first, the flood of the homeward tide at six-thirty in the evening, the thousands and tens of thousands of smartly dressed shop-girls hurrying and flocking from the lighted west to the shadowy east—their bright, hopeful, almost expectant features, their vivacity and energy even at the end of the long day. i felt the contrast with the london crowd, which is so much gloomier and wearier as it throngs into our great eastern terminus of liverpool street. new york has a stronger class of girl than london. our shop-girls are london-bred, but your sadie and dulcie are the children of foreigners; they have peasant blood in them and immigrant hope. they have a zest for the life that new york can offer them after shop-hours.
the average wage of the american shop-girl is stated to be seven dollars (twenty-eight shillings) per week; the average wage in london is about ten shillings, or two and a half dollars.[1] i suppose that is another reason why our new york sisters are more cheerful.[pg 74] despite the high price of food in new york there must be a comparatively broad margin left to the american girl to do what she likes with. the cult of the poor little girl of the department store is perhaps only a cult. for there are many women in new york more exploited than she. when the shop-girl sells herself to rich men for marriage or otherwise she does so because she has been infected by the craze for finery and wealth, is energetic and vivacious, and is morally undermined. it is not because she is worn out and ill-paid. if new york is evil it is not because new york is a failure. the city is prosperous and evil as well. the freshness and health and vigour of the rank and file of new york were amazing to one familiar with the drab and dreary procession of workers filing into the city of london at eight in the morning and away from it at the same hour in the evening.
then the grand central station, with its vast high hall of marble, surmounted by a blue-green ceiling which, aping heaven itself, is fretted and perforated and painted to represent the clear night sky. that starry roof astonished me. it reminded me of a story i heard of g. k. chesterton, that he lay in bed on a sunday morning and with a crayon mounted on a long handle drew pictures on the white ceiling. it was like some dream of chesterton's realised.
for a long time i looked at the painted roof and[pg 75] picked out my beloved stars and constellations,—the planets under which i like to sleep,—and then i thought, "strange, that out in the glowing broadway, not far away, the real stars are hidden from the gaze of new york by flashing and twinkling and changing sky-signs in manifold colour and allurement. every night the dancing-girl is dancing in the sky, and the hand pours out the yellow beer into the foaming glass which, like the vision of the grail, appears but to vanish; every night the steeds prance with the greek chariot, the athletes box, the kitten plays with the reel. these are the real stars and constellations of broadway, for charles's wain is never seen, neither orion nor the chair of cassiopeia nor the seven sisters. to see them you must come in here, into the grand central station."
but apart from this paradox, what a station this is—a great silent temple, a place wherein to come to meditate and to pray. it is more beautiful than any of the churches of america. how much more beautiful than the cathedral of st. john the divine, for instance. that cathedral will be the largest church in the world when it is finished, and, vanity of vanities, how much more secular it is than the station! it is almost conceivable that after some revolution in the future, new york might change its mind and go to worship at the grand central station and run its trains into the cathedral of st. john.
[pg 76]
americans are proud of saying that the woolworth building, the grand central station, the pennsylvania railway station, and the new york central library show the new york of the future. almost everything else will be pulled down and built to match these. they are new buildings, they are the soul of the new america finding expression. they are temples of a new religion. americans pray more and aspire more to god in these than they do in their churches.
* * * * * * *
there stands out in my memory the east side, and the slums which i walked night after night in quest of some idea, some redeeming feature, something that would explain them to me. i walked almost at random, taking ever the first turning to the left, the first to the right, and the first to the left again, coming ever and anon to the river and the harbour, and having to turn and change.
