said at last, as she took out a five- 
 dollar gold-piece ; " here is something I wish you 
 would give her on Christmas morning as a pres 
 ent from me. Will you ?" 
 
 " I will that," the mother replied, taking the 
 money, "and gladly too. It s richer than her 
 sisters she ll be now." 
 
 " How many children have you ?" the lady in 
 quired. 
 
 " Six ; thank ye, ma am, for askin ," was the re 
 sponse, " an all well and hearty." 
 
 " Six ?" echoed the woman in the victoria, with 
 a hungry gleam in her eyes. " You have six 
 children ?" 
 
 " It s six I have," the mother answered ; " and 
 it s a fine lot they are altogether, though I say it 
 that shouldn t." 
 
 The lady put her hand in her purse again. 
 
 " Buy something with this for the others," she 
 said, placing a bank-note in the Irishwoman s 
 hands. Then she raised her voice and added, 
 "You may drive on, John !" 
 
 As the victoria rolled away to the westward 
 the fruit-vender courtesied, and the children all 
 looked after the carriage with interest. 
 
 " That lady must be very rich," said the eldest 
 boy, the one who had the lozenges for sale. " I 
 
132 VIGNETTES OP MANHATTAN 
 
 shouldn t wonder if she had two millions of dol 
 lars I" 
 
 " She must be very happy," the eldest girl add 
 ed. "I suppose she can have ice-cream every 
 day, and go to the Seaside Home for two weeks 
 whenever she wants." 
 
 " It s a kind heart she has anyway, for all her 
 money," was the mother s comment, as she un 
 folded the bank-note and saw the X in the corner 
 of it. 
 
 Meanwhile the lady in the victoria was eaten 
 with bitter thoughts as the carriage rattled along 
 in the brilliant sunshine beneath the unclouded 
 sky. 
 
 "Six children!" she was saying to herself. 
 " That Irishwoman has six children ! Why is it 
 that some women have so much luck?" 
 
 (1893.) 
 
^ 
 
 m in 9 111 
 
 &peecfi of the &>veninc/ 
 
i HE more immaterial part of the ban 
 quet was about to begin. The guests 
 had made an end of eating, and the 
 waiters were filling the small cups 
 with black coffee, and passing boxes 
 of cigars and cigarettes. At the five long tables 
 which gridironed the great room the hum of 
 conversation rose higher and higher ; while at 
 the shorter table, raised on the platform at the 
 western end of the hall, there was almost silence, 
 as the men who were to make speeches saw the 
 oratorical moment approaching. The musicians, 
 hidden behind a screen of greenery, were playing 
 a medley of the latest popular airs ; and here and 
 there, at the tables below, a little group of the 
 diners now and again took up a chorus, with in 
 termittent energy, to the amusement of the ladies 
 who were arriving and filling rapidly the broad 
 boxes in the galleries. 
 
 The organizers of the dinner had felt that it 
 was a great occasion, and they had sought to 
 make it memorable artistically. The severe white 
 of the beautifully proportioned concert-hall was 
 relieved by foliage plants, massed and scattered 
 with a delicate understanding of decorative ef- 
 
136 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 feet ; against the absolutely colorless walls, with 
 their carved caryatides, were palms in pots ; 
 gayly colored silken banners floated down from 
 the ceiling ; and everywhere, on the ceiling and 
 the walls and the balconies and the platforms, the 
 electric lights glowed and twinkled, illuminating 
 the lofty hall with steady brilliancy. 
 
 Near the eastern end of one of the long tables 
 there sat a young man at least, he was barely 
 thirty. He was so placed that he had before him 
 the whole scene. He had an uninterrupted view 
 of the raised table, where the speakers were ab 
 sorbed in self - communion. He commanded the 
 entrance to the gallery opposite, and he could see 
 the ladies as they arrived in little groups, eager 
 for the unwonted pleasure of attendance at a 
 great public dinner. He could hear the feminine 
 chatter rising shrill above the masculine babble 
 below. He gazed at the boxes curiously, as 
 though he did not know any of the ladies in 
 them ; and he remained quiet while the diners 
 about him at that end of the table exchanged 
 salutations with the occupants of one box or an 
 other. Apparently he had few if any acquaint 
 ances even on the floor of the hall, the men on 
 each side of him being generally engaged in con 
 versation with their neighbors. 
 
 Seemingly his solitude was lightly borne, and 
 he found solace for it in amused observation of 
 the gathering. He lighted his own cigar, and 
 was soon helping to make the blue haze which 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 137 
 
 hung over the tables, rising in time almost to the 
 level of the boxes in the long balconies. 
 
 Yet he was not averse to conversation, and 
 when his right-hand neighbor turned back to pick 
 up a fresh cigarette, he took occasion to say, " It 
 isn t usual to let ladies in at dinners here in New 
 York, is it?" 
 
 " No," his right-hand neighbor responded, with 
 a slight but obvious German accent, "I don t 
 think it is. I ve been lifing in New York for a 
 long vile now most eleven years and I never 
 saw it before." 
 
 Then the right-hand neighbor, having lighted 
 his cigarette, sat back in his chair again and re 
 sumed his interrupted talk with the man on the 
 other side of him. 
 
 The young man who was apparently a stranger 
 was allowed to keep silence only for a minute or 
 two, however, as his left-hand neighbor, to whom 
 he had hardly spoken during the dinner, now 
 engaged him in conversation. 
 
 "I thought it was about time they did that," 
 said the neighbor, indicating the waiters who were 
 removing the potted orange-trees and the sugar- 
 trophies from the upper table. " Now we can 
 see who s who." 
 
 "I suppose those are the more distinguished 
 guests ?" the young man suggested. 
 
 "Most of the men who are going to make 
 speeches are up there," the neighbor responded. 
 " Hello, hello ! there s Alexander Macgregor down 
 
138 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 at that end there, the one with the full red beard. 
 He s the President of the St. Andrew s Society. 
 He s a first-rate American, too, for all he was born 
 in Edinburgh. You know, he s the man they 
 call the * Star-spangled Scotchman. " 
 
 "And who is that clean-shaved, clean-looking, 
 fair-haired man next to him ?" asked the young 
 man. 
 
 "That?" the neighbor replied, "that s oh, I 
 forget his name but he s the President of the St. 
 George s Society, I think. He s an Englishman 
 that is, he was ; I suppose he s been naturalized 
 but then you can never tell about Englishmen, 
 can you ? They will live in a place for years, 
 and they will be Britons to the backbone all the 
 time." 
 
 " Who is the presiding officer ?" was the next 
 question. 
 
 "Don t you know him?" the neighbor retort 
 ed. "Why, that s Crowninshield Eliot, the law 
 yer. He used to be President of the New Eng 
 land Society. He s a clever man and he makes 
 a rattling good speech sometimes, but then he s 
 mighty uncertain. He may speak well or he 
 may make a bad break. A speech from him is a 
 regular grab-bag you never know what you are 
 going to have. But things don t get rusty when 
 he is around, I tell you. You can rely on him to 
 wake all the other speakers up. And I guess we 
 shall have some fun before we get through ; it 
 isn t often you see so many representative New- 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 139 
 
 Yorkers together ; it s really a typical gather- 
 ing." 
 
