Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 16

"I don't sign my own name yet," continued Miss Peters; "I use a pen-name. So perhaps you have read something of mine without knowing it."

"Perhaps I have, my child," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I shall be on the lookout for you now. It must be delightful to be able to put your thoughts down in black and white, and send them forth to help make the world brighter and better."

Little Miss Peters laughed again, disclosing a fascinating dimple.

"I don't believe I shall ever write anything that will make the world better," she said; "and if I did, I don't believe the editor would take it. I don't think that is just what editors are after nowadays--do you?

They're on the lookout for stuff that'll sell the paper."

"Sad stuff it is, too, most of it," the old maid declared. "When I was a girl the newspapers were violent enough, and the editors abused each other like pickpockets, and sometimes they called each other out, and sometimes somebody else horsewhipped them. But the papers then weren't as silly and as cheap and as trivial as the papers are now. It seems as though the editors to-day had a profound contempt for their readers, and thought anything was good enough for them. Why, I had a letter from a newspaper last week--a printed form it was, too--stating that they were 'desirous of obtaining full and correct information on Society Matters, and would appreciate the kindness if Miss Marlenspuyk would forward to the Society Editor any information regarding entertainments she may purpose giving during the coming winter, and the Society Editor will also be happy to arrange for a full report when desired.' Was there ever such impudence? To ask me to describe my own dinners, and to give a list of my guests! As though any lady would do a thing like that!"

"There are ladies who do," ventured Miss Peters.

"Then they are not what you and I would call ladies, my child," returned Miss Marlenspuyk.

The face of the Southern girl flushed suddenly, and she bit her lip in embarra.s.sment. Then she mustered up courage to ask, "I suppose you do not read the _Daily Dial_, Miss Marlenspuyk?"

"I tried it for a fortnight once," the old maid answered. "They told me it had the most news, and all that. But I had to give it up. n.o.body that I knew ever died in the _Dial_. My friends all died in the _Gotham Gazette_."

"The _Gazette_ has a larger family circulation," admitted the younger woman.

"Besides," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "I could not stand the vulgarity of the _Dial_. I'm an old woman now, and I've seen a great deal of the world, but the _Dial_ was too much for me. It seemed to be written down to the taste of the half-naked inhabitants of an African kraal."

"Oh," protested the other, "do you really think it is as bad as that?"

"Indeed I do," the old maid affirmed. "It's worse than that, because the poor negroes wouldn't know better. And what was most offensive, perhaps, in the _Dial_ was the unwholesome knowingness of it."

"I see what you mean," said Miss Peters, and again the color rose in her cheeks.

"There was that Lightfoot divorce case," Miss Marlenspuyk went on. "The way the _Dial_ dwelt on that was unspeakable. I'm willing to allow that Mrs. Lightfoot was not exactly a nice person; I'll admit that she may have been divorced more times than she had been married--"

"That's admitting a good deal!" said the young woman, as the elder paused.

"But it is going altogether too far to say that, like Cleopatra, she had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat--isn't it?"

Miss Peters made no response. Her eyes were fixed on the carpet, and her face was redder than ever.

"Of course it isn't likely you saw the article I mean," the old maid continued.

"Yes," the younger responded, "I saw it."

"I'm sorry for that," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I may be old-fas.h.i.+oned--I suppose I must be at my age--but I don't think that is the kind of thing a nice girl like you should read."

Again Miss Peters made no response.

"I happen to remember that phrase," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "because the article was signed 'Polly Perkins.' Very likely it was a man who wrote it, after all, but it may have been a woman. And if it was I felt ashamed for her as I read it. How could one woman write of another in that way?"

"Perhaps the writer was very poor," pleaded Miss Peters.

"That would not be a good reason, and it is a bad excuse," the old maid declared. "Of course I don't know what I should do if I were desperately poor--one never knows. But I think I'd live on cold water and a dry crust sooner than earn my bread and b.u.t.ter that way--wouldn't you?"

Miss Peters did not answer this direct question. For a moment she said nothing. Then she raised her head, and there was a hint of high resolve in the emphasis with which she said, "It is a mean way to make a living."

Before Miss Marlenspuyk could continue the conversation she was greeted by two ladies who had just arrived. Miss Peters drew back and stood by herself in a corner for a few minutes as the throng in front of her thickened. She was gazing straight before her, but she was not conscious of the people who encompa.s.sed her about. Then she aroused herself, and went into the dining-room and had a cup of tea and a thin slice of b.u.t.tered bread, rolled up and tied with a tiny ribbon. And perhaps fifteen minutes later she found herself in front of the hostess.