the east side is more spectacular than the east end of london. the houses are so high, and there is so much more crowding, that you get into ten streets of new york what we get into a hundred streets. the new york slums are slums at the intensest. the buildings, great frames of rags and dirt, hang over the busy street below, and are wildly alive from base to summit. all day long the bedding hangs out at the windows or on the iron fire-escapes attached to the[pg 77] houses. women are shouting and children are crying on the extraordinary stairs which lead from room to room and story to story in the vast honeycomb of dens. on the side-walk is a rough crowd speaking all tongues. the toy doors of the saloons swing to and fro, simple couples sit on high stools in the soda-bars and suck various kinds of "dope." lithuanian and polish boys are rushing after one another with toy pistols, the girls are going round and round the barber's pole, singing and playing, with hands joined. the stores are crowded, and notices tell the outsider that he can buy two quarts of grade b milk for eleven cents, or ten state eggs for twenty-five cents. you come to streets where all the bakers' shops are "panneterias," and you know you are among the italians. one hundred and thirteenth street as it goes down from second avenue to first avenue is full of greeks and italians, and is extraordinarily dark and wild; men of murderous aspect are prowling about, there is howling across the street from tenement to tenement. dark, plump women stand at doorways and stare at you, and occasionally a negress in finery trapes past.
you come to little italian theatres where the price of admission is only five cents, and find them crammed with families, so that you cannot hear rigoletto for the squalling of the babies. there are mean cinema houses where you see only worn-out and spoiled films giving broken and incoherent stories. and all the while[pg 78] the lights and shadows play, the greek hawker of confectionery shouts:
"soh-dah!"
"can-dee!"
you continue your wanderings and you strike a nigger district. negresses and their beaux are flirting in corners and on doorsteps. darky boys and girls are skirling in the roadway. smartly dressed young men, carrying canes, come giggling and pushing one another on the pavement, crying out music-hall catches—"who was you with last night?" and the like.
you know the habitat of the jew by the abundance of junk-shops, old-clothes shops, and offices of counsellors-at-law. it seems the jews are very litigious, and even the poorest families go to law for their rights. you find windows full of boxing-gloves, for the jews are great boxers in america. you find stalls and push-carts without end. and every now and then rubbish comes sailing down from a window up above. that is one of the surest signs of the jews being installed—the pitching of cabbage-leaves and fish-bones and sausage-parings from upper windows.
what a sight was delancey street, with its five lines of naphtha-lit stalls, its array of tubs of fish and heaps of cranberries, its pavements slippery with scales, the air heavy with the odour of fish!
on one of the first of my nights out in the new york streets i came on a most wonderful sight. after [pg 79]prolonging a journey that started in the centre of the city i found myself suddenly plunging downward among dark and wretched streets. i was following out my zigzag plan, and came at last to a cul-de-sac. this was at the end of east ninth street. it was very dark and forbidding; there were no shops, only warehouses and yards. there were no people. i expected to find a new turning to the left, and was rather fearsome of taking it even should i find it. but at length i saw i had come to the east river. at the end of the street the water lapped against a wooden landing-stage, and there i saw a picture of wonder and mystery.
high over the glimmering water stood brooklyn bridge, with its long array of blazing electric torches and its procession of scores of little car-lights trickling past. the bridge hung from the high heaven by dark shadows. it was the brightest ornament of the night. i sat on an overturned barrow and looked out. up to me and past me came stalking majestic ferry-boats, all lights and white or shadowy faces. far away on the river lay anchored boats with red and green lights, and beyond all were the black silhouettes of the building and shipping on long island shore.
* * * * * * *
it was interesting to me to participate in the russian easter in new york, having lived in the protestant and roman catholic easters a whole month before on[pg 80] the emigrant ship on the day we reached new york. i came to the diminutive russian cathedral in east ninety-fifth street on easter eve at midnight. i had been at a fancy-dress party in the evening, and as fortune would have it, had gone in russian attire; that is, in a blue blouse like a moscow workman. what was my astonishment to find myself the only person so dressed in the great throng of russians surging in and out of the cathedral and the side street where the overflow of them talked and chattered. they were all in bowler hats, and wore collars and ties and american coats and waistcoats. they even looked askance at me for coming in a blouse; they thought i might be a jew or a german, or a foolish spy trying to gain confidences.