 The young man made no response to this, be 
 ing for the moment busy with his own ironic 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Now there s a man who will make the fur 
 fly if he gets a chance," continued the loquacious 
 neighbor, " that tall, thin, dignified-looking man, 
 with the black goatee and mustache ; that s Colo 
 nel Fairfax. He s Secretary of the Southern So 
 ciety all rebels, you know, but reconstructed by 
 this time, most of them. He s District Attorney 
 for the second term now, and you ought to hear 
 him talk to a jury. He could get a verdict against 
 the angel Gabriel for stealing the silver trumpet. 
 When I was on the grand jury last year he " 
 
 Here the young man s neighbor interrupted 
 himself to say, "Hello, hello ! that is odd, isn t it? 
 Right next to Colonel Fairfax is the man who 
 was foreman of our grand jury ; I didn t catch 
 sight of him till that waiter took away that candy 
 Statue of Liberty. See him ? The bald one with 
 the scar on his jaw ; it s a bullet wound he got 
 at Shiloh. That s S. Colfax Morrison ; he was 
 major of the 200th Ohio, but he s been living in 
 New York for ten years now at least. That s * the 
 Ohio idea they talk about : to come to New 
 York to live as soon as they can. I was born in 
 Ohio myself." 
 
 And the talker let his loquacity taper off into a 
 laugh, in which the young man joined courteously. 
 
140 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 There was a sudden diminution of the roar of 
 talk as the gentleman sitting in the middle of 
 the raised table rose to his feet and rapped for 
 silence. Even in the boxes, now filled to over 
 flowing with ladies, the chatter ceased as the man 
 who had been selected to preside over the dinner 
 began his remarks by recalling the event they had 
 met to commemorate. In felicitous phrases and 
 with neatly turned strokes of humor he declared 
 the reason why they were assembled together. 
 And when he had made an end of this, he an 
 nounced that the first toast of the evening would 
 be " New York, the Empire City, sitting at the 
 gates of commerce, and holding the highways of 
 trade." 
 
 There was a burst of applause and a pushing 
 back of chairs as all the guests rose with their 
 glasses in their hands. 
 
 Then the presiding officer prepared to intro 
 duce the speaker who was to make the response 
 to this important toast. 
 
 "I saw only this morning," he began again, 
 "the report of some remarks made by a Senator 
 from Nevada, in which New York was called a 
 city of kites and crows. There are Congress 
 men who cannot open their mouths without 
 disseminating miscellaneous misinformation ; and 
 the only appropriate retort would be with the 
 plain-spoken bowie of the mining-camp or with 
 the unambiguous derringer of Nevada. No ad 
 equate answer is possible in the sterilized vocab- 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 141 
 
 ulary permitted to us by the conventions of mod 
 ern society. And yet it is well that once in a 
 while New York should assert herself that she 
 should celebrate herself that she should rest 
 from her mighty labors, if only for a moment, to 
 contemplate her own great work. We are fortu 
 nate in having with us here to-night a man who 
 can do justice to this imposing theme, a man who 
 loves New York as we all love her, who is proud 
 of New York as we are all proud of her a man 
 whom there is no need for me to introduce to an 
 assembly of New-Yorkers. Works of supereroga 
 tion are discountenanced, and who is there here 
 who does not know Horace Chauncy ?" 
 
 As the chairman ceased the gentleman who had 
 been sitting at his right rose, and immediately 
 there was great applause from all parts of the 
 hall. Men clapped their hands and rapped upon 
 the table with the handles of their fruit-knives. 
 Even the ladies in the boxes waved their hand 
 kerchiefs. 
 
 Then, as the chairman, having done his duty, 
 took his seat, there was the customary hum of an 
 ticipated enjoyment, dying away swiftly as Mr. 
 Chauncy prepared to speak. 
 
 The left-hand neighbor of the young man down 
 at the far end of the long table turned to him 
 again, and said, " Now you keep your eyes open. 
 I shouldn t wonder if this was the speech of the 
 evening." 
 
 The young man looked at the new speaker and 
 
142 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 liked his face, at once masterful and intelligent. 
 Mr. Chauncy s attitude was one of conscious 
 strength and of perfect ease. He was a man of 
 fifty, perhaps, with gray hair and a curling gray 
 mustache. 
 
 " Upon a mellow October night like this," the 
 speaker began, and his voice was rich and firm, 
 while his delivery was as clear as a line en 
 graving "upon a mellow October night like 
 this, possible in no other city in this country or 
 in Europe, I think, and illustrative of the fact that 
 here in New York we have really a climate, while 
 most of the other great towns of the world have 
 only weather upon a night like this, and under 
 this graceful tower, uplifting its loveliness into 
 the azure air and topped by a Diana fairer than that 
 of the Ephesians smiling down upon gardens more 
 beautiful than any ever hanging in Babylon, there 
 is no need for me to present any defence of the 
 Empire City, or to proffer any apology for her. 
 If you seek for proof of her superiority, look 
 about you here to-night, and remember that no 
 where else in the United States could any such 
 company as this be gathered together ; nowhere 
 else in the United States is there a banquet-hall 
 so beautiful ; nowhere else in the United States 
 would a feast like this be graced by the presence 
 of so many lovely women. Yet I feel that I 
 should be derelict to my duty that I should let 
 slip a precious occasion if I did not dwell for a 
 while upon a few of the many things in the his- 
 
" NOWHERE ELSE WOULD A FEAST LIKE THIS BE GRACED BY SO MANY 
 LOVELY WOMEN " 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 143 
 
 tory of this city which give her proud pre-emi 
 nence; which make her what she is the mighty 
 and magnificent metropolis of a great people." 
 
 Again the applause broke forth. After a pause 
 the speaker continued, having the attention of 
 every man and woman in the hall. Even as he 
 warmed to his subject he preserved the perfec 
 tion of his delivery, and he poured forth facts, 
 figures, illustrations, one after the other, with nev 
 er a broken accent or a blurred syllable. 
 
 "I will not detain you by detailing the many 
 natural advantages of New York the noble river 
 which sweeps by on one side and the arm of the 
 ocean which embraces the other, and the spacious 
 and beautiful bay, with its harborage ample for 
 all the fleets of all the nations of the earth. It 
 is not my purpose to-night to linger long over 
 the works of art which make this island of ours 
 distinguished as the works of nature have made 
 possible her prosperity; and therefore I shall say 
 nothing of the Statue of Liberty, of the Brooklyn 
 Bridge, of the Riverside Drive, of the libraries 
 and the museums and the colleges and the church 
 es ; I shall even say nothing of Central Park, truly 
 the finest single work of art yet produced by any 
 American, and, simply as a work of art, unequalled 
 by any pleasure-ground of Europe." 
 
 There was another burst of applause, but the 
 speaker scarcely waited for it to die down before 
 he began again. 
 
 "Passing by these works of God and man, ever 
 
144 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 present before our eyes, I am going to call your 
 attention to things less material to things which 
 do not cling to our remembrance as they ought. 
 Secure in our material prosperity, we New-York 
 ers do not always recall those incidents in the his 
 tory of the city which deserve to be forever mem 
 orable. We are not often accused of modesty 
 but we are over-modest, are we not ? when we 
 allow our children to be taught that the first 
 bloodshed of the Revolution was in the Boston 
 Massacre, forgetting that the Liberty Pole fight 
 took place in New York six weeks earlier. It was 
 here in New York that the Stamp Act Congress 
 met, the forerunner of the federation of the Amer 
 ican colonies which cast off the British yoke. And 
 in the long and weary war of the Revolution only 
 one of the thirteen colonies furnished its full quo 
 ta of men, money, and supplies and that colony 
 was the colony of New York !" 
 
