Chapter X: Part II (2)

Collier does not allude to Sylvester in connection with this poem, but introduces him in another article, and treats him somewhat cavalierly, as "a mere literary adventurer and translating drudge." "When he died," Collier says, "is not precisely known." He might have known, since there were records all round him to show that Sylvester died in Holland, in September, 1618. His great contemporary, Sir Walter Raleigh, was beheaded in October, one month after.

(By the way, Payne Collier holds out marvellously. Here is his new work, dated 1866, and I have near me his "Poetical Decameron," published in 1820, _forty-six_ years ago.)

Ritson, a noted reaper in the "old fields," supposes, that "The Lie" was written by Francis Davison; and in Kerl's "Comprehensive Grammar," among many poetical extracts, I find two stanzas of the poem quoted as written by Barnfield,--probably Richard. These two writers were of Raleigh's time, but I think their claims may be readily dismissed. Supposing that "The Lie" was written by either Joshua Sylvester or Sir Walter Raleigh, I shall try to show that it was not written by Sylvester, and that he has wrongfully enjoyed the credit of its authorship.

Critics and collators have for years been doubting about the authorship of this little poem, written over two centuries and a half ago; and, so far as I can ascertain, not one of them has ever discovered, what is the simple fact, that there were _two_ poems instead of _one_, similar in scope and spirit, but still two poems,--"The Lie" _and_ "The Soul's Errand."

I have said that Sir Egerton Brydges alludes to a "parody" of "The Lie," in Sylvester's volume, there called "The Soul's Errand." In that volume I find what Sir Egerton calls a "parody." It is, in reality, another poem, bearing the title of "The Soul's Errand," consisting of _twenty_ stanzas, all of four lines each, excepting the first stanza, which has six. "The Lie" consists of but _thirteen_ stanzas, of six lines each, the fifth and sixth of which may be termed the refrain or burden of the piece. I annex copies of the two poems; Sir Walter's (so called) is taken from Percy's "Reliques," and Sylvester's is copied from his own folio.

On comparing the two pieces, it will be seen that they begin alike, and go on nearly alike for a few stanzas, when they diverge, and are then entirely different from each other to the end. I do not find that this difference has ever been pointed out, and am therefore left to suppose that it never was discovered. At this late day conjectures are not worth much, but it would appear that, the opening stanzas of the two poems being similar, their identity was at some time carelessly taken for granted by some collector, who read only the initial stanzas, and thus ignorantly deprived Sir Walter of "The Lie," and gave it to Sylvester, with the title of "The Soul's Errand."

This, however, is certain: "The Soul's Errand," so called, of _thirteen_ stanzas, given to us by Ellis and by Chambers as Sylvester's, is not the poem that Sylvester wrote under that title, and we have his own authority for saying so. His poem of _twenty_ stanzas, bearing that title, does not appear to have ever been reprinted, and it is believed cannot now be found anywhere out of his own book. Ellis, it is plain, is not to be trusted. Professing to be exact, he refers for his authority to page 652 of Sylvester's works, and then proceeds to print a poem as his which is not there. Had he read the page he quotes so carefully, he would have seen that "The Lie" and "The Soul's Errand" were two separate productions, alike only in the six stanzas taken from the former and included in the latter.

We learn that Sir Walter Raleigh's poems were never all collected into a volume, and, further, we learn that "The Lie," as a separate piece, was attributed to him at an early period. Payne Collier, as I have said, prints it as his, from a manuscript "of the time"; and in an elaborate article on Raleigh, in the North British Review, copied into Littell's Living Age, of June 9, 1855, the able reviewer refers particularly to "The Lie," "saddest of poems," as Sir Walter's, and adds in a note that "it is to be found in a manuscript of 1596." This would make the piece two hundred and seventy years old. When and by whom it was first taken from Sir Walter and given to Sylvester, with the altered title, and why Sylvester incorporated into his poem of "The Soul's Errand" six stanzas belonging to "The Lie," can now, of course, never be known.

I find that I have been indulging in quite a flow of words about a few old verses; but then they _are_ verses, and such as one should not be robbed of. They have lived through centuries of time, and outlived generations of ambitious penmen, and the true name of the author ought to live with them. Long ago, when a school-boy, I used to read and repeat "The Lie," and it was then the undoubted work of Sir Walter Raleigh. In after years, on looking into various volumes of old English poetry, I was told that "The Lie" was _not_ "The Lie," and was not written by Sir Walter Raleigh; that the true title of the piece was "The Soul's Errand," and that the real author of it was a certain Joshua Sylvester. Unwilling to displace the brave knight from the niche he had graced so long, I hunted up Sylvester's old folio, and the result of my search may be found in these imperfect remarks.

Frankly, I would fain believe that "The Lie" was written by Sir Walter. It is true I am not able to prove it, but I think I prove that it was not written by Sylvester. He wrote another poem, "The Soul's Errand," and he is welcome to it; that is, he is welcome to fourteen of its twenty stanzas,--the other six do not belong to him. Give him also, painstaking man! due laudation for his version of the "Divine Du Bartas," of which formidable work anyone who has the courage to grapple with its six hundred and fifty-odd folio pages may know where to find a copy.