i shall never forget the inside of the cathedral at one in the morning, the vociferous singing, the beshawled peasant girls, the tear-stained faces. priest after priest came forward and praised the orthodox church and the russian people, and appealed to the worshippers to remember that all over the russian world the same service was being held, not only in the great cathedrals and monasteries, but in the village churches, in the far-away forest settlements, at the shrines in lonely arctic islands, in the siberian wildernesses, on the urals, in the fastnesses of the caucasus, on the asian deserts, in jerusalem itself. it was pathetic to hear the priests exhort these young[pg 81] men and women to remain russians—they were all young, and they all or nearly all looked to america as their new home. on all ordinary occasions they longed to be americans and to be called americans; but this night a flood of feeling engulfed them, and in the new york night they set sail and looked hungrily to the east whence they came. they held tapers. they had tenderly brought their cakes, their chickens and joints of pork, to be sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the priest for their easter breakfast. it was sad to surmise how few had really fasted through lent, and yet to see how they clung to departing tradition.
coming out of the cathedral we each received a verbose revolutionary circular printed in the russian tongue: "keep holy the first of may! hail to the war of the classes! hurrah for socialism! workmen of all classes, combine!"—and so on. in russia a person distributing such circulars would be rushed off to gaol at once. in new york it is different, and "influences" of all kinds are in full blast. i looked over the shoulders of many groups outside the cathedral on easter day and found them reading those new york rags, which are conceived in ignorance and dedicated to anarchism. it seems the russian who comes to new york is at once grabbed by the existent social-democratic organisations, and though he go to church still, he begins to be more and more attached to [pg 82]revolutionism. it is strange that these organisations are directed, not against the tsar and the officialdom of russia, but against the government of the united states and the commercial machine. there is no question of america being a refuge for the persecuted russian. the latter is assured at once that america is a place of even worse tyranny than the land he has come from. but if he does not take other people's word he soon comes to that conclusion on his own account. for he finds himself and his brothers working like slaves and drinking themselves to death through sheer boredom, and he finds his sisters in the "sweat-shops" of the garment-workers, or loses them in houses of evil.
* * * * * * *
i shall long remember the night court on sixth avenue, and several occasions when i entered there after midnight and found the same shrewd, tireless irish judge nonchalantly fining and sentencing negresses and white girls found in the streets under suspicious circumstances. many a poor russian girl was brought forward, and called upon to defend herself against the allegations of the soulless spies and secret agents of the american police. i listened to their sobs and cries, their protests of innocence, their promises of repentance, till i was ready to rise in court and rave aloud and shriek, and be pounced upon by the great fat pompous[pg 83] usher who represses even the expression on your features. "why," i wanted to cry aloud, "it is america that ought to be tried, and not these innocent victims of america—they are the evidence of america's guilt and not the committers of her crimes!" but i was fixed in silence, like the reporters doing their jobs in the front bench, and the unmoved, hard-faced attendants and police by whom the order of the court was kept.
then, not far along the same road in which the night court stands, i came one evening into a wax-work show of venereal disease. it was quite by chance i went in, for there was nothing outside to indicate what was within. only the spirit of adventure, which prompted me to go in and look round wherever i saw an open door, betrayed me to this chamber of horrors. there i saw, in pink and white and red, the human body in the loathsome inflammation and corruption of the city's disease. chief of all i remember the queen of the establishment, a hypnotic-seeming corpse of wax, lying full-length in a shroud in a glass case. just enough of the linen was held aside to show or suggest the terrible cause of her decease. the show was no more than a doctor's advertisement, and it was open in the name of science, but it was an unforgettable vision of death at the heart of this great city pulsating with life.
* * * * * * *
[pg 84]
then the splendour of broadway, the great white way, "calling moths from leagues, from hundreds of leagues," as o. henry wrote. what a city of enchantment and wonder new york must seem to the traveller from some dreary russian or siberian town, if seen aright. it is a thrilling spectacle. now that i have looked at it i say to myself, "fancy any man having lived and died in this era without having seen it!" five hundred years ago the island was dark and empty, with the serene stars shining over it; but now the creatures of the earth have found it and built this city on it, lit by a myriad lights. thousands of years hence it will be dark again belike, and empty, and uninhabited, and once more the serene stars will shine over the island.