She told the hostess that she had had such a very good time, that she didn't know when she had met such very agreeable people, and that she was specially delighted with an old friend of her grandfather's, Miss Marlenspuyk. "Such a very delightful old maid, with none of the flavor of desiccated spinsterhood. She does her own thinking, too. She gave me some of her ideas about modern journalism."

"She is a brilliant conversationalist," said the hostess. "You might have interviewed her."

"Oh, she talked freely enough," Miss Peters responded. "But I could never write her up properly. Besides, I'm thinking of giving up newspaper wo'k."

Three ladies here came towards the hostess, who stepped forward with extended hand, saying, "So good of you to come on such a nasty day."

Miss Peters availed herself of the opportunity, and made her escape.

It might be half an hour afterwards when Miss Marlenspuyk, having had her cup of tea and her roll of bread-and-b.u.t.ter, returned to the front parlor in time to overhear a bashful young man take leave of the hostess, and wish the hostess's daughter "many happy returns of the day."

As it happened, there was a momentary stagnation of the flood of guests when Miss Marlenspuyk went up to say farewell, and she had a chance to congratulate the daughter of the house on the success of her coming-out tea.

"Then I must tell you, Miss Marlenspuyk," said the hostess, "that you completely fascinated little Miss Peters."

"She's a pretty little thing," the old maid returned, "with excellent manners. That comes with the blood, I suppose; she told me she was a granddaughter of the Bishop, you know. She isn't like so many of the girls here, who take what manners they have out of a book. They get them up overnight, but she was born with them. And she has the final sign of breeding, which is so rare nowadays--she listens when her elders are talking."

"Yes," the hostess replied, "Pauline Peters has pleasant manners, for all she is working on a newspaper now."

"On a newspaper?" repeated Miss Marlenspuyk. "She told me she was writing for her living, but she didn't say she was on a newspaper."

"She said something about giving it up as she went out," the hostess remarked; "but I shouldn't think she would, for she has been doing very well. Some of her articles have made quite a hit. You know she is the 'Polly Perkins' of the _Daily Dial_?"

"No," said Miss Marlenspuyk--"no, I didn't know that."

A LETTER OF FAREWELL

There had been a hesitating fall of snow in the morning, but before noon it had turned to a mild and fitful rain that had finally modified itself into a clinging mist as evening drew near. The heavy snow-storm of the last week in January had left the streets high on both sides with banks that thawed swiftly whenever the sun came out again, the water running from them into the broad gutters, and then freezing hard at night, when the cold wind swept across the city. Now, at nightfall, after a muggy day, a sickening slush had spread itself treacherously over all the crossings. The shop-girls going home had to pick their way cautiously from corner to corner under the iron pillars supporting the station of the elevated railroad. Train followed train overhead, each close on the other's heels; and clouds of steam swirled down as the engines came to a full stop with a shrill grinding of the brakes. From the skeleton spans of the elevated road moisture dripped on the cable-cars below, as they rumbled along with their bells clanging sharply when they neared the crossings. The atmosphere was thick with a damp haze; and there was a halo about every yellow globe in the windows of the bar-rooms at the four corners of the avenue. More frequent, as the dismal day wore to an end, was the hoa.r.s.e and lugubrious tooting of the ferryboats in the East River.

Under the steps of the stairs leading up to the aerial station of the railroad overhead, an Italian street vender had wheeled the barrow whereon he proffered for sale bananas and apples and nuts. At one end of this stand was the cylinder in which he was roasting peanuts, and which he ground as conscientiously as though he were turning a hand-organ. A scant quarter past six o'clock it might have been, when he opened his fire-box to throw in a stick or two more of fuel and to warm his stiffened fingers in the flame. The sudden red glare, glowing through the drizzle, caught the eye of a middle-aged man who was crossing the avenue. So insecure was his footing that this momentary relaxation of his attention was sufficient cause for a false step. His feet slipped from under him and he fell flat on his back, striking just below the right shoulder-blade upon a compact ma.s.s of snow, hardened by the chilly breeze, and yet softer than the stone pavement.

The concussion knocked the breath out of him; and he lay there for a minute almost, gasping again and again, wholly unable to raise himself.

As he struggled to get to his feet and to refill his lungs with air, he heard a shop-girl cry, "Oh, Liz, did you see him fall? Wasn't it awful?" And then he heard her companion respond, "I say, Mame, you ask him if he's hurt bad." Then two men stepped from the sidewalk and lifted him to his feet, while a boy picked up his hat and handed it to him.

"That's all right," said one of the men; "there ain't no bones broke, is there?"

The man who had fallen was getting his breath back slowly. "No," he panted, "there's nothing broke"--and he cautiously moved his limbs to make sure.

"Ye've knocked the wind out of ye," the other man returned, "but ye'll get it again in a jiffy. Come into Pat M'Cann's here and have a drink; that'll put the life into ye again."