Chapter XI: Part II: The Pillar of Fire by Night (2)

If you wish to write in imitation of the entire essay choose one of the topics in the first column. Begin your work by writing a series of poetic paragraphs that will present the spirit of your essay. Continue to write in a somewhat poetic style, but make many definite allusions to history, literature or the facts of life.

Throughout your work express your own personality as much as you can. End your essay by making some personal appeal but do not make your work too didactic.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] Provincetown or Gloucester. Famous sea-coast towns on the coast of Massachusetts.

[60] Sacramento. A river of California, near which gold was discovered in 1848.

[61] Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596). A great English sailor and naval commander. He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the earth, and was one of the commanders in the fight with the Spanish Armada, 1888.

[62] Sir Martin Frobisher (1535-1594). The discoverer of Frobisher Bay; one of the leaders against the Spanish Armada.

[63] John C. Fremont (1813-1890). An American general noted for his explorations of the West.

[64] Daniel Boone (1735-1820). An early American explorer, pioneer and Indian fighter.

VANISHING NEW YORK
By ROBERT and ELIZABETH SHACKLETON

_Robert Shackleton (1860--) and his wife, Elizabeth Shackleton,
have written much in collaboration. Among such works are:_ The
Quest of the Colonial; Adventures in Home Making; The Charm of the
Antique. _Mr. Shackleton was at one time associate editor of_ The
Saturday Evening Post. _He is the author of many books, among which
are_ Touring Great Britain; History of Harper's Magazine, _and_ The
Book of New York.

=Washington Irving's _Sketch Book_ tells of Irving's delighted
wanderings around old London, and of his interest in streets and
buildings that awoke memories of the past. _Vanishing New York_
is an essay that corresponds closely with the essays written by
Irving so many years ago. In this modern essay Robert and Elizabeth
Shackleton tell of their wanderings about old New York, of odd
streets, curious buildings, and romantic and historic associations.
The essay gives to New York an interest that makes it, in the eyes
of the reader, as fascinating as Irving's old London.=

=The writers do more than tell the story of a walk about New York,
and much more than merely name and describe the places they saw. By
a skilful use of adjectives, and by an interested suggestiveness,
they throw over the places they mention an atmosphere of charm. We
feel that we are with them, enjoying and loving the curious old
places that seem so destined to vanish forever.=

What is left of old New York that is quaint and charming? The New
York of the eighties and earlier, of Henry James,[65] of Gramercy
Park, Washington and Stuyvesant squares, quaint old houses on
curious by-streets? The period of perhaps a more beautiful and
certainly a more leisurely existence? All places of consequence and
interest that remain to-day are herewith described.

To one, vanishing New York means a little box garden up in the Bronx, glimpsed just as the train goes into the subway. To another, it is a fan-light on Horatio Street; an old cannon, planted muzzle downward at a curb-edge; a long-watched, ancient mile-stone; a well; a water-tank bound up in a bank charter; a Bowling Green sycamore; an ailantus beside the twin French houses of crooked Commerce Street. And what a pang to find an old landmark gone! To another it is the sad little iron arch of the gate of old St. John's at the end of the once-while quaint St. John's Place, all that is now left of the beautiful pillared and paneled old church and its English-made wrought-iron fence. To many it is the loss of the New York sky-line, one of the wonders of the world--lost, for it has vanished from sight. Now the sky-line is to be seen only from the water, and the city is no longer approached by water except by a few; but is entered under the rivers on each side, by tunnels down into which the human currents are plunged. A positive thrill, a morning-and-evening thrill that was almost a worship of the noble and the beautiful, used to sweep over the packed thousands on the ferry-boats as they gazed at the sky-line.

It is extraordinary how swiftly New York destroys and rebuilds. There is the story of a distinguished visitor who, driven uptown on the forenoon of his arrival, was, on his departure in the late afternoon of the same day, driven downtown over the same route in order that he might see what changes had meanwhile taken place. The very first vessel built in New York--it was three hundred years ago--was named in the very spirit of prophecy, for it was called the _Onrust_ (_Restless_).

Yet it is astonishing how much of interest remains in this iconoclastic city, although almost everything remains under constant threat of destruction. Far over toward the North River is one of the threatened survivals. It is shabby, ancient; indeed, it has been called the oldest building in New York, though nothing certain is known beyond 1767. But it is very old, and may easily date much further back. It is called the Clam Broth House, and is on Weehawken Street, which, closely paralleling West Street, holds its single block of length north from Christopher. It is a lost and forgotten street, primitively cobblestoned with the worst pavement in New York, and it holds several lost and forlorn old houses--low-built houses, with great broad, sweeping roofs reaching almost to the ground, houses tremulous with age. Of these the one now called the Clam Broth House, low, squat, broad-roofed, is the oldest. In a sense the fronts are on West Street, but all original characteristics have there been bedizenedly lost, and the ancient aspect is on Weehawken Street.

These were fishermen's houses in ancient days, waterside houses; for West Street is filled-in ground, and the broad expanse of shipping space out beyond the street is made land. When these houses were built, the North River reached their doors, and, so tradition has it, fishermen actually rowed their boats and drew their shad-seines beneath this Clam Broth House.

