Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 13

"Well, I'll 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 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 gla.s.ses 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 p.a.w.nbroker. 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 queried, "and go out West, and--"

"What's the use of talking about that?" Johnny 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, st.u.r.dily, 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 college 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 museums 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 curacoa."

"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 Johnny. "That's enough. That's more than most of my old friends would give me. And there's nothing 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 one a man had lighted, between the acts, outside of Daly's."

He puffed at it again with voluptuous appreciation, 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 response, "good and bad--better than I deserved, most of it--this dinner, for example; I should remember it even without to-morrow's dyspepsia. But what's the use of antic.i.p.ating 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 THE MIDST OF LIFE

It was late in the afternoon when John Suydam turned into Twenty-third Street, and he remarked the absence of the gleam of color generally visible 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 approaching 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 atmosphere was raw and dank. Suydam bought an evening paper from the crippled newsboy who sat in his rolling-chair, warmly wrapped against the weather, and seemingly cheerful and contented with his takings.

A few steps farther the young man pa.s.sed an old French sailor standing on the curb-stone, and using his single hand to wind the machinery of a glazed box, wherein a s.h.i.+p 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 tumbled artlessly down a steep flight of steps. The people who hurried past, with parcels under their arms, rarely stopped to look at the s.h.i.+p 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 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 Christmas 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 besprinkled with glittering crystalline flakes. Under the hood of the staircase of the station of the 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-gla.s.s windows at the corner of one huge store, gazing wonderingly 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 ma.s.s of humanity cl.u.s.tering 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, pa.s.sing the butchers', where carca.s.ses of sheep and of beeves hung in line garlanded with ropes of evergreen; pa.s.sing the grocers', where the shelves were battlemented with cans of food; pa.s.sing 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 stimulate the appet.i.te 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, before he came to the market, with its yawning baskets of vegetables and its long rows of pendent 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 dignified 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 Amsterdam were stronger than they are to-day.

The young man mounted the high stoop, on which the snow was now nearly half an inch 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 door 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.