 Once more was the speaker interrupted by a 
 tumult of approval ; and once more he went on 
 again as soon as he could make himself heard. 
 
 " When the critical period in the history of this 
 country came that is, when the need of a new 
 constitution was felt by all no men had a larger 
 share in the making of that constitution than two 
 New-Yorkers, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, 
 while the nervous English of that great instru 
 ment was due to a third New-Yorker, Gouver- 
 neur Morris. It was in New York that the founda 
 tions of American literature were laid, by the pub- 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 145 
 
 lication of Knickerbockers History y the earliest 
 book to be printed in America which keeps its 
 popularity to-day and more than fourscore 
 years have not yet tarnished its humor. To the 
 author of this immortal book, to Washington Ir 
 ving, was due the first work of American author 
 ship which won acceptance outside of the boun 
 daries of the United States. And as it was the 
 Sketch- Book of Washington Irving which was 
 the first American book to win its way in Eng 
 land, so it was the Spy of another citizen of 
 New York, Fenimore Cooper, which was the first 
 American book to achieve fame outside of the 
 English language. It was here in New York that 
 our American literature was first fostered, as it is 
 here in New York that our American authors are 
 most abundant, most highly honored, and most 
 richly rewarded." 
 
 The speaker paused again, but only for a mo 
 ment. 
 
 "As in letters, so in the arts. Here in New 
 York the National Academy of Design was 
 founded, and later the Society of American Art 
 ists ; and to two painters of New York, to Robert 
 Fulton and to Samuel F. B. Morse, we owe the 
 steamboat and the telegraph. Here in New York 
 was founded the Children s Aid Society than 
 which no city in the world has a nobler charity 
 the first of the kind and the most successful. 
 Here in New York, also, Peter Cooper established 
 
 the first institution intended to provide instruc- 
 10 
 
146 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 tion to all ambitions youth an institution that 
 has been imitated in almost every city of the 
 Union, although no city of the Union has ever 
 had a citizen more esteemed or better beloved 
 than was Peter Cooper here in New York. It is 
 not in a city of kites and crows that men of 
 Peter Cooper s character choose to dwell ; it is 
 not in a city of kites and crows that men of 
 Peter Cooper s character are cherished and re 
 vered." 
 
 Here the speech was again broken into by pro 
 longed applause. Men rose to their feet and 
 cheered, waving their napkins over their heads. 
 
 When there was quiet once more the speaker 
 went on : 
 
 "After years of peace and of prosperity, the 
 people of the United States suddenly found them 
 selves face to face with armed rebellion, and war 
 loomed before us inevitable. New York was 
 ready then as always. The first regiment to 
 reach the capital of the country to secure it 
 against traitors was a regiment of New York 
 City militia. Nor was there ever after any lack 
 of men here in this city who despised the snares 
 of death and defied the pains of hell, and who 
 went into battle bravely, and gayly, and glad that 
 in the words of one of them glad that there 
 is lots of good fighting along the whole line. 
 I have been told I confess I have not been able 
 to verify the figures but I have been told, that 
 the number of men who enlisted into the army 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 147 
 
 and the navy of the United States from this city 
 of ours during those four long years of doubt 
 and anxiety exceeded the number of the male 
 inhabitants of fighting age in the year when the 
 rebellion broke out. And not content with fur 
 nishing men to fight, the city of New York saw 
 to it that the wounded were duly attended to and 
 their anguish lightened as far as might be for it 
 was here that the United States Sanitary Commis 
 sion was organized." 
 
 There where cheers once more and yet again, 
 and it was not for a full minute that the speaker 
 was enabled to continue. 
 
 "Your applause tells me that I need say no 
 more," he began. " A successful city is the spoiled 
 child of fortune, and perhaps, like other spoiled 
 children, it is all the better for a sound thrashing 
 now and then. But what has New York done 
 amiss now, that she should be scourged with scor 
 pions? In the welter of politics it may be con 
 sidered adroit to suggest that your opponent is 
 either a wolf in sheep s clothing or an ass in a 
 lion s skin ; but it is more adroit still, it seems to 
 me, to avoid personality altogether. The louder 
 the report of the gun, the more violent the kick 
 is. When a New-Yorker hears his beloved town 
 called a city of kites and crows his first impulse 
 is to laugh ; his second is to inquire as to the man 
 who said it ; and his third is to laugh again and 
 louder when he discovers that the author of this 
 assertion is from Nevada, a state where even 
 
148 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 Santa Glaus on Christmas Eve does not dare go 
 his rounds for fear of being held up by road- 
 agents !" 
 
 This time a burst of hearty laughter mingled 
 with the abundant applause as the speaker sat 
 down. 
 
 " That s a very good speech," the young man 
 who seemed to be a stranger said to his left-hand 
 neighbor. 
 
 " Good speech ?" echoed the other enthusiasti 
 cally; "I should think so. It s the speech of the 
 evening, sure ! There s not one of them can beat 
 that." 
 
 "I ve been in Japan for the past five years, 
 and I seem to have lost track of people here in 
 the city," said the young man. " What is the 
 name of the gentleman who made the speech?" 
 
 " Horace Chauncy," was the answer. " I thought 
 everybody knew him. His father was United 
 States Senator from West Virginia, and his moth 
 er was a famous Kentucky belle in her day. He 
 himself used to be the leader of the California 
 bar before he moved here a few years ago. He 
 caught on at once in New York ; he s one of the 
 most popular speakers we have now; some fellows 
 call him { Our Horace. Haven t you ever heard 
 about him, really?" 
 
 "Well," the young man retorted, "you mustn t 
 expect me to know all these people. You see, I 
 was born in New York." 
 
 (1894.) 
 
ra i @ i BI m i tii n 111 HI HI " " . 
 
 Jji 
 
 nner- 
 
iHANKSGIVING DAY had dawned 
 clear and cold, an ideal day for the 
 foot-ball game. Soon after breakfast 
 the side -streets had been made hid 
 eous by small bands of boys, strange 
 ly disguised as girls some of them, or as Indians 
 and as negroes, with improvised costumes and 
 with staring masks ; they blew fish-horns, and be 
 sought coppers. A little later in the day groups 
 of fantasticals paraded on horseback or in car 
 riages ; and straggling target companies some 
 of them in the uniforms worn during the polit 
 ical campaign which had culminated in the elec 
 tion three weeks earlier marched irregularly up 
 the avenues under the elevated railroads, preceded 
 by thin lines of pioneers, and by slim bands of 
 music that played spasmodically before the many 
 adjacent saloons, at the doors of which the com 
 panies came to a halt willingly. 
 