Of a far different order of interest is a demure little church, neat and trim, on Hudson street. It is built of brick, bright red, with long red wings stretching oddly away from the rear, with a low, squat tower of red, and in the midst of gray old houses that hover around in fading respectability. It is St. Luke's, is a century old, and with it is connected the most charming custom of New York.

In 1792 a certain John Leake died, leaving a sum to Trinity Church for the giving forever, to “such poor as shall appear most deserving,” as many “six-penny wheaten loaves” as the income would buy, and this sweet and simple dole has ever since been regularly administered, and it will go on through the centuries, like the ancient English charity at Winchester, where for eight hundred years bread and ale have been given.

But there is one strictly New York feature about this already old Leake dole that differentiates it from the dole of Winchester, for it is still at the original wicket that the Winchester dole is given. There the custom was instituted, and there it has continued through all these centuries. But in New York the dole began at Trinity, but after something more than half a century, as population left the neighborhood of Trinity, the dole was transferred to St. John's, on Varick Street, once known as “St. John's in the Fields,” and now, after more than another half-century, there has come still another removal, and the dole is given at quaint old St. Luke's. Thus it has already had three homes, and one wonders how many it will have as the decades and the centuries move on. One pictures it peripatetically proceeding hither and thither as further changes come upon the city, the dole for the poor that never vanish.

A short distance south from St. Luke's, on the opposite side of Hudson Street, is an open space that is a public playground and a public garden. It was a graveyard, but a few years ago the city decreed that it should vanish, with the exception of a monument put up to commemorate the devotion of firemen who gave their lives for duty in a fire of the long ago. It was not the graveyard of St. Luke's, although near, but of farther away St. John's; and it is pleasant to remember that it was in walking to and fro among the now vanished graves and tombs that Edgar Allan Poe[66] composed his “Raven.”

Cheerful in its atmosphere--but perhaps this is largely from its name--is short little Gay Street, leading from Waverley Place, just around the corner from Sixth Avenue. Immediately beyond this point--for much of the unexpected still remains in good old Greenwich Village--Waverley becomes, by branching, a street with four sidewalks; for both branches hold the name of Waverley. It is hard for people of to-day to understand the power of literature in the early half of the last century, when Washington Irving[67] was among the most prominent citizens, and James Fenimore Cooper[68] was publicly honored, and admirers of the Waverley Novels made successful demand on the aldermen to change the name of Sixth Street, where it left Broadway, to Waverley Place, and to continue it beyond Sixth Avenue, discarding another name on the way, and at this forking-point to do away with both Catharine and Elizabeth streets in order to give Waverley its four sidewalks. Could this be done in these later days with the names, say of Howells[69] or of Hopkinson Smith![70] Does any one ever propose to have an “O” put before Henry Street![71]

At the forking-point is a triangular building, archaic in aspect, and very quiet. It is a dispensary, and an ancient jest of the neighborhood is, when some stranger asks if it has patients, to reply, “It doesn't need 'em; it's got money.”

Gay Street is miniature; its length isn't long and its width isn't wide. It is a street full of the very spirit of old Greenwich, or, rather, of the old Ninth Ward; for thus the old inhabitants love to designate the neighborhood, some through not knowing that it was originally Greenwich Village, and a greater number because they are not interested in the modern development, poetic, artistic, theatric, empiric, romantic, sociologic, but are proud of the honored record of the district as the most American ward of New York City.

In an apartment overlooking a Gay Street corner there died last year a man who had rented there for thirty-four years. There loomed practical difficulties for the final exit, the solution involving window and fire-escape. But the landlord, himself born there, said, “No; he has always gone in and out like a gentleman, and he shall still go out, for the last time, as a gentleman,” thereupon he called in carpenter and mason to cut the wall.

Then some old resident will tell you, pointing out house by house and name by name, where business men, small manufacturers, politicians, and office-holders dwelt. And, further reminiscent, he will tell of how, when a boy, at dawn on each Fourth of July, he used to get out his toy

(_page 185_)

cannon and fire it from a cellar entrance (pointing to the entrance), and how one Fourth the street was suddenly one shattering crash, two young students from the old university across Washington Square having experimentally tossed to the pavement from their garret window a stick of what was then “a new explosive, dynamite.” No sane and safe Fourths then!

It is still remembered that some little houses at the farther end of Gay Street, on Christopher, were occupied by a little colony of hand-loom weavers from Scotland, who there looked out from these “windows in Thrums.”[72]

Around two corners from this spot is a curiously picturesque little bit caused by the street changes of a century ago. It is Patchin Place, opening from Tenth Street opposite Jefferson Market. The place is a cul-de-sac, with a double row of little three-story houses, each looking just like the other, of yellow-painted brick. Each house has a little area space, each front door is up two steps from its narrow sidewalk. Each door is of a futuristic green. Each has its ailantus-tree, making the little nooked place a delightful bower.

Immediately around the corner is the still more curious Milligan Place, a spot more like a bit of old London than any other in New York. It is a little nestled space, entered by a barely gate-wide opening from the busy Sixth Avenue sidewalk. Inside it expands a trifle, just sufficiently to permit the existence of four little houses, built close against one another. So narrowly does an edge of brick building come down beside the entrance that it is literally only the width of the end of the bricks.

