Kitabı oku: «Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern», sayfa 10

BOSTON AND NEW YORK. – THE DIFFERENCE

TO live in Boston is to feel necessitated to wear your "Sunday clothes" all through the week. To live in New York is to wear a loose wrapper every day in the seven if you choose, without danger of being sent to Coventry for so doing; not because Gotham admires your wrapper, but because it has not time or inclination to overhaul so minute a circumstance. In New York, you may wash your one pair of stockings every night; or you may have seven changes of the same for all New York will care about it. In Boston the pedigree of your stockings, shawls, and bonnets is, by no contrivance of ingenuity, hidden. In New York, good Christians can take a walk on Sunday, if it does not lead straight to the church door. In Boston, one perils his salvation, and business standing, by taking a breath of air that has not first blown round a pulpit. In Boston, a rich man or woman must, in public places, keep within the talismanic circle marked out for them, nor cross the line of demarkation at peril of non-recognition. In New York a rich man or woman, by virtue of such position, feels at liberty to take any loafer-ish jump over the customary fence that inclination shall dictate. In Boston, the literary knee is not literary, if it has not knelt before certain shrines. In New York, if it is a genuine knee, it may kneel or not kneel, so far as perilling its safe foundation is concerned. In Boston, one who carries a parcel is supposed not to be able to hire it sent. In New York one may carry a double armful, without being suspected of living at the Five Points. In Boston, people settle your claims to notice by inquiring if you know Mr. This or visit Mrs. That. New York is more interested to know, whether you are eligible by virtue of good manners, and general jolliness, without reference to your tailor, hatter, or dressmaker. In New York, if you choose only to board two servants instead of five, and decline wasting your life in superintending their neglect of upholstery, silver, and china, your intelligence, and irreproachable grammar, are considered an equivalent. In Boston, under such circumstances, the golden gate turns not on its hinges to let you into the crystal city.

In other words, well as I love old Boston – and I do love it – I must own that it is a snob of the first water. It makes a vast difference what my opinion is, of course; but for all that, when Boston stays all its life in Boston, it becomes fossilized, mummy-ized, swathed round and round, from neck to heel, so that growth and expansion are morally impossible.

Still, let Boston always be born in Boston; but after it grows vigorous, if it would stay vigorous, and not get the cramp of self-conceit till it can't turn its "Boston neck," no matter how loudly the wheel of progress is dashing past, let it migrate betimes to New York; where it will get wholesomely thumped and bumped, and its conservative corns pounced upon by the rushing crowd; who will knock its respectable shiny hat over its eyes fifty times a day, all the same as though it was not one of the "highly respectable citizens," the state of whose kitchen-chimney is gravely reported to a gaping universe, in their daily papers.

I don't know what would become of New York had it not its Paradise in the Central Park. I never go there without blessing its originator, and wishing it might be baptized with a more suggestive and prettier name. But never mind names. In its lovely October dress, with its sparkling lake, and drooping willows, its white swans, its lovely velvet greensward; the myriads of sweet children alighting here and there, in their bits of gay dresses, like little humming birds or orioles, with happy mothers and fathers who have left their cares and frets in the city, and come there to be young again for too brief an hour, with the little ones; all this is a picture to feast the eye and gladden the heart. In one respect Central Park might borrow a hint from Boston Common. There the little children are allowed to run upon the grass at all times; not on certain days of the month or week as in Central Park. Said a bright little child of six the other day, when asked if it would like to go to Central Park: "No! (emphatically) no! I don't want to waste my time going where they won't let me step on the grass."

I sometimes wish that the policeman on duty there – so Argus-eyed to arrest the tiny shoe, when temptation is too strong for childhood which has always been cooped within city limits – would bestow some of their notice upon the men-loafers who stretch themselves at full length upon benches, occupying them to the exclusion of the children; puffing vile tobacco, and making a spittoon of the path through which ladies pass. It strikes me there might be an improvement on the strain-at-a-gnat and swallow-a-camel system now in vogue there.

To return to Boston, which I always like to do occasionally: that city needs not our Central Park drives, with its lovely and easily accessible environs.