But Sir Walter Raleigh,--heroic Sir Walter,--he is before me bodily, running his fingers along the sharp edge of the fatal axe, and calmly laying his noble head on the block.

"The good Knight is dust,
And his sword is rust";

but I want to feel that he left behind him, as the offspring of his great brain, one of the most impressive poems of his time,--ay, and indeed of any time.

THE LYE.

BY SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

Goe, soule, the bodies guest,
Upon a thanklesse arrant;
Feare not to touche the best,
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Goe, since I needs must dye,
And give the world the lye.

Goe tell the court, it glowes
And shines like rotten wood;
Goe tell the church it showes
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lye.

Tell potentates they live
Acting by others actions:
Not lov'd unlesse they give,
Not strong but by their factions:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lye.

Tell men of high condition,
That rule affairs of state,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practise only hate;
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lye.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who in their greatest cost
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Spare not to give the lye.

Tell zeale, it lacks devotion;
Tell love, it is but lust;
Tell time, it is but motion;
Tell flesh, it is but dust;
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lye.

Tell age, it daily wasteth;
Tell honour, how it alters;
Tell beauty, how she blasteth;
Tell favour, how she falters;
And as they shall reply,
Give each of them the lye.

Tell wit, how much it wrangles
In tickle points of nicenesse;
Tell wisedome, she entangles
Herselfe in over-wisenesse:
And if they do reply,
Straight give them both the lye.

Tell physicke of her boldnesse;
Tell skill, it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law, it is contention;
And as they yield reply,
So give them still the lye.

Tell fortune of her blindnesse;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindnesse;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they dare reply,
Then give them all the lye.

Tell arts, they have no soundnesse,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schooles they want profoundnesse,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schooles reply,
Give arts and schooles the lye.

Tell faith, it's fled the citie;
Tell how the countrey erreth;
Tell, manhood shakes off pitie;
Tell, vertue least preferreth;
And, if they doe reply,
Spare not to give the lye.

So, when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing,
Athough to give the lye
Deserves no less than stabbing,
Yet stab at thee who will,
No stab the soule can kill.

THE SOULES ERRAND.

BY JOSUAH SYLVESTER.

Goe Soule, the bodies guest,
Upon a thanklesse Errand,
Feare not to touch the best,
The Truth shall be thy warrant:
Goe thou, since I must die,
And give the world the lye.

Goe tell the Court it glowes,
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the Church it showes
What's good, but doth not good.

Tell Potentates they live,
Acting by others Action,
Not lov'd unlesse they give,
Not strong, but by a faction.

Tell men of high condition,
That in Affaires of State
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.

Goe tell the young Nobility,
They doe degenerate,
Wasting their large ability,
In things effeminate.

Tell those that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
And, in their greatest cost,
Seeke but a self-commending.

Tell Zeale it wants Devotion,
Tell Love it is but Lust,
Tell Priests they hunt Promotion,
Tell Flesh it is but Dust.

Say Souldiers are the Sink
Of Sinne to all the Realme;
Given all to whores and drink,
To quarrell and blaspheme.

Tell Townesmen, that because that
They pranck their Brides so proud,
Too many times it drawes that
Which makes them beetle-brow'd.

Goe tell the Palace-Dames
They paint their parboil'd faces,
Seeking by greater shames
To cover lesse disgraces.

Say to the City-wives,
Through their excessive brav'ry,
Their Husband hardly thrives,
But rather lives in Slav'ry.

Tell London Youths that Dice,
Faire Queanes, fine Clothes, full Bouls,
Consume the cursed price
Of their dead-Fathers Soules.

Say Maidens are too coy
To them that chastely seeke them,
And yet are apt to toy
With baser Jacks that like them.

Tell Poets of our dayes
They doe profane the Muses,
In soothing Sin with praise,
That all the world abuses.

Tell Tradesmen waight and measure
They craftily abuse,
Thereby to heap-up treasure,
Though Heav'n thereby they lose.

Goe tell the vitious rich,
By usury to gaine
Their fingers alwaies itch,
To soules and bodies paine.

Yea tell the wretched poore
That they the wealthy hate,
And grudge to see at doore
Another in their state.

Tell all the world throughout
That all's but vanity,
Her pleasures doe but flout
With sly security.

Tell Kings and Beggars base,
Yea tell both young and old,
They all are in one case,
And must all to the mould.

And now kinde Host adieu,
Rest thou in earthly Tombe,
Till Christ shall all renew,
And then I'll thee resume.

THE BOWERY AT NIGHT.