In an instant, going through the entrance that you might pass a thousand times without noticing, you are miles away, you are decades away, in a fragment of an old lost lane.

Near by, where Sixth Avenue begins, there is still projective from an old-time building the sign of the Golden Swan, a lone survival of long ago. And this is remindful of the cigar-store Indians. Only yesterday they were legion, now a vanished race. And the sidewalk clocks that added such interest to the streets, they, too, have gone, banished by city ordinance.

The conjunction of Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue and Eleventh Street makes a triangle, at the sharp point of which is a small, low, and ancient building, fittingly given over to that ancient and almost vanished trade, horseshoeing. A little brick building with outside wooden stair stands against and above it as the triangle widens, and then comes an ancient building a little taller still. And this odd conglomerate building was all, so you will be told, built in the good old days for animal houses for one of the earliest menageries! Next came a period of stage-coaches, with horses housed here. And, as often in New York, a great shabbiness accompanies the old. Within the triangle, inside of a tall wooden fence, are several ancient ailantus trees, remindful that long ago New York knew this locality as--name full of pleasant implications--“Ailanthus Gardens.” And every spring Ailanthus Gardens, oblivious to forgetfulness and shabbiness, still bourgeons green and gay.

An old man, a ghost-of-the-past old man, approached, and, seeing that we were interested, said abruptly, unexpectedly, “That's Bank Street over there, where the banks and the bankers came,” thus taking the mind far back to the time of a yellow-fever flight from what was then the distant city to what was in reality Greenwich.

Only a block from here, on Seventh Avenue, is a highly picturesque survival, a long block of three-story dwellings all so uniformly balconied, from first floor to roof-line, across the entire fronts, that you see nothing but balconies, with their three stories fronted with eyelet-pattern balustrades. In front of all the houses is an open grassy space, and up the face of the balconies run old wistaria-vines. Each house, through the crisscrossing of upright and lateral lines, is fronted with nine open square spaces, like Brobdingnagian pigeon-holes.

On West Eleventh Street is a row almost identical in appearance. If you follow Eleventh Street eastward, and find that it does not cut across Broadway, you will remember that this comes from the efforts of Brevoort, an early landowner, to save a grand old tree that stood there. And then Grace Church gained possession, and the street remained uncut.

A most striking vanishing hereabouts has been of the hotels. What an interesting group they were in this part of Broadway! Even the old Astor, far down town, has gone, only a wrecked and empty remnant remaining.

But a neighbor of the Astor House is an old-time building whose loss, frequently threatened, every one who loves noble and beautiful architecture would deplore--the more than century-old city hall, which still dominates its surroundings, as it has always dominated, even though now the buildings round about are of towering height.

Time-mellowed, its history has also mellowed, with myriad associations and happenings and tales. That a man who was to become Mayor of New York (it was Fernando Wood) made his first entry into the city as the hind leg of an elephant of a traveling show, and in that capacity passed for the first time the city hall, is a story that out-Whittingtons Whittington.[73]

And noblest and finest of all the associations with the city hall is one which has to do with a time before the city hall arose; for here, on the very spot where it stands, George Washington paraded his little army on a July day in 1776, and with grave solemnity, while they listened in a solemnity as grave, a document was read to them that had just been received from Philadelphia and which was forever to be known as the Declaration of Independence.

It used to be, three quarters of a century ago, that people could go northward from the city hall on the New York and Harlem Railway, which built its tracks far down in this direction. It used the Park Avenue tunnel, which had been built in 1837 for the first horse-car line in the world. After the railway made Forty-second Street its terminal, horse-cars again went soberly through the tunnel. What a pleasure to remember the tinkle, tinkle as they came jerkily jogging through, from somewhere up Harlemward, and, with quirky variety as to course, to an end somewhere near University Place! A most oddly usable line.

A few minutes' walk from University Place is one of the most fascinating spots in New York--“St. Mark's in the Bouwerie,” although it is actually on Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Street.

The church was built in 1799, but it stands on property that the mighty Petrus Stuyvesant[74] owned, and on the site of a chapel that he built, and his tomb is beneath the pavement of the church, and the tombstone is set in the foundation-wall on the eastern side. There is an excellent bronze close by, fittingly made in Holland, of this whimsical, irascible, kind-hearted, clear-headed captain-general and governor who ruled this New Amsterdam. Nothing else in the city so gives the smack of age, the relish of the saltness of time, as this old church built on Stuyvesant's land and holding his bones. For Stuyvesant was born when Elizabeth reigned in England and when Henry of Navarre, with his white plume, was King of France. The great New-Yorker was born in the very year that “Hamlet” was written.[75]

He loved his city, and lived here after the English came and conquered him and seized the colony.

This highly pictorial old church, broad-fronted, pleasant-porticoed, stands within a great open graveyard space, green with grass and sweetly shaded, and its aloofness and beauty are markedly enhanced by its being set high above the level of the streets.