Here in New York one does not get to the environs until it is time to come home; what with clogged streets and ferry-boats, and Babel-hindrances too numerous to mention, such as scratched sides of the pet carriage, and often-recurring "locked wheels," the fright of prostrate horses, and the music of profanity, from the lips of hurried and irate drivers of teams, and drays, in every direction. All this is death to the repose one seeks in "a drive." Therefore we New Yorkers love our quiet accessible Central Park. May its boundaries be limitless as our tax bills! I couldn't say more. But my first love – that dear old gem of a Boston Common! How happy were the Saturday and Wednesday afternoons, when, under the blessed old school system, before children were forced with grammar and geography, like hot-house plants, – and we had short forenoon and afternoon sessions, with the exception of the above-mentioned holidays; how happy were the afternoons I spent there, picking buttercups, and blowing off thistledown, "to see if mothers wanted us at home;" which by the way, was sure to be answered in the negative. And as to the Frog-Pond – what was the Atlantic Ocean to that? On the Atlantic Ocean, they had dreadful ship-wrecks; on the Boston Frog-Pond, we sent out our tiny ventures, sure to find safe arrivals when we ran round the other side of the Pond. And the big Tree – hooped all round like a modern belle – with what big eyes of wonder we looked up into its branches, as our elders told us wonderful stories of what it had seen in its long, eventful life. And now there are many big trees where little ones used to stand. Bless me! it shows how old I must be; just as it does to go back there and meet in the street some radiant fresh young girl, "the very image of her mother," with whom I used to play buttercups, on Saturday afternoons. There are the same bright eyes, and lovely hair, and smiling lips – bless me, how old I really must be! and why don't I walk with a stick?

And then I laugh as I look up at Boston State-House and its awe-inspiring dome of our childhood; and recall the "members of the Legislature," crawling up and down stairs and galleries like great black ants; and think of the terrific "Inquisition" – doings which we used to be sure must be going on, inside those wonderful halls, and to which Blue-Beard's locked apartment was nothing. Oh, it is all very funny now, when I go there; and though I sit on a seat in the Common, and try to conjure all the myriad hours, and days, and years, between then and now, and try to feel like the second Methusaleh I am, I declare to you I never can do it, – but, instead, catch myself trotting off home under the trees, as briskly as a squirrel. I suppose, some day, I shall be dead though, for all that.

ABOUT SOME THINGS IN NEW YORK WHICH HAVE INTERESTED ME

THE Battery was my first New York love. I shall never forget how completely it took possession of me, or how magnetically it drew me under the shade of its fine trees, to breathe the fresh sea-breeze, and watch the graceful ships come and go, or lie calmly at anchor, with every line so clearly defined against the bright sky. It was not "the fashion," even then, to go there; so much the better. It is still less the fashion now; but there I found myself, one bright Sunday not long since, as I left the leafy loveliness of Trinity church, with its sweet choral music still sounding in my ears.

Alas! for my dear old Battery. The sea is still there, to be sure – no "corporation" can meddle with that; and still the picturesque ships come and go; but the blades of grass grow fewer and thinner, and the dirty, dusty paths call aloud for a "vigilance committee." What a sin and shame! I exclaimed, that this loveliest spot in New York should present so forlorn an appearance. Is there not room enough in the purses and affections of New Yorkers for the Central Park and the Battery too? In good truth, when I reflect upon it, I am jealous of this new aspirant for the public favor. What is a horse to a ship? sacrilege though it be to say so. What is the gaudy, over-dressed equestrian "swell" of fine ladies and fine "Afghans" to the majestic swell of the sea? What are the stylish equipages and liveries, to the picturesque crowd of newly-arrived emigrants, with their funny little, odd-looking babies, their square, sturdy forms and bronze faces, chattering happy greetings in an unknown tongue, and gazing about them bewildered, at the strange sights and sounds of a great new city; or sauntering up to Trinity church, and in happy ignorance of novel steeples and creeds, dropping on their catholic knees in its aisles, in thankful, devout recognition of their safe arrival in a new country. What is the pretty toy-lake, and the hearse-like "gondola," and "the swans," and the posies, and the "bronze-eagle," and the blue-coated policemen, who stand ready to handle rogues with gloves, and white ones at that, to my dear old Battery, battered as it is.