Coming up from one of the Brooklyn ferries, after dark, on a sultry summer evening, I take my way through the close-built district of New York City still known as "The Swamp." The narrow streets of the place are deserted by this time, but they have been lively enough during the day with the busy leather-dealers and their teams; for this is the great hide and leather mart of the city, as any one might guess even now in the gloom by the pungent odors that arise on every side. The heavy iron doors and window-shutters of the buildings have been locked and barred for the night; and the thick atmosphere of the place appears to affect the gas-lights, which burn sickly and dim in the street lanterns. Nobody lives here at night. The footfalls of the solitary policeman give out a hollow sound as he paces the narrow _trottoir_ of Ferry Street, in the heart of "The Swamp." Over two hundred years ago, when Governor Peter Stuyvesant pastured his flocks and herds hereabouts, the wayfarer would have been more likely to mark a solitary heron than a solitary policeman; for it was really a swamp then, and much earth-work must have been expended in making the solid ground whereon the buildings now stand. Neither is it probable that, even on the most sultry of summer nights, the nose of old Mynheer Stuyvesant would have been saluted with odors of morocco leather, such as fill the air of "The Swamp" to-night. The wild swamp-flowers, though, gave out some faint perfumes to the night air in those olden times; but the place could hardly have been so still of a summer night as it is now, for the booming of the bullfrog and the piping of his lesser kin must have made night resonant here, and it is reasonable to surmise that owls hooted in the cedar-trees that hung over the tawny sedges of the swamp. "Jack-o'-Lantern" was the only inhabitant who burned gas hereabouts in those times, and he manufactured his own. The nocturnal raccoon edged his way through the alders here, in the old summer nights, and the muskrat built his house among the reeds. Not a raccoon nor a muskrat is the wayfarer likely to meet with here to-night; but the gray rat of civilization is to be dimly discerned, as he lopes along the gutters in his nightly prowl.

There is something very bewildering to the untutored mind in the announcements on the dim, stony door-posts of the stores. Here it is set forth that "Kids and Gorings" are the staple of the concern. Puzzling though the inscription is to me, yet I recognize in it something that is pastoral and significant; for there were kids that skipped, probably, and bulls that gored, when the grass was green here. "Oak and Hemlock Leather," on the next door-post, reads well, for it is redolent of glades that were old before the masonry that now prevails here had been dreamed of. Here we have an announcement of "Russet Roans"; and the next merchant, who is apparently a cannibal or a ghoul, deliberately notifies the public that he deals in "Hatters' Skins." Many of the door-posts announce "Findings" and "Skivers"; and upon one of them I note the somewhat remarkable intimation of "Pulled Wool." Gold Street, also, is redolent of all these things, as I turn into it, nor is there any remission of the pungent trade-stenches of the district until I have gained a good distance up Spruce Street, toward the City Hall Park. Here the Bowery proper, viewed as a great artery of New York trade and travel, may be said to begin. The first reach of it is called Chatham Street; and, having plunged into this, I have nothing before me now but Bowery for a distance of nearly two miles.

Leaving behind me, then, the twinkling lights of the newspaper buildings and those of the City Hall Park northward along Chatham Street I bend my loitering steps. Israel predominates here,--Israel, with its traditional stock in trade of cheap clothing, and bawbles that are made to wear, but not to wear long. The shops here are mostly small, and quite open to the street in front, which gives the place a bazaar-like appearance in summer. Economy in space is practised to the utmost. It is curious to observe how closely crowded the goods (bads might be a more appropriate term for most of them) are outside the shops, as well as inside. The fronts of the houses are festooned with raiment of all kinds, until they look like tents made of variegated dry-goods. Here is a stall so confined that the occupant, rocking in his chair near the farther end of it, stretches his slippered feet well out upon the threshold. It is near closing time now, and many of the dealers, with their wives and children, are sitting out in front of their shops, and, if not under their own vines and fig-trees, at least under their own gaudy flannels and "loud-patterned" cotton goods, which are waving overhead in the sluggish evening breeze. Nothing can be more suggestive of lazily industrious Jewry than this short, thick-set clothier, with the curved nose, and spiral, oily hair, who sits out on the sidewalk and blows clouds from his meerschaum pipe. The women who lounge here are generally stoutish and slatternly, with few clothes on, but plenty of frowzy hair. Here and there one may see a pretty face among the younger girls; and it is sad to reflect that these little Hebrew maids will become stout and slatternly by and by, and have hooked noses like their mothers, and double chins. The labels on the ready-made clothing are curious in their way. Here a pair of trousers in glaring brown and yellow stripes is ticketed with the alluring word, "Lovely." Other garments are offered to the public, with such guaranties as "Original," "Genteel," "Excelsior," and "Our Own." There is not an article among them but has its ticket of recommendation, and another card affixed to each sets forth the lowest price for which it is to be had. The number and variety of hats on show along this queer arcade are very characteristic of the people, with whom hats have long been a traditional article of commerce. Dimly-lighted cellars, down precipitous flights of narrow, dirty steps, up which come fumes of coffee and cooked viands, are to be seen at short intervals, and these restaurants are supported mainly by the denizens of the street. Shops in the windows of which blazes much cheap jewelry abound, and there are also many tobacconists on a small scale.

The lights of Chatham Square twinkle out now; and here I pause before a feature very peculiar to the Bowery,--one of those large, open shops in which vociferous salesmen address from galleries a motley crowd of men and women. One fellow in dirty shirt-sleeves and a Turkish cap flourishes aloft something which looks like a fan, but proves, on closer inspection, to be a group composed of several pocket-combs, a razor, and other small articles, constituting in all a "lot." This he offers, with stentorian utterances, for a price "a hundred per cent less, _you_ bet, than you kin buy 'em for on Broadway." Other salesmen lean furiously over the gallery railing, flourishing shirts, stockings, and garments of every kind, mentionable and unmentionable, in the faces of the gaping loafers below. Sometimes a particular "lot" will attract the attention of a spectator, and he will chaffer about it for a while; but the sales do not often appear to be very brisk. The people one sees in these places are very characteristic of the Bowery. Many of them are what the police call "hard cases,"--men, with coarse, bulldog features, their mustaches trimmed very close, and dyed with something that gives them a foxy-black hue. Women, many of them with children in their arms, have come to look out for bargains. Near the entrance, which is quite open to the street, there stands a man with a light cane in his hand, which he lays every now and then over the shoulders of some objectionable youth marked by him in the crowd. The objectionable youth is a pickpocket, or a "sneak-thief," or both, and the man with the cane is the private detective attached to the place. He is well acquainted with the regular thieves of these localities, and his business is to "spot" them, and keep them from edging in among the loose articles lying about the store. He says that there area great many notorious pickpockets in the crowd, and he looks like one who knows.