On Lafayette Street, once Lafayette Place, a quarter of a mile from St. Mark's, still stands the deserted Astor Library, just bought by the Y. M. H. A. as a home for immigrants, built three quarters of a century ago for permanence, but now empty and bare and grim, shorn of its Rialto-like[76] steps, with closed front, as if harboring secrets behind its saddening inaccessibility. Once-while stately gate-posts and gateway, now ruinous, beside the library building, marked the driveway entrance of a long-vanished Astor home.

All is dreary, dismal, desolate, and the color of the Venetian-like building has become a sad combination of chocolate brown and dull red.

The tens of thousands of books from here, the literature and art of the Lenox collection, and the fine foundation of Tilden are united at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. From what differing sources did these three mighty foundations spring! One from the tireless industry of a great lawyer;[77] one from a far-flung fur trade that over a century ago reached through trackless wilderness to the Pacific;[78] one from a fortune wrung by exactions from American soldiers of the Revolution, prisoners of war, who paid all they had in the hope of alleviating their suffering--a fortune inherited by a man who studied to put it out for the benefit of mankind in broad charity and helpfulness, in hospitals and colleges, and in his library, left for public use.[79]

With the old Astor Library so stripped and deserted, one wonders if a similar fate awaits the stately and palatial building to which it has gone. Will the new building some day vanish? And similarly the superb and mighty structures that have in recent years come in connection with the city's northern sweep?

A curious fate has attended the Lenox Library property. Given to the city, land and building and contents, the land and building were sold into private ownership when the consolidation of libraries was decided upon. The granite stronghold, built to endure forever, was razed, and where it had stood arose the most beautiful home in New York, which, gardened in boxwood, its owner filled with priceless treasures. And now he is dead, and again the land, a building, and costly contents are willed to the city.

Across from the old Astor Library stood Colonnade Row, a long and superb line of pillar-fronted grandeur; but only a small part now remains, with only a few of the fluted Corinthian pillars. All is shabby and forlorn, but noble even in shabbiness. And the remnant, one thinks, must shortly fall a victim to the destructive threat that hangs over everything in our city.

Colonnade Row was built in the eighteen twenties. Washington Irving lived there. One gathers the impression that Irving, named after Washington, lived in as many houses as those in which Washington slept. In the row occurred the wedding of President Tyler,[80] an event not characterized by modest shrinking from publicity, for after the ceremony the President and his bride were driven down Broadway in an open carriage, drawn by four horses, to the Battery, whence a boat rowed them out to begin their married life on--of all places!--a ship of war!

It is interesting to find two Virginia-born Presidents of the United States coming to Lafayette Street; for here dwelt Monroe,[81] he of the “Doctrine,” during the latter part of his life, at what is now the northwest corner of Lafayette Street and Prince; and he died there. Long since the house fell into sheer dinginess and wreck, and a few months ago was sold to be demolished; but New York may feel pride in her connection with the American who, following Washington's example, declared against “entangling ourselves in the broils of Europe, or suffering the powers of the old world to interfere with the affairs of the new.”

Near this house Monroe was buried, in the Marble Cemetery on Second Street, beyond Second Avenue, a spot with high open iron fence in front and high brick wall behind, with an atmosphere of sedateness and repose, although a tenement district has come round about. Monroe's body lay here for a quarter of a century, and then Virginia belatedly carried it to Virginian soil.

Close by, entered through a narrow tunnel-like entrance at 41-1/2 Second Avenue, is another Marble Cemetery (the Monroe burying-place is the New York City Marble Cemetery, and this other is the New York Marble Cemetery), and this second one is quite hidden away in inconspicuousness, as befits a place which, according to a now barely decipherable inscription, was established as “a place of interment for gentlemen,” surely the last word in exclusiveness!

Across the street from the entrance to this cemetery for gentlemen is a church for the common people, one of the pleasant surprises of a kind which one frequently comes upon in New York--a building really distinguished in appearance, yet not noticed or known. A broad flight of steps stretches across the broad church front. There are tall pillars and pilasters, excellent iron fencing and gateway. The interior is all of the color of pale ivory, with much of classic detail and with a “Walls-of-Troy” pattern along the gallery. There were a score of such classic churches in New York early in the last century.

Always in finding the unexpected there is charm, as when, the other day, we came by the merest chance upon “Extra Place”! What a name! It is a little court nooked out of First Street,--how many New Yorkers know that there is a First Street in fact and not merely in theory?--between Second and Third avenues. Extra Place is a stone's throw in length, a forgotten bit of forlornness, but at its end, beyond sheds and tall board fencing, are suggestions of pleasant homes of a distant past, great fireplace chimneys and queer windows, and an old shade tree, and under the tree a brick-paved walk, formal in its rectangle, where happy people walked in the long ago, and where once a garden smiled, but where now no kind of flower grows wild.

The tree of the New York tenements is the ailantus, palm-like in its youth, brought originally from China for the gardens of the rich. It grows in discouraging surroundings, is defiant of smoke, does not even ask to be planted; for, Topsy-like, it “jest grows.” Cut it down, and it comes up again. It is said to have no insect enemies. An odd point in its appearance is that every branch points up.

The former extraordinary picturesqueness of the waterfront has gone; but still there is much there that is strange, and a general odor of oakum and tar remains. And, leading back from the East-Side waterfront, narrow, ancient lanes have been preserved, and by these one may enter the old-time warehouse portion of the city, where still the permeative smell of drugs or leather or spice differentiates district from district.