I call capricious, fickle New York to order, for thus forsaking the old love for the new. I demand an instant settlement of any protracted dispute there may be on hand, as to "whose business it is" to renovate the Battery, before it quite runs to seed, like the City Hall Park. Not that I won't keep on going to the Battery, though they should build a small-pox hospital on it; for it is not my way to forsake an old friend because he is shabby; but I should like to be a female General Butler, for one month, and put this business through in his chain-lightning executive fashion.

It is a great plague to be a woman. I think I've said that before, but it will bear repeating. Now the wharves are a great passion of mine; I like to sit on a pile of boards there, with my boots dangling over the water, and listen to the far-off "heave-ho" of the sailors in their bright specks of red shirts, and see the vessels unload, with their foreign fruits, and dream away a delicious hour, imagining the places they came from; and I like to climb up the sides of ships, and poke round generally, just where Mrs. Grundy would lay her irritating hand on my arm and exclaim – "What will people think of you?"

I am getting sick of people. I am falling in love with things. They hold their tongues and don't bother.

I like also to stroll forth in New York, just at dusk, and see the crowds hurrying homeward. The merchant, glad to turn his back at last on both profit and loss. The laboring man with his tools and his empty dinner pail. The weary working-girl, upon whose pallid face the fresh wind comes, like the soft caressing touch of her mother's fingers. The matron, with her little boy by the hand, talking lovingly, as he skips by her side. The young man, full of hope for the future, looking, with his eagle eye, and fresh-tinted cheek, as if he could defy fate. The young girl, rejoicing in her prettiness, for the power it gives her to win love and friends. The little beggar children, counting their pennies on some doorstep, to see how much supper they will buy. The small boot-blacks, who stoop less, after all, than many men whose feet they polish, singing as merrily as if they were sure of a fortune on the morrow. The bright glancing lights in the shop windows, touching up bits of scarlet, and yellow, and blue, and making common beads and buttons gleam like treasures untold. The lumbering omnibuses, crawling up and down, heavy with their human freight. The rapid whirl of gay carriages, with their owners. The little bits of conversation one catches in passing, showing the depth or shallowness of the speakers. The tones of their voices, musical or otherwise. The step, awkward or graceful, and the sway of the figure. The fading tints of the sky, and the coming out of the stars, that find it hard to get noticed among so many garish lights. The interior glimpses of homes, before caution draws the curtains. Now – some picture on the wall. Now – a maiden sitting at the piano. Now – a child, with its cunning little face pressed close against the window. Now – a loving couple, too absorbed in the old – old – but ever new romance, to think that their clasped hands may be noted by the passer by. Now – a woman for whom your heart aches; walking slowly; glancing boldly; going anywhere, poor thing! but —home. Now – oh! the contrast – a husband and wife, with locked arms, talking cheerily of their little home matters. Now – a policeman with folded arms, standing on the corner, past being astonished at anything. Now a florist's tempting window, whence comes a delicious odor of tube-roses, and heliotrope, and geranium. There is a huge, fragrant pyramid for some gay feast. There is a snowy wreath and cross, white as the still, dead, face, above which they are soon to be laid. There is a snowy coronal for a bride. There is a gay, bright-tinted bouquet for an actress. Lingering, you look, and muse, and spell out life's alphabet, by help of these sweet flowers; and now you are jostled away by a policeman, dragging a wretched, drunken woman to the station-house.

People talk of Niagara, and tell how impressive is its roar. What is the roar of a dumb thing like that to the roar of a mighty city? There, souls go down, and alas! the shuttle of life flies so swiftly that few stop to heed.