 The sun shone out and warmed one side of the 
 street as people came from church ; and the wind 
 blew gently down the avenues, and fluttered the 
 petals of the yellow chrysanthemums which ex 
 panded themselves in many button-holes. Little 
 groups of young people passed, the girls with 
 
152 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 knots of blue at their throats or with mufflers of 
 orange and black, the young men with college- 
 buttons or with protruding handkerchiefs of the 
 college colors. The fashionable dealers in men s 
 goods had arranged their windows with impartial 
 regard for future custom one with blue flannels 
 and scarfs, shirts and socks, and the other all or 
 ange and black. Coaches began to go by, draped 
 witli one set of colors or the other, and filled with 
 young men who split the air with explosive cheers, 
 while waving blue pennants with white letters, 
 or yellow pennants with black. The sun shone 
 brightly, and the brisk breeze shivered the bare 
 branches of the trees. It rippled the flags which 
 projected from the vehicles gathering at Madison 
 Square and streaming up the avenue in thick suc 
 cession coaches, private carriages, omnibuses, 
 road-wagons of one kind or another. 
 
 Towards nightfall the tide turned and the 
 coaches began to come back, the young men 
 hoarse with incessant shouting of their stacca 
 to college cries. Some of them, wild with joy 
 at the victory of their own team, had voice still 
 for exulting yells. Others were saddened into 
 silence by the defeat of their side. Most of those 
 who had gone out to see the game belonged nei 
 ther to the college of the blue nor to the college 
 of the black and orange, but they were all stimu 
 lated by the struggle they had just seen a strup: 
 gle of strength and of skill, of gumption and of 
 grit. The sun had gone down at last, and the 
 

 
 COMING FROM CHURCH 
 
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 153 
 
 bracing breeze of noon had now a touch of damp 
 ness which chilled the flesh. But the hearty young 
 fellows paid no heed to it ; they cheered and they 
 sang and they cried aloud one to the other as 
 though the season were spring, and they were 
 alone on the sea-shore. 
 
 Robert White caught the fever like the rest, 
 and as he walked down the avenue to the College 
 Club he was conscious of an excitement he had 
 not felt for years. He was alone in the city for 
 a week, as it happened, his wife having taken the 
 children into the country for a long-promised visit; 
 and he had been spending his evenings at the Col 
 lege Club. So it was that he had joined in char 
 tering a coach, and for the first time in a dozen 
 years he had seen the foot-ball game. He had 
 been made happy by the success of his own col 
 lege, and by meeting classmates whom he had not 
 laid eyes on since their Commencement in the heat 
 of the Centennial summer. One of them was now 
 the young governor of a new Western State, and 
 another was likely to be a member of the new 
 President s cabinet. 
 
 On the way out to the game White had sat be 
 side a third classmate, now a professor in the old 
 college, and they had talked over their four years 
 and their fellow -students. They recalled the 
 young men of promise who had failed to sustain 
 the hopes of the class ; the steady, hard-working 
 fellows, who were steady and hard-working still; 
 the quiet, shy man who had known little Latin 
 
154 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 and less Greek, but was fond of science, and who 
 was now developing into one of the foremost nov 
 elists of the country; the best base-ball player of 
 the class, now the pastor of one of the leading 
 churches of Chicago; and others who had done 
 well for themselves in the different walks of life. 
 They talked over the black sheep of the class 
 some dead, some worse than dead, some dropped 
 out of sight. 
 
 " What has become of Johnny Carroll ?" asked 
 the professor. 
 
 "I have not seen him since class-day. There 
 was some wretched scandal before Commence 
 ment, you know, and I doubt if Johnny ever got 
 his degree," White answered. 
 
 "I know he didn t," the professor returned. 
 " He never dared to apply for it." 
 
 " They managed to keep the trouble very quiet, 
 whatever it was," White went on. " I never knew 
 just what the facts were." 
 
 "I didn t know then," responded the professor; 
 " I have been told since. But there is no need to 
 go into that now. The girl is dead long ago, and 
 Johnny too, for all I have heard." 
 
 "Poor Johnny Carroll," White said; "I can re 
 member how handsome he looked that last night, 
 the night of class-day. But he was always hand 
 some and always well dressed. He was not very 
 clever or very anything, was he ? Yet we all liked 
 him." 
 
 " I remember that he tried to get on the Fresh- 
 
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 155 
 
 man crew," the professor remarked, after a pause, 
 "but the temptations of high living were too 
 much for him. He wouldn t train." 
 
 "Training was just what he needed most," 
 "White added; " moral and mental as well as phys 
 ical. Fact is, he always had more money than was 
 good for him. His father was in Wall Street 
 then, and making money hand over fist." 
 
 "It wasn t till the year after we were gradu 
 ated that old Carroll committed suicide, was it ?" 
 the professor inquired. " Blew out his brains in 
 the bath-tub, didn t he ?" 
 
 "And didn t leave enough money to pay for his 
 funeral," White answered. " Johnny was in hard 
 luck always: he had too much money at first, and 
 none at all when he needed it most." 
 
 "His great misfortune," said the professor, 
 " was that his father was ( one of the boys. " 
 
 " Yes," White agreed, " that is pretty rough on 
 a fellow. I wonder where Johnny is, if he is alive ? 
 Out West, perhaps, prospecting on a grub stake, 
 or else stoker on an ocean steamer, or perhaps 
 he s a member of the Broadway squad, earning a 
 living by elbowing ladies over the crossing." 
 
 "I hope he has as good a berth as that," the 
 professor answered; "but I don t believe that 
 Johnny Carroll would stay on the force long, 
 even if he got the appointment. Do you remem 
 ber how well he sang The Son of a Gamboleer ?" 
 
 It was this question of the professor s which 
 Robert White remembered after he had got off 
 
156 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 the coach and was walking towards Madison 
 Square. Three young fellows, mere boys two 
 of them, were staggering on just in front of him. 
 They were arm in arm, in hope of a triplicate sta 
 bility quite unattainable without more ballast than 
 they carried, and they were singing the song John 
 ny Carroll had made his own in college. The wind 
 was still sharpening, and the wooden signs which 
 projected across the sidewalk here and there swung 
 heavily as they felt its force. There were knots of 
 eager young men and boys going to and fro before 
 the brilliantly lighted porticos of the hotels. 
 
 As White stepped aside to get out of the way 
 of one of these groups, rather more hilarious than 
 the others, he knocked into a man who was stand 
 ing up against the glaring window of a restaurant. 
 The man was thin and pinched ; his face was clean 
 shaven and blue ; his clothes were threadbare ; his 
 attitude was as though he were pressing close to 
 the glass in the hope of a reflected warmth. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," cried White. 
 
 The man turned stiffly. " It s of no con " he 
 began, then he saw White s face in the bright 
 light which streamed across the sidewalk. He 
 stopped, hesitated for a moment, and then turned 
 away. 
 
 The moment had been enough for White to rec 
 ognize him. " Johnny Carroll !" he called. 
 
 The man continued to move away. 
 
 White overtook him in two strides, and laid a 
 hand on his shoulder. " Johnny !" he said again. 
 
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 15? 
 
 The man faced about and answered doubtfully, 
 11 Well, what do you want ?" 
 
 " Is this really you, Johnny Carroll ?" asked 
 White, as he held out his hand. 
 
 " Oh yes," said the other, " it s Johnny Carroll 
 and you are Bob White." 
 
 White s hand was still extended. After a long 
 pause his classmate took it. White was shocked 
 at the chill of Carroll s fingers. "Why, man," 
 he cried, " you are cold." 
 