Vanished is many a delightful old name. Pie Woman's Lane became Nassau Street. Oyster Pasty Alley became Exchange Alley. Clearly, early New Yorkers were a gustatory folk.

A notable vanishing has within a few months come to Wall Street itself--the vanishing of the last outward and visible sign of the feud of Alexander Hamilton[18] and Aaron Burr.[82] Hamilton was the leading spirit in establishing one bank in the city, and Burr, through a clause in a water-company charter, established another, and through all these decades the banks have been rivals. Now they have united their financial fortunes and become one bank.

An interesting rector of Trinity Church, which looks in such extraordinary fashion into the narrow gorge of Wall Street, became over a century ago Bishop of New York, Benjamin Moore, and he is chiefly interesting, after all, through his early connection with the then distant region still known as Chelsea, in the neighborhood of Twenty-third Street and the North River, where he acquired great land-holdings that had been owned by the English naval captain who had made his home here and given the locality its name.

Chelsea still holds its own as an interesting neighborhood, mainly because of its possession of the General Theological Seminary, which has attracted and held desirable people and given an atmosphere of quiet seclusion.

The seminary buildings occupy the entire block between Ninth and Tenth avenues and Twentieth and Twenty-first streets. They are largely of English style, and there are long stretches of ten-foot garden wall. Now and then a mortar-boarded student strides hurriedly across an open space, and now and then a professor paces portentously. The buildings are mostly of brick, but the oldest is an odd-looking structure of silver-gray stone. The varied structures unite in effective conjunction. It may be mentioned that, owing to a Vanderbilt who looked about for something which in his opinion would set the seminary in the front rank, its library possesses more ancient Latin Bibles, so it is believed, than does even the Bodleian.[83]

The chapel stands in the middle of the square, and above it rises a square Magdalen-like tower,[84] softened by ivy; and, following a beautiful old custom as it has been followed since the tower was built, capped and gowned students gather at sunrise on Easter morning on the top of this tall tower and sing ancient chorals to the music of trombone and horn.

Chelsea ought to be the most home-like region in New York on account of its connection with Christmas; for a son of Bishop Moore, Clement C. Moore,[85] who gave this land to the seminary, and made his own home in Chelsea, wrote the childhood classic, “'Twas the night before Christmas.”

In this old-time neighborhood stand not only houses, but long-established little shops. One for drugs, for example, is marked as dating back to 1839. But, after all, that is not so old as a great Fifth Avenue shop which was established in 1826. However, there is this difference: the Chelsea shops are likely to be on the very spots where they were first opened, whereas the great shop of Fifth Avenue has reached its location by move after move, from its beginning on Grand Street, when that was the fashionable shopping street of the city.

In Chelsea are still to be found the old pineapple-topped newel-posts of wrought iron, like openwork urns; there are old houses hidden erratically behind those on the street-front. One in particular remains in mind, a large old-fashioned dwelling, now reached only by a narrow and built-over passage, a house that looks like a haunted house, from its desolate disrepair, its lost loneliness of location.

Chelsea is a region of yellow cats and green shutters, shabby green on the uncared for and fresh green for the well kept. Old New York used typically to temper the dog-days behind green slat shutters, or under shop awnings stretched to the curb, and with brick sidewalks, sprinkled in the early afternoon from a sprinkling-can in the 'prentice hand.

One of the admirable old houses of Chelsea is that where dwelt that unquiet spirit, Edwin Forrest,[86] the actor. It is at 436 West Twenty-second Street, a substantial-looking, square-fronted house, with a door of a great single panel. And the interior is notable for the beautiful spiral stair that figured in court in his marital troubles.

There are in Chelsea two more than usually delightful residential survivals, with the positively delightful old names of Chelsea Cottages and London Terrace. The cottages are on Twenty-fourth Street, and the Terrace is on Twenty-third, and each is between Ninth and Tenth avenues, and both were built three quarters of a century ago.

The cottages are alternating three-story and two-story houses, built tightly shoulder to shoulder, astonishingly narrow-fronted, each with a grassy space in front. Taken together, they make one of the last stands on Manhattan of simple and modest and concerted picturesque living.

The Terrace is a highly distinguished row of high-pilastered houses, set behind grassy, deep dooryards. There are precisely eighty-eight three-and-a-half-story pilasters on the front of this stately row. The houses have a general composite effect of yellowish gray. They are built on the London plan of the drawing-room on the second floor, so that those that live there “go down to dinner.” The drawing-rooms are of pleasant three-windowed spaciousness, extending across each house-front.

The terrace is notable in high-stooped New York in having the entrance-doors on virtually the sidewalk level. That the familiar and almost omnipresent high-stooped houses of the nineteenth century ought all to have been constructed without the long flight of outside stone steps characteristic of the city is shown by a most interesting development on East Nineteenth Street, between Third Avenue and Irving Place. There the houses have been excellently and artistically remodeled, with highly successful and highly satisfactory results. With comparatively slight cost, there has been alteration of commonplaceness into beauty.

The high front steps have been removed, and the front doors put down to where they ought to be. Most of the house-fronts have been given a stucco coat, showing what could be done with myriad commonplace houses of the city.