There are persons who can regard oppression and injustice without any acceleration of the pulse. There are others who never witness it, how frequent soever, without a desperate struggle against non-interference, though prudence and policy may both whisper "it's none of your business." I believe, as a general thing, that the shopkeepers of New York who employ girls and women to tend in their stores, treat them courteously; but now and then I have been witness to such brutal language to them, in the presence of customers, for that which seemed to me no offence, or at least a very trifling one, that I have longed for a man's strong right arm, summarily to settle matters with the oppressor. And when one has been the innocent cause of it, merely by entering the store to make a purchase, the obligation to see the victim safe through, seems almost imperative. The bad policy of such an exhibition of unmanliness on the part of a shopkeeper would be, one would think, sufficient to stifle the "damn you" to the blushing, tearful girl, who is powerless to escape, or to clear herself from the charge of misbehavior. When ladies "go shopping," in New York, they generally expect to enjoy themselves; though Heaven knows, they must be hard up for resources to fancy this mode of spending their time, when it can be avoided. But, be that as it may, the most vapid can scarcely fancy this sort of scene.

The most disgusting part of such an exhibition is, when the gentlemanly employer, having got through "damning" his embarrassed victim, turns, with a sweet smile and dulcet voice, to yourself, and inquires, "what else he can have the pleasure of showing you?" You are tempted to reply, "Sir, I would like you to show me that you can respect womanhood, although it may not be hedged about with fine raiment, or be able to buy civil words with a full purse." But you bite your tongue to keep it quiet, and you linger till this Nero has strolled off, and then you say to the girl, "I am so sorry to have been the innocent cause of this!" and you ask, "Does he often speak this way to you?" and she says, quietly, as she rolls up the ribbons or replaces the boxes on the shelves, "Never in any other!" It is useless to ask her why she stays, because you know something about women's wages and women's work in the crowded city; and you know that, till she is sure of another place, it is folly for her to think of leaving this. And you think many other things as you say Good-morning to her as kindly as you know how; and you turn over this whole "woman-question" as you run the risk of being knocked down and run over in the crowded thoroughfare through which you pass; and the jostle, and hurry, and rush about you, seem to make it more hopeless as each eager face passes you, intent on its own plans, busy with its own hopes and fears – staggering perhaps under a load either of the soul or body, or both, as heavy as the poor shop-girl's, and you gasp as if the air about had suddenly become too thick to breathe. And then you reach your own door-step, and like a guilty creature, face your dressmaker, having forgotten to "match that trimming;" and you wonder if you were to sit down and write about this evil, if it would deter even one employer from such brutality to the shop-girls in his employ; not because of the brutality, perhaps, but because by such a short-sighted policy, he might often drive away from his store, ladies who would otherwise be profitable and steady customers.

There is an animal peculiar to New-York, who infests every nook and corner of it, to everybody's disgust but his own. He is a boy in years, but a man in vicious knowledge. Every woman who is unfortunate enough to be in his presence is simply a she– nothing more. He may be seen making a charmed circle of expectoration, about the seat he occupies in a ferry-boat, ferry-house, or car, while she stands half fainting with exhaustion, in hearing distance of his coarse, prurient remarks to some other little beast like himself. Pea-nuts are the staple food of this creature, the shells of which he snaps dexterously at those about him, when other means of amusement give out. When a public conveyance has reached its point of destination, this animal is the first to make an insane rush for egress, treading down young children, and tearing ladies' clothing in his triumphal march. Sometimes he stops on the way to "bung out the eye" of an offending youngster, in so tight a place for a combat that somebody's corpse seems inevitable. Terrified ladies, who would fain give him elbow room if they had it, faintly ejaculate "Oh!" as they squeeze themselves into the smallest breathable space; nor does he desist, till his adversary is punished for the crime of existing, without this brute's permission; he then emerges into the open street, settling his greasy jacket and indescribable hat, muttering oaths, and squaring off occasionally, as he looks behind him, as though he wished somebody else was "spiling for a licking."

Often this animal may be found in the city parks; where the city corporation generously furnishes about one seat to every hundred children, and selecting the shadiest and most eligible, stretches himself on it upon his stomach, while tired little children and their female attendants, wander round in vain for a resting-place. Sometimes sitting upon it, he will stretch out his leg so as to trip some unwary, happy little child in passing; or perhaps he will suddenly give a deafening shout in its ear, for the pleasure of hearing it cry; or from a pocket well stuffed with pebbles will skillfully pelt its clean clothes from a safe distance; and sometimes this animal, who smokes at ten years like a man of forty, will address a passing lady with such questions as these:

"Oh, aint you bully? Oh, give her room enough to walk! – oh, yes!" Or, "Who's your beau, Sally?" which last cognomen seems with them to constitute a safe guess.