 " Well," the other answered, simply, " why not? 
 It isn t the first time." Then, after a swift glance 
 at White s face, he turned his own away and said, 
 " I m hungry, too, if you want to know." 
 
 " So am I," said White, cordially. " I was go 
 ing to have my Thanksgiving dinner alone. Will 
 you join me, Johnny ?" 
 
 " Do you mean it ?" asked the other. 
 
 " Why shouldn t we dine together ?" White re 
 sponded, setting off briskly and putting his arm 
 through his classmate s. u Our team has won to 
 day, you know eighteen to nothing; we ll cele 
 brate the victory." 
 
 " Where are you taking me ?" inquired Johnny, 
 uneasily. 
 
 "To the College Club, of course," answered 
 White. " We ll" 
 
 "I mustn t go there," said Johnny, stopping 
 short. "I couldn t face them now. I oh, I 
 couldn t !" 
 
 "Very well, then," White agreed. "Where 
 
158 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 
 
 shall we go? What do you say to Dehnoni- 
 co s ?" 
 
 Again Johnny asked : " Do you mean it ? Hon 
 est ?" 
 
 " Of course I mean it, Johnny," he replied. 
 
 "I haven t been in Delmonico s for ten years 
 and more," said the other. " I d like to have just 
 another dinner there. But you can t take me 
 there. Look at me !" 
 
 White looked at him. The thin coat was but 
 toned tight ; it was very worn, and yet it was 
 not ragged ; it was in better condition than the 
 hat or the boots. 
 
 As the two men stood there facing each other 
 on the corner of the street there was a foretaste 
 of winter in the wind which smote them and ate 
 into their marrow. 
 
 White linked his arm again in his classmate s. 
 " I ve seen you look sweller, Johnny, I confess," 
 he said ; "but I haven t dressed for dinner my 
 self to-night." 
 
 "So it s Delmonico s?" Johnny asked. 
 
 " It s Delmonico s," White responded. 
 
 "Then take me into the cafe," said the other. 
 "I can stand the men, I think, but I m not in 
 shape to go into the restaurant where the women 
 are." 
 
 "Very well," agreed White. "We ll try the 
 cafe." 
 
 When they entered the cafe it was crowded 
 with young men. There was already a blue haze 
 
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 159 
 
 of smoke over the heads of the noisy throng. 
 Boys drinking champagne at adjacent tables 
 were calling across to each other with boisterous 
 merriment. 
 
 White was able to secure a small table near 
 the corner on the Broadway side. As he walked 
 over to it he nodded to half a score of acquaint 
 ances, some of whom looked askant at his compan 
 ion, and exchanged whispered comments after he 
 had passed. 
 
 Apparently Johnny neither saw the looks nor 
 heard the whispers. He followed White as if in 
 a dream ; and White had noticed that when they 
 had entered the heated room Carroll had drawn a 
 long breath as though to warm himself. 
 
 " I don t need an overcoat in here," he said, as 
 he took the chair opposite White s with the little 
 marble-topped table between them. 
 
 When the waiter had deftly laid the cloth, 
 Johnny fingered its fair softness, as with a cat 
 like enjoyment of its cleanness. 
 
 "Now, what shall we have?" asked White, as 
 the waiter handed him the bill of fare in its nar 
 row frame. " What would you like ?" 
 
 " I ?" the guest responded ; " oh, anything 
 whatever you want some roast beef." 
 
 "Then your taste has changed since you left 
 college," White declared. "I asked you what 
 you would like" 
 
 11 What Pd like ?" echoed Johnny. " Do you 
 mean it ? Honest ?" 
 
160 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 White smiled as the old college phrase dropped 
 again from the lips of his classmate. 
 
 " Of course I mean it," he said ; " honest. 
 There s the bill of fare. Order what you please. 
 And remember that it is Thanksgiving, and that 
 Pm hungry, and that I want a good dinner." 
 
 "Very well, then," said Johnny, as he took the 
 bill of fare. He was already warmer, and now 
 he seemed to expand a little with the unwonted 
 luxury of the occasion. 
 
 He looked over the bill of fare carefully. 
 
 "Blue Points on the half-shell, of course," he 
 began, adding to the waiter, " be sure that they 
 are on the deep shell. Green turtle soup the 
 green turtle here used to be very good fifteen 
 years ago. Filet de sole, d la Mornay the sole is 
 flounder, I suppose, but d la Mornay a man could 
 eat a Hebrew manuscript. Then a canvas-back 
 apiece two canvas -back, you understand, real 
 canvas-back, not red-head or mallard with samp, 
 of course, and a mayonnaise of celery. Then a 
 bit of Chedder cheese and a cup of coffee. How 
 will that suit you, White ?" 
 
 "That will suit me," White responded. "And 
 now what wine ?" 
 
 " Wine, too ?" Johnny queried. 
 
 White smiled and nodded. 
 
 "Well, Pll go you," the guest went on. "I 
 might as well see the thing through, if you are 
 bound to do it in style." He turned over the bill 
 of fare and scanned the wine list on the under 
 
" WHITE SECURED A SMALL TABLE NEAR THE CORNER ! 
 
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 161 
 
 side. "Yquem 74 with the oysters; and they 
 tell me there is a Silver Seal Special 84 brut that 
 is better than anything one has tasted before. 
 Give us a quart of that with the duck. And let 
 us have it as soon as you can." 
 
 He handed the bill of fare to the waiter, and 
 then, for the first time, he ventured to glance 
 about the room. 
 
 The oysters were brought very soon, and when 
 Johnny had eaten them and part of a roll, and 
 when he had drunk two glasses of the Yquem, 
 White said to him : " Tell me something about 
 yourself. What have you been doing all these 
 years ?" 
 
 Johnny s face fell a little. " I ve done pretty 
 nearly everything," he answered, " from driving 
 a Fifth Avenue stage to keeping books for a 
 Third Avenue pawnbroker. I ve been a waiter at 
 a Coney Island chowder saloon. Two summers 
 ago I waited on the man who has just taken our 
 order I waited on him more than once. I ve 
 dealt faro, too." 
 
 The waiter brought the soup and served them. 
 
 When he left them alone again, White asked : 
 " Can t some of your old friends help you out of 
 this give you a start and set you up again ?" 
 
 "It s no good trying," Johnny replied. "You 
 can t pull me up now. It s too late. I guess it 
 was too late from the start." 
 
 " Why don t you drop this place ?" White que 
 ried, "and go out West, and" 
 
162 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 "What s the use of talking about that?" John 
 ny interrupted. "I can t live away from New 
 York. If I got out of sight of that tower over 
 there I d die." 
 
 "You will die here soon enough at this rate," 
 White answered. 
 
 " That s so, too," admitted Johnny ; " but it 
 can t be helped now." He was eating steadily, 
 sturdily, but not ravenously. 
 
 After the waiter had served the fish, White 
 asked again, "What can we do for you ?" 
 
 "Nothing," Johnny answered "nothing at all. 
 Yes, you can give me a five, if you like, or a ten ; 
 but don t give me your address, or the first time 
 I m down again I d look you up and strike you 
 for ten more." 
 
 A band of undergraduates, twenty of them or 
 more, four abreast, arm in arm, went tramping 
 down Broadway, yelling forth the chorus of a col 
 lege song. 
 
 " You used to sing that song, Johnny," said 
 White. 
 