The houses are colorfully painted tawny red or cream or gray or pale pink or an excellent shade of brown. You think of it as the happiest-looking street in New York. Solid shutters add their effect, some the green of bronze patina. There are corbeled gables. Some of the roofs are red-tiled. Two little two-story stables have been transformed by little Gothic doors. There are vines. There are box-bushes. There are flowers in terra-cotta boxes on low area walls. Here and there is a delightful little iron balcony, here and there a gargoyle. On one roof two or three storks are gravely standing! There are charming area-ways, and plane-trees have been planted for the entire block. And here the vanishing is of the undesirable.

On Stuyvesant Square, near by, are the Quaker buildings, standing in an atmosphere of peace which they themselves have largely made--buildings of red brick with white trimmings, and with a fine air of gentleness and repose; a little group that, so one hopes, is very far indeed from the vanishing point.

And there is fine old Gramercy Park, whose dignified homes in the past were owned by men of the greatest prominence. Many of the great homes still remain, and the central space, tall, iron-fenced, is still exclusively locked from all but the privileged, the dwellers in the houses on the park. And there, amid the grass and the trees, sedate little children, with little white or black dogs, play sedately for hours.

We went for luncheon, with two recent woman's college graduates, all familiar with New York, into the club house that was the home of Samuel J. Tilden. Our companions were unusually excellent examples of the best that the colleges produce; they were of American ancestry. But any New-Yorker will feel that much of the spirit of the city has vanished, that much of the honored and intimate tradition has gone, when we say that, it being mentioned that this had been the Tilden home, it developed that neither of them had ever heard of Samuel J. Tilden.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What is the authors' attitude toward the past?

2. What does the essay say concerning change?

3. In what spirit does the essay mention old buildings?

4. What does the essay prophesy for the future?

5. Tell the origin of some of the street names in New York City.

6. What does the essay say concerning the influence of people who
are now dead?

7. Point out examples of pleasant suggestion.

8. Show where the writers express originality of thought.

9. What is the plan of the essay?

10. What advantage does the essay gain by making so frequent
reference to names of people?

11. How do the writers gain coherence?

12. Point out pleasing allusions.

13. What spirit does the essay arouse?

14. What do the writers think concerning the present?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Things That Have Vanished 11. A Trip About Town
2. My Own Town Years Ago 12. Some Curious Buildings
3. Old Buildings 13. The Highway
4. The People of a Former Day 14. The Founding of My Town
5. Legacies 15. Early Settlers
6. Street Names 16. My Ancestors
7. The Story of a Street 17. Family Relics
8. The Story of an Old House 18. A Walk in the Country
9. The Farm 19. The Making of a City
10. Eternal Change 20. Main Street

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Your object is not to tell what you do on any walk that you choose to take, nor is it to tell what you see. You are not to try to inform people concerning facts. You are to give them pleasing impressions that come to you as you meditate on something that has changed.

In order to do this you must, first of all, have a real experience, both in visiting a place and in feeling emotion. Then you must make a plan for your writing, so that you will take your reader just as easily and just as naturally as possible over the ground that you wish him to visit in imagination.

Make many allusions to people, to books, to events, and to anything else that will bring back the past vividly. Make that past appear in all its charm. You can do this best if your emotion is real, and if you pay considerable attention to your style of writing. Use many adjectives and adjective expressions. Above all, try to find words that will be highly suggestive.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Henry James (1843-1916). An American novelist noted for strikingly analytical novels. His boyhood home was on Washington Square.

[66] Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Perhaps the most widely known American poet and short story writer. _The Raven_ is the best-known poem by any American poet. Poe wrote the poem while he was living in New York City.

[67] Washington Irving (1783-1859). The genial American essayist, biographer and historian. He spent much of his time in New York City.

[68] James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). The first great American novelist, best known for his famous “Leatherstocking Tales.”

[69] William Dean Howells (1837-1920). A celebrated modern novelist, noted for his realistic pictures of life.

[70] F. Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). An American civil engineer, artist and short story writer. _Colonel Carter of Cartersville_ is one of his best-known books.

[71] O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) (1867-1910). A popular American short story writer, noted for originality of style and treatment.

[72] “Windows in Thrums”. The title of a novel by James Matthew Barrie (1860.--) is _A Window in Thrums_, _Thrums_ being an imaginary village in Scotland, inhabited principally by humble but devout weavers.

[73] Sir Richard Whittington (1358-1423). Three times Lord Mayor of London; the hero of the legend of _Whittington and His Cat_.

[74] Petrus Stuyvesant (1592-1672). The last of the Dutch governors of New York. In 1664 he surrendered New York to the English. His farm was called “The Bouwerij”.

[75] _Hamlet._ While the date of _Hamlet_ can not be told with certainty it is reasonably sure that Shakespeare wrote his version of an older play about 1592.

[76] Rialto. A celebrated bridge in Venice, Italy. It has a series of steps.

[77] Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886). An American lawyer, at one time Governor of New York. As candidate for the Presidency he won 250,000 more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes, but lost the election in the Electoral College.

[78] John Jacob Astor (1763-1848). A German immigrant who, through the founding of a great fur business, established the Astor fortune. He bequeathed $400,000 for the Astor Library.