When not otherwise occupied, this young gentleman writes offensive words on door-steps and fences with bits of chalk, which he keeps on hand for this purpose. Or, if a servant has just nicely cleaned a window, he chews gum into little balls wherewith to plaster it; or he kicks over an ash-barrel in passing upon a nicely swept side-walk; or he rings the door-bell violently, and makes a flying exit, having ascertained previously the policeman's "beat" on that district; or he climbs the box round a favorite tree, which has just begun by its grateful shade to refresh your eye and reward your care, and, stripping off the most promising bough for a switch, goes up street picking off the leaves and scattering them as he goes; or he will stand at the bottom of a high flight of steps, upon the top step of which is a lady waiting for admittance, and scream, "Oh, my – aint you got bully boots on?" He also is expert at stealing newspapers from door-steps, and vociferating bogus extras about shocking murders and fires, and "lass of life;" and flowers out in full glory in a red shirt, in a pit of a Bowery theatre of an evening.

Sometimes he diverts himself throwing stones at the windows of passing cars, and splintering the glass into the eyes of frightened ladies and children, and suddenly disappearing as if the earth had opened and swallowed him, as you wish some day it would.

What this boy will be as a man, it is not difficult to tell. He counts one at the ballot-box, remember that, when you deny cultivated, intelligent, loyal women a vote there.

If there is one sight more offensive to me in New York than another, it is that of a servant in livery. Daily my republican soul is vexed by the different varieties of this public nuisance. Sometimes he appears to me in the sacerdotal garb – a long, petticoat-y suit of solemn black, with stainless stiff white cravat. Then again he crosses my path, bedizzened in blue, with yellow facings, and top-boots. Then again he flames out like a poll-parrot, in green coat, and scarlet waistcoat. Again, his white gloves, and broad hat-band, are the only public advertisements of his servitude. Generally upon the hat of this animal is mounted the "cockade," which his parvenu master imagines is just the thing, but which in reality is in "the old country" only worn by servants of military men. Yesterday I saw a vehicle, in which was seated a gentleman, driving a fine pair of horses, and behind him, on a small seat, was his man-servant with his arms folded like a trussed turkey, and his back turned to his master. This last fact seemed to me a very funny one; but, I dare say, it is satisfactorily accounted for in some book of heraldry, unfortunately not in my library. Now, it is not for a moment to be supposed, that when but so lately the nation was struggling for its "God-given rights," that the men of America are interested in these finikin-equine-millineries. Of course not. They are to be pitied; they are undoubtedly the too compliant victims of weak wives and silly daughters. For themselves, I have no doubt they are sick at their manly hearts at these servile and badly-executed imitations of old-country flunkeyism, and blush, with an honest shame, at being obliged to parade this disgusting and ill-timed exhibition, in the same streets where our maimed soldiers are limping home, with our torn and blackened flag, which tells so well its mute, eloquent story.

Let me speak of a pleasanter topic: my visit to the newsboys. One Sunday evening I went to "The Newsboys' Lodging House, 128 Fulton Street, New York." Few people who stop these little fellows in the street to purchase a paper, ever glance at their faces, much less give a thought to their belongings, associations or condition. Oh! had you only been down there with me that evening, and looked into those hundred and fifty intelligent, eager faces, numbered their respective ages, inquired into their friendless past, given a thought to the million temptations with which their present is surrounded, spite of all the well directed efforts of Christian philanthropy, and looked forward into their possible future, your eyes would have filled, and your heart beat quicker, as you have said to yourself, Oh, yes; something must be done to save these children.