 "I used to do lots of things," he answered, as 
 the waiter opened the champagne. 
 
 "I never heard anybody get as much out of 
 The Son of a Gamboleer as you did," White 
 continued. 
 
 "I joined a negro -minstrel troupe as second 
 tenor twelve years ago, but we got stranded in 
 Hartford, and I had to walk home. I ve tried to 
 do a song and dance in the Bowery dime muse- 
 
A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 163 
 
 urns since then, more than once. But it s no 
 use." 
 
 When they had made an end of the canvas- 
 backs and the brut 84, Johnny sat back in his 
 chair and smiled, and said, "Well, this was worth 
 while." 
 
 Then the coffee came, and White said, " You 
 forgot to order the liqueur, Johnny." 
 
 " You see what it is to be out of practice," he 
 replied. " I d like some orange curagoa." 
 
 "And I will take a little green mint," said 
 White to the waiter. " And bring some cigars 
 Henry Clays." 
 
 " That s right," Johnny declared. " My father 
 was always a Henry Clay man, and I suppose 
 that s why I like those cigars." 
 
 After the cigars were lighted White looked 
 his companion square in the face. "Are you 
 sure," he asked, "that we can do nothing for 
 you ?" 
 
 " Dead sure," was the answer. 
 
 "Nothing?" 
 
 "You have given me a good dinner," said John 
 ny. " That s enough. That s more than most of 
 my old friends would give me. And there s noth 
 ing more to be done." 
 
 White held his peace for the moment. 
 
 Johnny took a long sip of his coffee, and drew 
 three or four times at his cigar. " That s a first- 
 rate cigar," he said. " I haven t smoked a Henry 
 Clay for nearly two years, and then I picked up 
 
164 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 one a man had lighted, between the acts, outside 
 of Daly s." 
 
 He puffed at it again with voluptuous appreci 
 ation, and then leaned across the table to White 
 and remarked, confidentially, " Do you know, Bob, 
 most everything I ve cared for in this world has 
 been immoral, or expensive, or indigestible." 
 
 " Yes," White admitted ; " I suppose that s the 
 cause of your bad luck." 
 
 " I ve had lots of luck in my life," was the re 
 sponse, " good and bad better than I deserved, 
 most of it this dinner, for example ; I should re 
 member it even without to-morrow s dyspepsia. 
 But what s the use of anticipating evil ? I ll let 
 the next day take care of itself, and make the best 
 of this one. There are several hours of it left 
 where shall we go now ?" 
 
 (1892.) 
 
in i i m i it is! w in in @ in in @ ni e 
 
 n t/ie> 
 
 of Jbif 
 
T was late in the afternoon when John 
 Suydam turned into Twenty -third 
 Street, and he remarked the absence 
 of the gleam of color generally visi 
 ble far away to the westward beyond 
 the end of the street and across the river. There 
 was no red vista that Christmas Eve, for the sky 
 was overcast and lowering, and there was a 
 damp chill in the air, a premonition of approach 
 ing snow. It was about the edge of dusk as he 
 skirted Madison Square and saw the electric- 
 lights twinkle out suddenly up and down Fifth 
 Avenue, and in the square here and there. 
 
 The young man crossed Broadway, skilfully 
 avoiding a huge express wagon, and springing 
 lightly out of the path of a clanging cable-car. 
 He crossed Fifth Avenue, threading his way 
 through the carriages and the carts piled high 
 with paper - covered packages. The white walls 
 of the hotel on the opposite side of Twenty-third 
 Street were dingy under the leaden sky as the 
 haze of the swift twilight settled down. The 
 wind died away altogether, and yet the atmos 
 phere was raw and dank. Suydam bought an 
 evening paper from the crippled newsboy who sat 
 
168 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 in his rolling-chair, warmly wrapped against the 
 weather, and seemingly cheerful and contented 
 with his takings. 
 
 A few steps farther the young man passed an 
 old French sailor standing on the curb-stone, and 
 using his single hand to wind the machinery of a 
 glazed box, wherein a ship was to be seen tossing 
 on the regular waves while a train of cars kept 
 crossing a bridge which spanned an estuary. 
 Almost under the sailor s feet there was an old 
 woman huddled in a dirty heap over a tiny hand- 
 organ, from which she was slowly grinding a 
 doubtful and dolorous tune. By her side, but a 
 little beyond, two boys were offering for sale 
 green wreaths and stars and ropes of greenery, 
 to be used in festooning. Close to the broad 
 windows of a dry-goods store, whence a yellow 
 light streamed forth, a tall, thin man had a board 
 on a trestle, and on this portable table he was 
 showing off the antics of a toy clown who tum 
 bled artlessly down a steep flight of steps. The 
 people who hurried past, with parcels under their 
 arms, rarely stopped to look at the ship tossing on 
 the waves, or to listen to the hesitating tune of 
 the wheezy organ, or to buy a bit of green or- a 
 performing clown. Yet the open-air bazaar, as it 
 might plainly be called, the out-door fair, extended 
 all the way along the street, and on both edges of 
 the sidewalk the fakirs were trying to gather in 
 their scanty Christmas harvest. 
 
 Before John Suydam came to the corner of 
 
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 169 
 
 Sixth Avenue the snow began at last to fall ; the 
 first flakes descended hesitatingly, scurried by a 
 brief wind that sprang up for a minute or two, 
 and then died away absolutely. After a while 
 the snow thickened and fell faster, sifting down 
 softly and silently, but filling the air under the 
 electric-lights which were clustered at the corner, 
 and reddening under the glare of the engines on. 
 the elevated railroad overhead, as the cars rushed 
 along girt with swirling clouds of steam. The 
 snow clustered upon the boughs of the unsold 
 Christmas-trees which stood irregularly along the 
 sidewalk before a florist s a few doors down Sixth 
 Avenue, and by the time Suydam had turned the 
 corner, they looked like the shrouded ghosts of 
 balsam pines. 
 
 All along the avenue he had to make his way 
 through the same crowds of belated Christinas 
 shoppers, hurrying in and out of the overgrown 
 stores, availing themselves of their last chance to 
 buy gifts for the morrow ; but as he advanced, 
 the throng thinned a little, driven home perhaps 
 by the snow-storm. Yet though the purchasers 
 were fewer, the peddlers persisted. Suydam 
 noted one old man, bent and shrivelled, and with 
 a long gray beard, who had a tray before him 
 hung on a strap over his shoulders, and on the 
 narrow board were plaster figures of Santa Claus 
 carrying aloft a branching Christmas-tree be 
 sprinkled with glittering crystalline flakes. Under 
 (lie hood of the staircase of the station of the 
 
170 VIGNETTES OP MANHATTAN 
 
 elevated railroad he saw a little blind woman 
 wrapped in a scant shawl, silently proffering half 
 a dozen lead-pencils. And high over the centre 
 of the roadway the snow -clad trains thundered 
 up and down, with white plumes of steam trailing 
 from the engines. 
 