[79] James Lenox (1800-1880). An American philanthropist who founded the great Lenox Library.

[80] John Tyler (1790-1862). Tenth President of the United States.

[81] James Monroe (1758-1831). Fifth President of the United States; originator of the “Monroe Doctrine” policy designed to prevent foreign interference in affairs in North or South America.

[82] Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804). A great American statesman and financier. He was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr (1756-1836), an American politician.

[83] The Bodleian Library. The great library of Oxford University, England, named after Sir Thomas Bodley, one of its founders.

[84] Magdalen College. One of the colleges of Oxford University, England. It is noted for an especially beautiful tower.

[85] Clement C. Moore (1779-1863). A wealthy American scholar and teacher who wrote the poem, _'Twas the Night Before Christmas_.

[86] Edwin Forrest (1806-1872). A great American actor, noted for his rendition of Shakespeare.

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR[87]
By BRANDER MATTHEWS

_(1852--). One of the most influential American critics and
essayists, Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University.
He was one of the founders of The Authors' Club, and The Players,
and a leader in organizing the American Copyright League. He is
a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is
the author of works that illustrate many types of literature,
including novels, short stories, essays, poems and plays. Among his
books are:_ A Story of the Sea, and Other Stories; Pen and Ink;
Americanisms and Briticisms; The Story of a Story; Vignettes of
Manhattan; His Father's Son; Aspects of Fiction; Essays in English;
The American of the Future.

=When companionable people meet in pleasant converse, whether before
the open fire at home, or in chance gatherings at any place, they
tell one another about the interesting experiences that they have
had or the discoveries that they have made. If you could place on
paper what any one of them says, except in narration, and if you
could, at the same time, show the feeling and the spirit of the
speaker,--if you could in some way transfer the personality of the
speaker to the paper,--you would, in all probability, produce an
essay.=

=The author of _The Songs of the Civil War_ has learned some
interesting facts concerning our national songs. He communicates
those facts as he would to a company of friends, indicating
throughout his remarks his own interests and beliefs. His words
are the pleasant words of friendship,--not the formal giving of
information that characterizes most encyclopedia articles. That
part of his essay which is given here is sufficient to indicate the
charm of his presentation.=

A national hymn is one of the things which cannot be made to order. No man has ever yet sat him down and taken up his pen and said, “I will write a national hymn,” and composed either words or music which a nation was willing to take for its own. The making of the song of the people is a happy accident, not to be accomplished by taking thought. It must be the result of fiery feeling long confined, and suddenly finding vent in burning words or moving strains. Sometimes the heat and the pressure of emotion have been fierce enough and intense enough to call forth at once both words and music, and to weld them together indissolubly once and for all. Almost always the maker of the song does not suspect the abiding value of his work; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by a power within; he has written for immediate relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or the future; he has builded better than he knew. The great national lyric is the result of the conjunction of the hour and the man. Monarch cannot command it, and even poets are often powerless to achieve it. No one of the great national hymns has been written by a great poet. But for his single immortal lyric, neither the author of the “Marseillaise”[88] nor the author of the “Wacht am Rhein”[89] would have his line in the biographical dictionaries. But when a song has once taken root in the hearts of a people, time itself is powerless against it. The flat and feeble “Partant pour la Syrie,” which a filial fiat made the hymn of imperial France, had to give way to the strong and virile notes of the “Marseillaise,” when need was to arouse the martial spirit of the French in 1870. The noble measures of “God Save the King,” as simple and dignified a national hymn as any country can boast, lift up the hearts of the English people; and the brisk tune of the “British Grenadiers” has swept away many a man into the ranks of the recruiting regiment. The English are rich in war tunes and the pathetic “Girl I Left Behind Me” encourages and sustains both those who go to the front and those who remain at home. Here in the United States we have no “Marseillaise,” no “God Save the King,” no “Wacht am Rhein”; we have but “Yankee Doodle” and the “Star-spangled Banner.” More than one enterprising poet, and more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as yet no one has succeeded. “Yankee Doodle” we got during the revolution, and the “Star-spangled Banner” was the gift of the War of 1812; from the Civil War we have received at least two war songs which, as war songs simply, are stronger and finer than either of these--“John Brown's Body” and “Marching Through Georgia.”

Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth but little trace is now to be detected in literature except by special students. In most cases neither words nor music have had vitality enough to survive a quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two things only survive, one Southern and the other Northern; one a war-cry in verse, the other a martial tune: one is the lyric “My Maryland” and the other is the marching song “John Brown's Body.” The origin and development of the latter, the rude chant to which a million of the soldiers of the Union kept time, is uncertain and involved in dispute. The history of the former may be declared exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did the deed--for the making of a war song is of a truth a deed at arms--I am enabled to state fully the circumstances under which it was written, set to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the South.