Here and there along the Bowery small, shrivelled Chinamen stand by rickety tables, on which a few boxes of cheap cigars are exposed for sale. These foreigners look uneasy in their Bowery clothes, which are of the cheapest quality sold at the places just mentioned. Some of them wear the traditional queue, but they wind it very closely round their heads, probably to avoid the derision of the street boys, to whom a Chinaman's "tail" offers a temptation not to be resisted. Others have allowed their hair to grow in the ordinary manner. They are not communicative when addressed, which may be due, perhaps, to the fact, that but few of them possess more of the English language than is necessary for the purposes of trade. Fireworks and tobacco are the principal articles in which these New York Chinamen deal.

Everybody who passes through the Bowery, and more especially at night, must have observed the remarkable prevalence of small children there. Swarms of well-clad little boys and girls, belonging to the shop-keepers, sport before the doors until a late hour at night. Here is a group of extremely diminutive ones, dancing an elf-like measure to the music of an itinerant organist. Darting about, here, there, and everywhere, are packs of ragged little urchins. They paddle along in the dirty gutter, the black ooze from which they spatter over the passers on the sidewalk, and run with confiding recklessness against the legs of hurrying pedestrians. Ragged and poor as they certainly are, they do not often ask for alms, but continually give themselves up, with wild _abandon_, to chasing each other in and out between the obstacles on the sidewalk. Boys of a better class carry on business here. Watch this one selling fans: he is so well dressed, and so genteel in appearance, that it is easy to see his livelihood does not altogether hang upon a commercial venture so small as the one in which he is at present engaged. That boy has evidently a mercantile turn, and may be a leading city man yet. Farther on, four smart-looking youngsters are indulging in some very frothy beverage at a street soda-water bar. High words are bandied about concerning the quality of the "stamps" offered by them in change, the genuine character of which has been challenged by a boy of their own size, who seems to be in charge of the concern. Numbers of these cheap soda-water stalls are to be seen in the Bowery; and they appear to drive a good business generally, notwithstanding the lager-beer saloons that so generally abound. Many larger establishments for the sale of temperance drinks are open here during the summer months. I notice a good number of people going to and from a large one, the entrance of which is so wide and high that it realizes the idea of "open house," and within which there are a great number of taps from which soda-water, ready mingled with all the various kinds of syrups, is drawn.

Let us cross over the Bowery, and take a look at Division Street, which diverges from it at the neck of Chatham Square, and is one of the curiosities of the district. It is a narrow street, very brilliantly lighted up on one side by the show-windows of the milliners' shops; and a marvellously long row of milliners it is, never ending until it runs against a druggist just where Bayard Street makes an angle with Division. Every window and every show-case by the thresholds is filled with a curious variety of infinitesimally small bonnets and hats, some in a skeleton state, others bedizened in all the fancy modes of the season. Division Street may be termed the milliners' quarter of New York City. Most of the goods displayed here are of a "sensation" character, but that is just what pays on the east side. Yet I would not be understood here as meaning to disparage the west side; and indeed I have been told that ladies from the most fashionable quarters of the city are not above buying their millinery in Division Street. Numbers of young girls are passing to and fro here, pausing ever and anon to gaze in at the windows with longing eyes. If there be "sermons in stones," so are there also in show-cases, and many a sad romance of won and lost grows out of the latter too. The shop-girls have nearly got through their work now, and they lean against the door-posts or stand out on the sidewalk, gossiping in groups of twos and threes. You will observe that there is not a single milliner's shop on the other side of the street. The dealers there are mostly in the hardware and grocery lines, or they represent commerce as tobacconists, confectioners, and such like; but they have nearly all shut up for the night, and the glory of the gas is on the milliner side of the way alone. All along the Bowery the same order of things may be observed to prevail,--the west side being chiefly devoted to the dry-goods trade, while the hardware dealers, grocers, restaurateurs, and numerous other tradespeople occupy the east side.