 As Suydam neared Fourteenth Street he found 
 the crowds compacting again ; and at the corner 
 there was a chaos of carriages, carts, and street 
 cars. The flights of stairs leading to the elevated 
 railroad station were packed with people bearing 
 bundles and boxes, most of them, ascending and 
 descending with difficulty, jostling one another 
 good-naturedly. Long lines of children of all 
 ages spread along the wide plate - glass windows 
 at the corner of one huge store, gazing wonder- 
 ingly at a caravan of toy animals in gorgeous 
 trappings, with chariots and palanquins, which 
 kept circling around in front of painted palm- 
 trees and gayly-decorated tents. The snow was 
 now falling fast, but still the young ones looked 
 admiringly and waited willingly, though their 
 hats were whitened, and though the soft flakes 
 melted on their capes and on their coats. 
 
 The mass of humanity clustering about these 
 windows forced Suydam almost to the edge of the 
 sidewalk ; but this was the last crowd he had to 
 make his way through. Lower down there were 
 no solid groups, although the avenue was still 
 thronged. He was able to quicken his pace. So 
 he sped along, passing the butchers , where car- 
 
IX THE MIDST OF LIFE 171 
 
 casses of sheep and of beeves hung in line gar 
 landed with ropes of evergreen ; passing the gro 
 cers , where the shelves were battlemented with 
 cans of food ; passing the bakers , where bread 
 and cakes, pies and crullers, were displayed in 
 trays and in baskets. He glanced into the yellow 
 windows of candy-stores, and saw the parti-colored 
 sweetmeats temptingly spread out. He caught 
 a glimpse of more than one dealer in delicatessen 
 whose display of silver-clad sausage and heavy 
 pasty and wicker-work flask was enough to stim 
 ulate the appetite of a jaded epicure. He saw 
 the signs of a time of plenty, but no one knew 
 better than John Suydam that just then there 
 was truly a season of want. 
 
 Night had fallen before he reached the court 
 house, with its high roof and its lofty turret, be 
 fore he came to the market, with its yawning 
 baskets of vegetables and its long rows of pen 
 dent turkeys beneath the flaring jets of gas. He 
 crossed the avenue and turned into a small street 
 not here at right angles to the thoroughfare, as 
 are the most of the side streets of New York. At 
 last he stopped before a little house, an old two- 
 story building, worn with long use, and yet digni 
 fied in its decay. The tiny dwelling had a Dutch 
 roof, with two dormer-windows ; and it had been 
 built when the Dutch traditions of New Amster 
 dam were stronger than they are to-day. 
 
 The young man mounted the high stoop, on 
 which the snow was now nearly half an inch 
 
172 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 thick. He rang the bell twice with a measured 
 interval between. The flying step of a girl was 
 heard, and then the door was thrown open, and 
 Suydam disappeared within the little old house. 
 
 As the d oor closed, the young man took the 
 young woman in his arms and kissed her. 
 
 " Oh, John," she said, "it is so good of you to 
 come on Christmas Eve. How did you manage to 
 get away ?" 
 
 " I ve only two hours," he answered, " and I 
 had to get something to eat, so I thought that 
 perhaps you " 
 
 " Of course we can," the girl interrupted. " And 
 mother will be delighted. She has made one of 
 her old-fashioned chicken pies, and it s ever so 
 much too much for us two. It will be ready 
 at six." 
 
 " Then I know where I m going to get my din 
 ner," her lover returned, as he followed her into 
 the little parlor. " But I shall have to go back 
 as soon as Pve had it. I ve told them that I think 
 the office ought to be kept open till midnight, and 
 I said I d stay. It would be a sorrowful thing, 
 wouldn t it, if any one who wants help couldn t 
 get it on Christmas Eve ?" 
 
 "And there must be many who w r ant help this 
 hard winter," said the girl. "I went as far as 
 Broadway this afternoon, on an errand for moth 
 er, and I passed six beggars " 
 
 " Oh, beggars " he began. 
 
 " Yes, I know," she interrupted again. "I did 
 
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 173 
 
 not give them anything, though it seemed so cruel 
 not to. I knew what you thought about indis 
 criminate charity, and so I steeled my heart. And 
 I suffered for it, too. I know I should have felt 
 happier if I had given something to one or two 
 of them." 
 
 " I suppose you did deprive yourself of the virt 
 uous glow of self-satisfaction," Suydam admit 
 ted. " But that virtuous glow is too cheap to 
 be valuable. If we want to help our neighbor 
 really, we must practise self-sacrifice, and not pur 
 chase an inexpensive self -gratification at the cost 
 of his self-respect." 
 
 " I should feel as though I wasn t spending 
 Christmas if I didn t give away something," she 
 protested. 
 
 " Exactly," he returned. "You haven t yet 
 freed yourself from the pestilent influence of 
 Dickens, though you have much more sense, too, 
 than nine women out of ten. You have blindly 
 followed the belief that you ought to give for 
 your own sake, without thinking whether it was 
 best for the beggar to receive. Dickens s Christ 
 mas stories are now breeding their third genera 
 tion of paupers ; and I doubt if we can convince 
 the broad public of the absurdity of his sociology 
 in another half-century. It takes science to solve 
 problems ; hysteric emotionalism won t do it." 
 
 "You don t think all the beggars I saw to-day 
 were humbugs, do you ?" she asked. 
 
 " There isn t one chance in ten that any one of 
 
174 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 the half -dozen is really in need," he answered ; 
 " and probably five out of the six have taken to 
 begging partly out of laziness, and partly because 
 they can beg larger wages than they can earn 
 honestly." 
 
 " But there was one old man ; he must have 
 been forty, at least," urged the girl, " who was 
 positively starving. Why, just as I turned out 
 of Broadway, I saw him spring down to the gut 
 ter and pick up a crust of bread and begin to eat 
 it greedily. I felt in my pocket for my purse, of 
 course, but a gentleman had seen it, too, and he 
 went up to the man and talked to him and gave 
 him a five-dollar bill. Now, there was a real case 
 of distress, wasn t it ?" 
 
 Suydam smiled, sadly. " The starving man was 
 about forty, you say ? Tall and thin, wasn t he, 
 with a thin, pointed beard, and a mark on his right 
 cheek ?" 
 
 The girl looked at him in wonder. " Why, how 
 did you know?" she cried. 
 
 " That s Scar-faced Charley," he answered. 
 
 "And is he a humbug, too?" she asked. 
 
 "I followed him for two hours one afternoon 
 last week," he explained, " and I saw him pick 
 up that bit of bread and pretend to eat it at least 
 twenty times. When I had him arrested he had 
 more than ten dollars in his pockets." 
 
 "Well," the young woman declared, "I shall 
 never believe in anybody again." 
 
 "But I don t see how it is Scar-faced Charley 
 
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 175 
 
 is out to-day," Suydam wont on. " We had him 
 sent up for a month only, for the judge was easy 
 with him. If he s out again so soon, I suppose 
 he must have a pull of some sort. Those fellows 
 often have more influence than you would think." 
 
 " He took me in completely," the girl admitted. 
 " If Scar-faced Charley, as you call him, can act 
 so well, why doesn t he go on the stage and earn 
 an honest living ?" 
 
 " That s the first thing that astonished me when 
 I went to live in the University Settlement last 
 spring, and began to study out these things for 
 myself. I found beggars who were fond of their 
 profession, and who prided themselves on their 
 skill. What are you to do with them ? And if you 
 let them ply their trade, how are you going to dis 
 tinguish them from those who are really in need ?" 
 
 " It is all very puzzling to me," the girl con 
 fessed. " Since I ve heard you talk, charity 
 doesn t seem half as simple as it used to." 
 
