Chapter IV: Part 4

It was the last Sunday in September, and the blue sky arched above the Park, clear, cloudless, unfathomable. The afternoon sun was hot, and high overhead. Now and then a wandering breeze came without warning and lingered only for a moment, fluttering the broad leaves of the aquatic plants in the fountain below the Terrace. At the Casino, on the hill above the Mall, men and women were eating and drinking, some of them inside the dingy and sprawling building, and some of them out-doors at little tables set in curving lines under the gayly colored awnings, which covered the broad walk bending away from the door of the restaurant. From the bandstand in the thick of the throng below came the brassy staccato of a cornet, rendering "The Last Rose of Summer." Even the Ramble was full of people; and the young couples, seeking sequestered nooks under the russet trees, were often forced to share their benches with strangers. Beneath the reddening maples lonely men lounged on the grass by themselves, or sat solitary and silent in the midst of chattering family groups.

The crowd was cosmopolitan and unhurried. For the most part it was good-natured and well-to-do. There was not a beggar to be seen; there was no appealing poverty. Fathers of families there were in abundance, well-fed and well-clad, with their wives and with their sons' wives and with their sons' children. Maids in black dresses and white aprons pushed baby-carriages. Young girls in groups of three and four giggled and gossiped. Young men in couples leaned over the bridge of the Lake, smoking and exchanging opinions. There was a general air of prosperity gladly displaying itself in the sunshine; the misery and the want and the despair of the great city were left behind and thrust out of mind.

Two or three yards after a portly German with a little boy holding each of his hands while a third son still younger rode ahead astride of his father's solid cane, there came two slim Japanese gentlemen, small and sallow, in their neatly cut coats and trousers. A knot of laughing mulatto-girls followed, arm in arm; they, too, seemed ill-dressed in the accepted costume of civilization, especially when contrasted with half a dozen Italians who passed slowly, looking about them with curious glances; the men in worn olive velveteens and with gold rings in their ears, the women with bright colors in their skirts and with embroidery on their neckerchiefs. Where the foot-path touched the carriage-drive there stood a plain but comfortably plump Irishwoman, perhaps thirty years of age; she had a baby in her arms, and a little girl of scant three held fast to her patched calico dress; with her left hand she was proffering a basket containing apples, bananas, and grapes; two other children, both under six, played about her skirts; and two more, a boy and a girl, kept within sight of her--the girl, about ten years old, having a basket of her own filled with thin round brown cakes; and the boy, certainly not yet thirteen, holding out a wooden box packed with rolls of lozenges, put up in red and yellow and green papers. Now and again the mother or one of the children made a sale to a pedestrian on his way to the music. The younger children watched, with noisy glee, the light leaps of a gray squirrel bounding along over the grass behind the path and balancing himself with his horizontal tail.

The broad carriage-drive was as crowded as any of the foot-paths. Bicyclists in white sweaters and black stockings toiled along in groups of three and four, bent forward over the bars of their machines. Politicians with cigars in the corners of their mouths held in impatient trotters. Park omnibuses heavily laden with women and children drew up for an instant before the Terrace, and then went on again to skirt the Lake. Old-fashioned and shabby landaus lumbered along with strangers from the hotels. Now and then there came in sight a hansom cab with a young couple framed in the front of it, or a jolting dog-cart, on the high seat of which a British-looking young man was driving tandem. Here and there were other private carriages--coupes and phaetons, for the most part, with once and again a four-in-hand coach rumbling heavily on the firmly packed road.

A stylish victoria sped along, spick and span, with its glistening harness and its jingling steel chains, with its stalwart pair of iron-gray steppers and with two men on the box, correct and impassive. Suddenly, as it passed close to the walk at the end of the Terrace, the coachman drew up sharply, pulling his horses back on their haunches and swearing inaudibly at the plump Irishwoman who had dropped her basket of fruit just in time to rescue one of her children from being run over.

"It's more careful ye ought to be!" cried the mother, as she stood again on the walk with her daughter clasped to her waist.

"We are very sorry, indeed," said the lady in the victoria, leaning forward. "It was an accident."

"An accident, was it?" returned the Irishwoman. "An' it's an accident, then, ye wouldn't like if it was yer own children ye were runnin' over like that."

The childless couple in the carriage looked at each other for a moment only; and then the husband said, swiftly, "Drive on, John!"

He was a man of fifty, spare in frame and round-shouldered; he had a keen glance, and a weary smile came and went on his lips, not hidden by his sparse gray moustache. His wife was a woman of perhaps thirty, tall, dark, with passionate eyes and a full figure.