And now again up the Bowery,--where the lights appear to stretch away into almost endless space. The numerous lines of horse-cars pass and repass each other in long perspective, their lights twinkling like constellations on the rampage, as they run to and fro. The jingle of their harness-bells is pleasant of a sultry night, recalling the sleigh-bells of bracing winter. And the bells have something suggestive in them, too, of the old Bowery pastures, where the flocks and herds roamed at large, and the cow-bells rang bass to the shrill treble that came from the bell-wethers of the flock. But here we have something that is hardly so pastoral in its associations. Out from the portals of a large theatre issues a crowd of roughs, who elbow and jostle each other in their anxiety to reach the nearest place where bad liquor can be had. To-night the theatre has been given over to the gymnasts of the "prize-ring," and they have had a sparring exhibition there. Three or four interesting English pugilists, lately arrived in the city, have been showing their mettle with the gloves on; and, although a dollar a head is the usual admission fee on such occasions, the entertainment is always sure to bring together an immense crowd of the rough class. A little later, and another dense throng will emerge from the Old Bowery Theatre, just over the way. It will be a very mixed crowd of men, women, and children,--the street-boys, with their wondrous variety of sharp faces, owlish faces, wicked faces, and ragged clothes, being constant patrons of this popular east-side theatre. Not far from this are the most dangerous corners and lurking-places to be found anywhere in the Bowery. Here thieves and rowdies of the worst description hang about the doors of the low bar-rooms in the neighborhood, in gangs of five or six, all ready at a signal to concentrate their forces for a rescue, a robbery, or a row of any sort in which plunder may be secured. There are policemen in the Bowery, of course; but in many cases the tactics of the thieves prove to be too much for these guardians of the public peace. One night, for instance, in the merry month of May of this year, a gang of about a dozen armed ruffians boarded a Third Avenue horse-car somewhere in these latitudes, knocked down the conductor with a slung-shot, robbed and otherwise maltreated several of the passengers, and got clear away before the first policeman had made his appearance. Such incidents are by no means uncommon in the Bowery and its purlieus at night. It is quite different now, remember, from the Bowery it was when old Peter Stuyvesant used to dot its cow-paths with the tip of his wooden leg.

Everywhere within the limits of the sidewalk, and sometimes out upon the pavement beyond, stand fruit-stalls loaded with oranges, apples, nuts, and all such fruits as are seasonable and plenty. There are tables on which pink, pulpy melons, flecked with the jet-black seeds, are set forth in slices, to tempt thirsty passengers; tables upon which large rocks of candy are broken up into nuggets to suit customers; and tables upon which bananas alone are exposed for sale. The lamps upon all these flame and smoke in the fitful whiffs of night air. The weighing-machine man is here, with a blazing light suspended in front of his brazen disk; and, as I pass on, I notice that the man who exhibits the moon is dismounting his big telescope, for the night is clouding fast, and his occupation is gone. Two small girls are scraping doleful strains from the sad catgut of violins nearly as big as themselves. They have long been frequenters of the Bowery at night, and were much smaller than their fiddles when I first saw them here. Off the sidewalk, upon the pavement of the street, there is a crowd of men and boys, closely grouped around something in the way of a show. As I approach, old voices of the once familiar woodlands and farm-yards greet my ear. I listen to them, for a brief moment, rapt. Alas! they are spurious. They emanate from a dirty man, who stands in the centre of the group, with a small wooden box slung before him. By his side stands his torch-bearer, who illuminates him with a lamp suspended from a long pole. The performer takes something from his mouth, and, having made a laudatory address regarding its merits, replaces it between his teeth, and resumes his imitations of many birds and quadrupeds. His mocking-bird is very fair; his thrush, passable; but his canary less successful, being rather too reedy and harsh. Farm-yard sounds are thrown off with considerable imitative power. His pig is so good, indeed, that it invites a purchaser, who puts one of the calls into his mouth, and frightfully distorts his features in his wretched efforts to produce the desired grunts and squeaks. The crowing of cocks, the neighing of horses, the lowing of cows, and the bleating of sheep follow in succession,--sounds so appropriate to the memories of the Bowery that was, that one is tempted to applaud the rascal in spite of the swindle he is practising on the crowd. Of course, with the exception of the bird-songs, none of these sounds are produced by the aid of the calls, but are simply the fruit of long and assiduous practice on the part of the gifted performer.

On, on, still up the Bowery, of which the end is not yet. Great numbers of people are passing to and fro, an excess of the feminine element being generally observable. The sidewalks are cumbered with rough wooden cases. As in Chatham Street, the shop-keepers--or "merchants," if they insist on being so designated--are sitting, mostly, outside their doors. Garlands of hosiery and forests of hoop-skirts wave beneath the awnings,--for most of the Bowery shops have awnings,--making the sidewalk in front of them a sort of arcade for the display of their goods. But the time has come now for taking in all these waving things for the night, and the young men and girls of the shops are unhooking them with long poles, or handing them down from step-ladders planted in the middle of the sidewalk. Ranged outside the larger establishments are rows of headless dummies, intended to represent the female form divine, and to show off on their inanimate busts and shoulders the sweetest assortments ever seen of new things in summer fashions. These headless dummies of the Bowery have a very ghastly look at night. They suggest a procession of the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives, who, true to their instincts while in life, nightly revisit the "ladies' furnishing establishments" here, to rummage among scarfs and ribbons, and don for the brief hour before cock-crow the valuable stuffs and stuffings that are yet so dear to them.