Children! for many of them are no more. Children! already battling with life, though scarce past the nursery age. Imagine your own dear boy, with the bright eyes and the broad, white forehead, whom you tuck so comfortably in his little soft bed at night, with a prayer and a kiss; whom you look at the last thing on retiring; for whom you gladly toil; whom you hedge around with virtuous, wholesome influences from the cradle; who does not yet know even the meaning of the word "evil;" who jumps into your arms as soon as he wakes in the morning, with the sweet certainty of a warm love-clasp; who has the nicest bit, at breakfast, laid on his little plate; whose little stories and questions always find eager and sympathizing ears; imagine this little fellow of seven or eight, or ten years, getting out of his bed at one or two o'clock in the morning, going out into the dark, chill, lonesome street, half-clad, hungry, alone to some newspaper office, to wait for the damp morning papers, as they are worked from the press, and seizing his bundle, hurrying, barefoot and shivering, to some newspaper stand or depot, at the farther part of the city. Imagine your little Charley doing that! Then, if that were all! If this drain on the physical immaturity of childhood were the worst of it. The devil laughs as he knows it is not. Big boys —men, even —cheat; why not he? If he can pass off bad change – surely, who has more need to make a sixpence, though it be not an honest one? What care customers if he grow up a good or a bad man, so that the newspaper comes in time to season their warm breakfast? Who will ever care for him living, or mourn for him dead? What does it matter, anyhow?

That's the way this poor friendless child reasons. I understood it all last night. All too that this noble philanthropy called "The Newsboys' Lodging House" meant. And as I looked round on those boys, I felt afraid when they were addressed, that the right thing might not be said to so peculiar an audience. For children though they were, they had seen life as men see it. Untutored, uneducated, in one sense, in others they knew as much as any adult who should address them. Sharpened by actual hard-fisted grappling with the world, let him be careful who should speak to these grown-up children of seven, and ten, and fourteen years. Thinking thus, I said, as their friend, Mr. C. L. Brace, rose to speak – pray God, he may take all this into consideration. Pray God, he may give them neither creeds nor theology; but, instead, the wide open arms of the good, pitiful, loving Saviour, whose home on earth was with the lowly and the friendless. And he did! It was a human address. The God he told them of was not out of their reach. It was every word pure gold. Bless him for it! He had them all by the hand, and the heart too. I saw that. Promptly, frankly, and with the confidence of children in the family, they answered his questions as to their views on the chapter in the Bible he read them. And if you smiled at some of their queer notions, the tear was in your eye the next minute at the blessed thought that they had friends who cared whether the immortal part of them slumbered or woke; who recognized and fanned into a flame even the smallest particle of mentality. Now and then among the crowd a head or face would attract your eye, and you would be lost in wonder to see it there! The head and face of what I call "a mother's boy." God knows if its owner had one, or, if it had, if she cared for him! And as they sang together of "The Friend that never grew weary," my heart responded, aye – aye – why should I forget that?

I hope you will go – and you and you – on some Sabbath evening, if you come to New York. They love to feel that people take an interest in them. It brightens and cheers their lives. It gives them self-respect and motive for trying to do right; and don't forget to ask the Superintendent, Mr. O Conner, to show you the nice little beds where they sleep. Do go; and if you can say a few words to them, or tell them a bright short story, so much the better. They will know you next time they sell you a newspaper; don't forget to shake hands with them then. And take your little pet boy Charley down there. Show him the little fellows who go into business in New York at seven and ten years old, and have no father or mother at night to kiss them to sleep. It will be a lesson better than any he will ever learn at school. He will find out that all boys are not born to plum-cake and sugar candy, and some of the best and smartest boys too. He will open his eyes when you tell him that without plum-cake, or candy, or a grandpa, or an aunt, or father or mother to care for them, some of the newsboys who came from that very house, to-day own farms in the West, that they earned selling newspapers, and have since come back for other newsboys to go out there and help them work on it. Tell Charley that. I think he will be ashamed to cry again because there was "not sugar enough in his milk."

People who visit a great city, and explore it with a curious eye, generally overlook the most remarkable things in it. They "do it up" in Guide-Book fashion, going the stereotyped rounds of custom-ridden predecessors. If my chain were a little longer, I would write you a book of travels that would at least have the merit of ignoring the usual finger-posts that challenge travellers. I promise you I would cross conservative lots, and climb over conservative fences, and leave the rags and tatters of custom fluttering on them, behind me, as I strode on to some unfrequented hunting-ground.