 " No," said Suydam, " it isn t simple. In fact, 
 it is about as complicated and complex a problem 
 as the twentieth century will have to solve. But 
 I m coming to one conclusion fast, and that is 
 that the way to tell those who need help from 
 those who don t need it is, that the latter ask for 
 it, and the former won t. New York is rich and 
 generous, and there s never any difficulty about 
 getting money enough to relieve every case of 
 distress in the city limits none whatever. The 
 real difficulty is in getting the money to the peo- 
 
176 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 pie who really need it, and in keeping it from the 
 people who ought not to have it. You see that 
 those who ask for assistance don t deserve it not 
 once in fifty times ; and those who deserve it 
 won t ask for it. There are men and women 
 women especially who will starve before they 
 will face the pity of their fellows. Every day I 
 hear of cases of suffering borne silently, and dis 
 covered only by accident." 
 
 " I ve been wondering for a week if we haven t 
 one of those cases in this house now," said the girl. 
 
 "In this house?" the young man repeated. 
 
 "I ve been meaning to tell you all about it 
 every day," she went on, " but I ve seen so little 
 of you, and when you do come we have so many 
 things to talk about, you know." 
 
 "I know," Suydam repeated. He was seated by 
 her side on the sofa, and his arm was around her 
 waist. He drew her closer to him and kissed her. 
 " Now tell me about your case of distress," he said. 
 
 " Well," the girl began, " this house is too big 
 for mother and me alone, so we let one room on 
 the top floor to two old ladies. They have been 
 here since before Thanksgiving. They are for 
 eigners Cubans, I think. The mother must be 
 seventy, and I can see she has been very hand 
 some. The daughter is nearly fifty, I m sure ; 
 and a more devoted daughter you never saw. She 
 waits on her mother hand and foot. They didn t 
 bring any baggage to speak of no trunk, only 
 just a little bag and we saw at once that they 
 
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 177 
 
 were very, very poor. They paid two weeks 
 rent in advance, and since then they ve paid two 
 weeks more. A fortnight ago the daughter told 
 mother that they would be obliged if she would 
 let them defer paying the rent for a little while, 
 as a letter they were expecting had not come. 
 And I suppose that was so, for the postman never 
 whistled but the daughter came running down 
 stairs to see if there wasn t something for them. 
 But it hasn t come yet, and I don t believe they ve 
 got enough money to get things to eat, hardly. 
 The daughter used to go out every morning, and 
 come back with a tiny little parcel. You see, 
 there s a gas-stove in their room, and they do 
 their own cooking. But she hasn t been out of 
 the house for two days, and we haven t seen either 
 of them since the day before yesterday, when the 
 daughter came to the head of the stairs and asked 
 if there was a letter for her mother. We can 
 hear them moving about overhead gently,, but we 
 haven t seen them. And now we don t really know 
 what to do. I m so glad you ve come, for I told 
 mother I was going to ask you about them." 
 
 " Do you think they have no money ?" Suydam 
 asked. 
 
 " I m afraid it s all gone," she answered. " And 
 they have no friends at all so far as we know." 
 
 " You say they are Cubans ?" 
 
 " I think they are. Their name is De los Rios 
 Senora de los Rios, I heard the daughter call her 
 
 mother when she asked the postman about a letter." 
 12 
 
178 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 " If it wasn t so late," said the young man, look 
 ing at his watch, " I would go to the Spanish Con 
 sulate. But it s nearly six now, and the consulate 
 is certain to be closed. If there is any reason to 
 think that they are actually suffering for want of 
 food, can t you find some feminine reason for in 
 truding on them." 
 
 " I m afraid we can t," she answered. " We 
 did try yesterday morning. When we found that 
 the daughter didn t go out for something to cook, 
 we misdoubted they might be hungry, and so we 
 talked it over and over, and did our best to hit on 
 some way of helping them. At last mother had 
 an idea, and she made a sort of Spanish stew 
 what they call an olla podrida, you know. She 
 got the receipt out of the cook-book, and she took 
 it up and knocked at the door. They asked who 
 it was, and they didn t open the door but a little. 
 Mother told the daughter that she had been try 
 ing to make a Spanish dish, and she didn t know 
 as she d got it right, and so she d come up to ask 
 them as a favor if they wouldn t taste it, and tell 
 her if it was all right. You see that was mother s 
 idea. She thought she might get them to eat it 
 that way, and save their pride. But it wouldn t 
 do. The daughter said that she was sorry, but she 
 couldn t taste it then, she couldn t, nor her mother 
 either. They had no appetite then, and so they 
 couldn t judge of the olla podrida. She said they 
 had just been cooking some chops and steaks." 
 
 "Chops and steaks?" echoed Suydam. 
 
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 179 
 
 "That s what she said," the girl continued. 
 " But of course that was only her excuse for refus 
 ing. That was her way of impressing on mother 
 that they didn t need anything. So mother had 
 to give it up, and bring the stew down -stairs 
 again. Mother doesn t feel so badly about them, 
 however, because they had been cooking some 
 thing yesterday. She smelt fish yesterday was 
 Friday, you know." 
 
 " I know," repeated the young man ; " but still 
 I-" 
 
 Just then the shrill whistle of the postman was 
 heard, and a sharp ring at the bell. 
 
 The girl jumped up, and went to the door. As 
 she opened it there came in the faint melody of 
 distant sleigh-bells, and the roar of the street al 
 ready muffled by the snow. 
 
 She returned to the parlor with a long blue 
 envelope in her hand. 
 
 " Here is the letter at last," she said. 
 
 "What letter?" asked Suydam. 
 
 " The letter the old ladies are waiting for," she 
 answered, handing it to him. 
 
 He held it up nearer the single gas-jet of the 
 parlor and read the address aloud, " Marquisa de 
 los Rios, and it s registered." 
 
 " Yes," the girl returned, " and the postman is 
 waiting to have the receipt signed. He said he 
 guessed it was money or a Christmas present of 
 some sort, since it had so many seals on it. I 
 wanted you to know about it ; but I ll take it 
 right up now." 
 
180 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN 
 
 She tripped lightly up-stairs, and John Suydam 
 heard her knocking at the door of the room the 
 two old ladies occupied. After an interval she 
 rapped again, apparently without response. Then 
 he heard her try the door gently. 
 
 Two seconds later her voice rang out in a cry 
 of alarm : "Mother ! mother ! Oh, John !" 
 
 Suydam sprang up-stairs, and found her just 
 outside of the door of the old ladies room. She 
 was trembling, and she gripped his hand. 
 
 " Oh, John," she said, " something terrible has 
 happened ! It was even worse than I thought ! 
 They really were starving !" 
 
 Then she led him silently into the room, where 
 her mother joined them almost immediately. 
 
 After waiting five minutes the postman at the 
 front door below became impatient. He rang the 
 bell sharply and whistled again. He was kicking 
 the snow off his boots and swinging his arms to 
 keep warm, when at last the door opened and 
 John Suydam appeared, with the long blue en 
 velope in his hand. 
 
 " I m afraid that you will have to take this let 
 ter away again," Suydam said to the postman. 
 "There is no one here now to sign for it. The 
 Marquisa de los Rios is dead !" 
 
 THE END 
 
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