Yonder is a group curious for color, and one well worth the consideration of a painter who has a fancy for striking effects. A negro girl with hot corn for sale stands just outside the reflection from a druggist's window, the bars of red and green light from the colored jars in which fall weirdly on the faces of two men who are buying from her. The trade in boots and shoes is briskly carried on, even at this late hour of the night. In the Bowery this trade is very extensive. Long strings of boots and shoes hang from the door-posts. Trays of the same articles are displayed outside, and it seems an easy matter for any nocturnal prowler to help himself, _en passant_, from the boxes full of cordwainers' work that stand on the edge of the footway next the street. On the eastern side of the way, there are fewer lights to be seen now than there were an hour ago. The tradespeople over there, generally, have put up their shutters, and the time for closing the drinking-saloons is at hand; but lights are yet lingering in the pawnbroker's establishments, for the _Mont de Piete_ is an institution of an extremely wakeful, not to say wide-awake, kind.

Now the Bowery widens gradually to the northward, and may be likened to a river that turns to an estuary ere it joins the waters of the main. The vast and hideous brown-stone delta of the Cooper Institute divides it into two channels,--Third Avenue to the right, Fourth Avenue to the left. Properly the Bowery may be said to end here; but only a few blocks farther on, at the corner of Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street, is marked the spot where stood the gateway leading to the original _Bouwery_, the old mansion in which Peter Stuyvesant dwelt when New Amsterdam was, but as yet no New York. And here, till within a few months, stood the traditional Stuyvesant pear-tree, said to have been brought from Holland, and planted by the hands of the old Dutch Governor himself. Spring-time after spring-time, until within a year or two past, the Stuyvesant pear-tree used to blossom, and its blossoms run to fruit. It lived, in a very gnarled and rheumatic condition, until the 26th of February last, when it sank quietly down to rest, and nothing but the rusty old iron railing is left to show where it stood.

STEPHEN C. FOSTER AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY.

Thirty-six years ago a young man, about twenty-five years of age, of a commanding height,--six feet full, the heels of his boots not included in the reckoning,--and dressed in scrupulous keeping with the fashion of the time, might have been seen sauntering idly along one of the principal streets of Cincinnati. To the few who could claim acquaintance with him he was known as an actor, playing at the time referred to a short engagement as light comedian in a theatre of that city. He does not seem to have attained to any noticeable degree of eminence in his profession, but he had established for himself a reputation among jolly fellows in a social way. He could tell a story, sing a song, and dance a hornpipe, after a style which, however unequal to complete success on the stage, proved, in private performance to select circles rendered appreciative by accessory refreshments, famously triumphant always. If it must be confessed that he was deficient in the more profound qualities, it is not to be inferred that he was destitute of all the distinguishing, though shallower, virtues of character. He had the merit, too, of a proper appreciation of his own capacity; and his aims never rose above that capacity. As a superficial man he dealt with superficial things, and his dealings were marked by tact and shrewdness. In his sphere he was proficient, and he kept his wits upon the alert for everything that might be turned to professional and profitable use. Thus it was that, as he sauntered along one of the main thoroughfares of Cincinnati, as has been written, his attention was suddenly arrested by a voice ringing clear and full above the noises of the street, and giving utterance, in an unmistakable dialect, to the refrain of a song to this effect:--

"Turn about an' wheel about do jis so,
An' ebery time I run about I jump Jim Crow."

Struck by the peculiarities of the performance, so unique in style, matter, and "character" of delivery, the player listened on. Were not these elements--was the suggestion of the instant--which might admit of higher than mere street or stable-yard development? As a national or "race" illustration, behind the footlights, might not "Jim Crow" and a black face tickle the fancy of pit and circle, as well as the "Sprig of Shillalah" and a red nose? Out of the suggestion leaped the determination; and so it chanced that the casual hearing of a song trolled by a negro stage-driver, lolling lazily on the box of his vehicle, gave origin to a school of music destined to excel in popularity all others, and to make the name of the obscure actor, W. D. RICE, famous.

As his engagement at Cincinnati had nearly expired, Rice deemed it expedient to postpone a public venture in the newly projected line until the opening of a fresh engagement should assure him opportunity to share fairly the benefit expected to grow out of the experiment. This engagement had already been entered into; and accordingly, shortly after, in the autumn of 1830, he left Cincinnati for Pittsburg.

The old theatre of Pittsburg occupied the site of the present one, on Fifth Street. It was an unpretending structure, rudely built of boards, and of moderate proportions, but sufficient, nevertheless, to satisfy the taste and secure the comfort of the few who dared to face consequences and lend patronage to an establishment under the ban of the Scotch-Irish Calvinists. Entering upon duty at the "Old Drury" of the "Birmingham of America," Rice prepared to take advantage of his opportunity. There was a negro in attendance at Griffith's Hotel, on Wood Street, named Cuff,--an exquisite specimen of his sort,--who won a precarious subsistence by letting his open mouth as a mark for boys to pitch pennies into, at three paces, and by carrying the trunks of passengers from the steamboats to the hotels. Cuff was precisely the subject for Rice's purpose. Slight persuasion induced him to accompany the actor to the theatre, where he was led through the private entrance, and quietly ensconced behind the scenes. After the play, Rice, having shaded his own countenance to the "contraband" hue, ordered Cuff to disrobe, and proceeded to invest himself in the cast-off apparel. When the arrangements were complete, the bell rang, and Rice, habited in an old coat forlornly dilapidated, with a pair of shoes composed equally of patches and places for patches on his feet, and wearing a coarse straw hat in a melancholy condition of rent and collapse over a dense black wig of matted moss, waddled into view. The extraordinary apparition produced an instant effect. The crash of peanuts ceased in the pit, and through the circles passed a murmur and a bustle of liveliest expectation. The orchestra opened with a short prelude, and to its accompaniment Rice began to sing, delivering the first line by way of introductory recitative:--

"O, Jim Crow's come to town, as you all must know,
An' he wheel about, he turn about, he do jis so,
An' ebery time he wheel about he jump Jim Crow."