“My Maryland” was written by Mr. James R. Randall, a native of Baltimore, and now residing in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a professor of English literature and the classics in Poydras College at Pointe Coupee, on the Faussee Riviere, in Louisiana, about seven miles from the Mississippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the New Orleans _Delta_ the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. “This account excited me greatly,” Mr. Randall wrote in answer to my request for information; “I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from my mind. About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of 'My Maryland.' I remember that the idea appeared to first take shape as music in the brain--some wild air that I cannot now recall. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly when once begun. It was not composed in cold blood, but under what may be called a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect. I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my name with that of my native State, if not 'with my land's language'. But I never expected to do this with one single, supreme effort, and no one was more surprised than I was at the widespread and instantaneous popularity of the lyric I had been so strangely stimulated to write.” Mr. Randall read the poem the next morning to the college boys, and at their suggestion sent it to the _Delta_, in which it was first printed, and from which it was copied into nearly every Southern journal. “I did not concern myself much about it, but very soon, from all parts of the country, there was borne to me, in my remote place of residence, evidence that I had made a great hit, and that, whatever might be the fate of the Confederacy, the song would survive it.”

Published in the last days of April, 1861, when every eye was fixed on the border States, the stirring stanzas of the Tyrtæan bard[90] appeared in the very nick of time. There is often a feeling afloat in the minds of men, undefined and vague for want of one to give it form, and held in solution, as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into song, in which all may see clearly and sharply reflected what in their own thought was shapeless and hazy. It was Mr. Randall's good fortune to be the instrument through which the South spoke. By a natural reaction his burning lines helped to fire the Southern heart. To do their work well, his words needed to be wedded to music. Unlike the authors of the “Star-spangled Banner” and the “Marseillaise,” the author of “My Maryland” had not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It was left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric the musical wings it needed to enable it to reach every camp-fire of the Southern armies. To the courtesy of this lady, then Miss Hetty Cary, and now the wife of Professor H. Newell Martin, of Johns Hopkins University, I am indebted for a picturesque description of the marriage of the words to the music, and of the first singing of the song before the Southern troops.

The house of Mrs. Martin's father was the headquarters for the Southern sympathizers of Baltimore. Correspondence, money, clothing, supplies of all kinds went thence through the lines to the young men of the city who had joined the Confederate army. “The enthusiasm of the girls who worked and of the 'boys' who watched for their chance to slip through the lines to Dixie's land found vent and inspiration in such patriotic songs as could be made or adapted to suit our needs. The glee club was to hold its meeting in our parlors one evening early in June, and my sister, Miss Jenny Cary, being the only musical member of the family, had charge of the program on the occasion. With a school-girl's eagerness to score a success, she resolved to secure some new and ardent expression of feelings that by this time were wrought up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched through her stock of songs and airs--nothing seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the suggestion that she should adapt the words of 'Maryland, my Maryland,' which had been constantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric a few days before in the South. I produced the paper and began declaiming the verses. 'Lauriger Horatius!'[91] she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal song found voice in the stirring air so perfectly adapted to it. That night, when her contralto voice rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from every throat present without pause or preparation; and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such effect to a crowd assembled beneath our open windows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the party.”

“Lauriger Horatius” had long been a favorite college song, and it had been introduced into the Cary household by Mr. Burton N. Harrison, then a Yale student. The air to which it is sung is used also for a lovely German lyric, “Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,” which Longfellow has translated “O Hemlock Tree.” The transmigration of tunes is too large and fertile a subject for me to do more here than refer to it. The taking of the air of a jovial college song to use as the setting of a fiery war-lyric may seem strange and curious, but only to those who are not familiar with the adventures and transformations a tune is often made to undergo. Hopkinson's[92] “Hail Columbia!” for example, was written to the tune of the “President's March,” just as Mrs. Howe's[93] “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written to “John Brown's Body.” The “Wearing of the Green,” of the Irishman, is sung to the same air as the “Benny Havens, O!” of the West-Pointer. The “Star-spangled Banner” has to make shift with the second-hand music of “Anacreon in Heaven,” while our other national air, “Yankee Doodle,” uses over the notes of an old English nursery rhyme, “Lucy Locket,” once a personal lampoon in the days of the “Beggars' Opera,”[94] and now surviving in the “Baby's Opera” of Mr. Walter Crane.[95] “My Country, 'tis of Thee,” is set to the truly British tune of “God Save the King,” the origin of which is doubtful, as it is claimed by the French and the Germans as well as the English. In the hour of battle a war-tune is subject to the right of capture, and, like the cannon taken from the enemy, it is turned against its maker.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Why cannot a national hymn be made to order?

2. Why is it true that the great national hymns have not been
written by great poets?

3. What establishes the worth of a national hymn?

4. Name the best national hymns of the United States.

5. What are some of the best national hymns of other countries?

6. What type of music is necessary for a good national hymn?

7. Tell the story of the origin of _My Maryland_.

8. What sources gave rise to the music of many of our national
hymns?

9. Explain the last sentence of the essay.

10. Point out the respects in which the essay differs from an
encyclopedia article.

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Popular Songs 11. Games
2. Popular Music 12. Athletic Sports
3. Popular Opera 13. Streets
4. Fashions in Dress 14. Furniture
5. Every Day Habits 15. Dancing
6. Hats 16. Mother Goose Rimes
7. Buttons 17. Favorite Poems
8. Uniforms 18. Legends
9. Social Customs 19. _Evangeline_
10. Architecture 20. Political Customs

DIRECTIONS12277 FOR WRITING