The effect was electric. Such a thunder of applause as followed was never heard before within the shell of that old theatre. With each succeeding couplet and refrain the uproar was renewed, until presently, when the performer, gathering courage from the favorable temper of his audience, ventured to improvise matter for his distiches from familiarly known local incidents, the demonstrations were deafening.

Now it happened that Cuff, who meanwhile was crouching in dishabille under concealment of a projecting _flat_ behind the performer, by some means received intelligence, at this point, of the near approach of a steamer to the Monongahela Wharf. Between himself and others of his color in the same line of business, and especially as regarded a certain formidable competitor called Ginger, there existed an active rivalry in the baggage-carrying business. For Cuff to allow Ginger the advantage of an undisputed descent upon the luggage of the approaching vessel would be not only to forfeit all "considerations" from the passengers, but, by proving him a laggard in his calling, to cast a damaging blemish upon his reputation. Liberally as he might lend himself to a friend, it could not be done at that sacrifice. After a minute or two of fidgety waiting for the song to end, Cuff's patience could endure no longer, and, cautiously hazarding a glimpse of his profile beyond the edge of the flat, he called in a hurried whisper: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, must have my clo'se! Massa Griffif wants me,--steamboat's comin'!"

The appeal was fruitless. Massa Rice did not hear it, for a happy hit at an unpopular city functionary had set the audience in a roar in which all other sounds were lost. Waiting some moments longer, the restless Cuff, thrusting his visage from under cover into full three-quarter view this time, again charged upon the singer in the same words, but with more emphatic voice: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, must have my clo'se! Massa Griffif wants me,--_steamboat's comin'!_"

A still more successful couplet brought a still more tempestuous response, and the invocation of the baggage-carrier was unheard and unheeded. Driven to desperation, and forgetful in the emergency of every sense of propriety, Cuff, in ludicrous undress as he was, started from his place, rushed upon the stage, and, laying his hand upon the performer's shoulder, called out excitedly: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, gi' me nigga's hat,--nigga's coat,--nigga's shoes,--gi' me nigga's t'ings! Massa Griffif wants 'im,--STEAMBOAT'S COMIN'!!"

The incident was the touch, in the mirthful experience of that night, that passed endurance. Pit and circles were one scene of such convulsive merriment that it was impossible to proceed in the performance; and the extinguishment of the footlights, the fall of the curtain, and the throwing wide of the doors for exit, indicated that the entertainment was ended.

Such were the circumstances--authentic in every particular--under which the first work of the distinct art of Negro Minstrelsy was presented.

Next day found the song of Jim Crow, in one style of delivery or another, on everybody's tongue. Clerks hummed it serving customers at shop counters, artisans thundered it at their toils to the time-beat of sledge and of tilt-hammer, boys whistled it on the streets, ladies warbled it in parlors, and house-maids repeated it to the clink of crockery in kitchens. Rice made up his mind to profit further by its popularity: he determined to publish it. Mr. W. C. Peters, afterwards of Cincinnati, and well known as a composer and publisher, was at that time a music-dealer on Market Street in Pittsburg. Rice, ignorant himself of the simplest elements of musical science, waited upon Mr. Peters, and solicited his co-operation in the preparation of his song for the press. Some difficulty was experienced before Rice could be induced to consent to the correction of certain trifling informalities, rhythmical mainly, in his melody; but, yielding finally, the air as it now stands, with a pianoforte accompaniment by Mr. Peters, was put upon paper. The manuscript was put into the hands of Mr. John Newton, who reproduced it on stone with an elaborately embellished title-page, including a portrait of the subject of the song, precisely as it has been copied through succeeding editions to the present time. It was the first specimen of lithography ever executed in Pittsburg.

Jim Crow was repeated nightly throughout the season at the theatre; and when that was ended, Scale's Long Room, at the corner of Third and Market streets, was engaged for rehearsals exclusively in the Ethiopian line. "Clar de Kitchen" soon appeared as a companion piece, followed speedily by "Lucy Long," "Sich a Gittin' up Stairs," "Long-Tail Blue," and so on, until quite a _repertoire_ was at command from which to select for an evening's entertainment.

Rice remained in Pittsburg some two years. He then visited Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, whence he sailed for England, where he met with high favor in his novel character, married, and remained for some time. He then returned to New York, and shortly afterwards died.

With Rice's retirement his art seems to have dropped into disuse as a feature of theatrical entertainment, and thenceforward, for many years, to have survived only in the performances of circuses and menageries. Between acts the _extravaganzaist_ in cork and wool would appear, and to the song of "Coal-Black Rose," or "Jim along Joe," or "Sittin' on a Rail," command, with the clown and monkey, full share of admiration in the arena. At first he performed _solus_, and to the accompaniment of the "show" band; but the school was progressive; couples presently appeared, and, dispensing with the aid of foreign instruments, delivered their melodies to the more appropriate music of the banjo. To the banjo, in a short time, were added the bones. The art had now outgrown its infancy, and, disdaining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded from the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments--perhaps we should say implements--of music; introduced the hoe-down and the conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and, peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, went on and prospered.

One of the earliest companies of this sort was organized and sustained under the leadership of Nelson Kneass, who, while skilful in his manipulations of the banjo, was quite an accomplished pianist besides, as well as a favorite ballad-singer. He had some pretensions as a composer, but has left his name identified with no work of any interest. His company met with such success in Pittsburg, that its visits were repeated from season to season, until about the year 1845, when Mr. Murphy, the leading caricaturist, determining to resume the business in private life which he had laid aside on going upon the stage, the company was disbanded.

Up to this period, if negro minstrelsy had made some progress, it was not marked by much improvement. Its charm lay essentially in its simplicity, and to give it full development, retaining unimpaired meanwhile such original excellences as Nature in Sambo shapes and inspires, was the task of the time. But the task fell into bungling hands. The intuitive utterance of the art was misapprehended or perverted altogether. Its naive misconceits were construed into coarse blunders; its pleasing incongruities were resolved into meaningless jargon. Gibberish became the staple of its composition. Slang phrases and crude jests, all odds and ends of vulgar sentiment, without regard to the idiosyncrasies of the negro, were caught up, jumbled together into rhyme, and, rendered into the lingo presumed to be genuine, were ready for the stage. The wit of the performance was made to consist in quibble and equivoke, and in the misuse of language, after the fashion, but without the refinement, of Mrs. Partington. The character of the music underwent a change. Original airs were composed from time to time, but the songs were more generally adaptations of tunes in vogue among Hard-Shell Baptists in Tennessee and at Methodist camp-meetings in Kentucky, and of backwoods melodies, such as had been invented for native ballads by "settlement" masters and brought into general circulation by stage-drivers, wagoners, cattle--drovers, and other such itinerants of earlier days. Music of the concert-room was also drafted into the service, and selections from the inferior operas, with the necessary mutilations of the text, of course; so that the whole school of negro minstrelsy threatened a lapse, when its course of decline was suddenly and effectually arrested.

A certain Mr. Andrews, dealer in confections, cakes, and ices, being stirred by a spirit of enterprise, rented, in the year 1845, a second-floor hall on Wood Street, Pittsburgh supplied it with seats and small tables, advertised largely, employed cheap attractions,--living statues, songs, dances, &c.,--a stage, hired a piano, and, upon the dissolution of his band, engaged the services of Nelson Kneass as musician and manager. Admittance was free, the ten-cent ticket required at the door being received at its cost value within towards the payment of whatever might be called for at the tables. To keep alive the interest of the enterprise, premiums were offered, from time to time, of a bracelet for the best conundrum, a ring with a ruby setting for the best comic song, and a golden chain for the best sentimental song. The most and perhaps only really valuable reward--a genuine and very pretty silver cup, exhibited night after night, beforehand--was promised to the author of the best original negro song, to be presented before a certain date, and to be decided upon by a committee designated for the purpose by the audience at that time.

Quite a large array of competitors entered the lists; but the contest would be hardly worthy of mention, save as it was the occasion of the first appearance of him who was to prove the reformer of his art, and to a sketch of whose career the foregoing pages are chiefly preliminary.

Stephen Collins Foster was born in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, on the 4th of July, 1826. He was the youngest child of his father, William B. Foster,--originally a merchant of Pittsburg, and afterwards Mayor of his native city, member of the State Legislature, and a Federal officer under President Buchanan, with whom he was closely connected by marriage. The evidences of a musical capacity of no common order were apparent in Stephen at an early period. Going into a shop, one day, when about seven years old, he picked up a flageolet, the first he had ever seen, and comprehending, after an experiment or two, the order of the scale on the instrument, was able in a few minutes, uninstructed, to play any of the simple tunes within the octave with which he was acquainted. A Thespian society, composed of boys in their higher teens, was organized in Alleghany, into which Stephen, although but in his ninth year, was admitted, and of which, from his agreeable rendering of the favorite airs of the day, he soon became the leading attraction.

At thirteen years of age, he made his first attempt at composition, producing for a public occasion at the seminary in Athens, Ohio, where he was a student at the time, the "Tioga Waltz," which, although quite a pretty affair, he never thought worthy of preservation. In the same year, shortly afterwards, he composed music to the song commencing, "Sadly to mine heart appealing," now embraced in the list of his publications, but not brought out until many years later.

Stephen was a boy of delicate constitution, not addicted to the active sports or any of the more vigorous habits of boys of his age. His only companions were a few intimate friends, and, thus secluded, his character naturally took a sensitive, meditative cast, and his growing disrelish for severer tasks was confirmed. As has been intimated, he entered as a pupil at Athens; but as the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber, he devoted himself to this art.

At the age of sixteen he composed and published the song, "Open thy Lattice, Love," which was admired, but did not meet with extraordinary success. In the year following he went to Cincinnati, entering the counting-room of his brother, and discharging the duties of his place with faithfulness and ability. His spare hours were still devoted, however, to his favorite pursuit, although his productions were chiefly preserved in manuscript, and kept for the private entertainment of his friends. He continued with his brother nearly three years.