She was still leaning forward, clinching the side of the carriage as it turned northward and rolled along by the side of the Lake. Her voice showed that her excitement had not subsided, as she faced her husband again and said: "John is getting very careless. That is the third time this week he has nearly run over a child!"

"He has not quite run over one yet. It will be time enough to discharge him when he does," her husband answered, calmly. "That little girl there is none the worse for her fright. She seemed a pretty little thing, and she has been saved to grow up in a tenement-house and to go to the devil ten years from now. So her mother has cause to be thankful."

His wife looked at him indignantly. "I suppose," she said, "you mean that it is a pity that John didn't run over the child and kill her."

"I didn't mean that exactly," he responded. "But perhaps it is true enough. Death is not the worst thing in this world, you know."

"You are always talking of dying," returned his young wife, impatiently. "I wonder you don't commit suicide."

"I have thought of it," he answered, looking at her with a tolerant smile. "But life amuses me still--I have so much curiosity, you know. But I might do it, if I were sure I could have the privilege of coming back to see what you will be up to when I'm gone."

She looked straight before her and made no answer, keeping her lips firmly compressed.

There was a touch of tenderness in his tone as he went on, a curious cynical tenderness, quite characteristic of him. "Don't let some rascal marry you for my money. That would annoy me, I confess. And yet, I don't know why I should suggest the possibility of such a thing, for you will be a most fascinating widow."

She gazed ahead steadily and said nothing, but she had joined her hands together, and her fingers kept moving.

"Still," he continued, "I'm afraid I'm good for ten years more. We're a hardy stock, you know. My father lived to be eighty, and he was fifty when I was born. Besides, you take such good care of me always."

He held out his hand to her, and she took it and clasped it tight in both of hers, while the tears brimmed her eyes.

"But perhaps you are letting me stay out too long this afternoon," he said. "It is balmy, I know, but I'm getting tired already."

"John," she cried, hastily, "you may turn now, and go home."

"I don't want you to lose this lovely September afternoon," her husband declared. "Take me home, and come back to the Park here for an hour, while I have a nap, if I can."

Just then there was a break in the stream of vehicles, and the coachman took advantage of it and turned the horses' heads southward. In five minutes the victoria swerved to the westward, leaving the Lake behind, and making for the Riverside Drive.

The Lake was gay with boats. Black gondolas with white canopies and brilliant American flags were propelled adroitly by their standing boat-men. Light canoes were paddled briskly in and out of the bays and channels, where the ducks and swans swam lazily about. Young fellows in their shirt-sleeves tugged inexpertly at the oars of row-boats laden down with young women. By regular and easy strokes the Park watermen rowed the capacious barges, with their striped awnings, in the prescribed course around the Lake. The oars flashed in the flickering sunlight, and the sunshine gilded the prows of the distant canoes as they shot across the vista. The yellow leaves of the maples high on the bank over the opposite shore fluttered loosely away on the doubtful breeze, and at last fell languidly into the water. To the west a towering apartment-house lifted itself aloft over the edge of the Park, and seemed to shorten the space between. To the east the gilded dome of a new synagogue rose over the tree-tops. Above all was the blue concave of the calm and illimitable sky.

When the victoria, with its two men on the box and with its pair of high-stepping horses, returned to the Park, and skirted the Lake again, and approached the Terrace, the lady sat in it alone. As she came in sight of the Mall she bent forward, eagerly looking for the little girl whom they had almost run over half an hour earlier.

Near the Terrace she saw the pleasant-faced Irishwoman, with her basket of fruit in one hand and the baby in the other arm; the three little children were playing about their mother's feet, while the elder boy and girl were only a few yards away.

The lonely woman in the victoria bade the coachman draw up.

Seeing the carriage stop at the side of the road the Irishwoman came forward, proffering her fruit. Then she recognized the lady and checked her approach, hesitating.

The handsome woman in the carriage smiled, and said, "Which is the little girl we almost ran over?"

"That's the one," answered the mother, indicating the slip of a child who was now clasping the edge of the fruit-basket while staring at the strange lady with wide-open eyes.

"What a pretty child she is!" said the lady. "I hope she is none the worse for her fright?"

"Ye didn't break any bones, if that's what ye mean," the mother responded.

"And how old is she?" was the next question.

"She'll be three years old come Christmas," was the answer.

The lady in the carriage felt in her pocket, and brought out her purse and looked through it.

"Here," she said at last, as she took out a five-dollar gold-piece; "here is something I wish you would give her on Christmas morning as a present from me. Will you?"

"I will that," the mother replied, taking the money, "and gladly too. It's richer than her sisters she'll be now."

"How many children have you?" the lady inquired.

"Six; thank ye, ma'am, for askin'," was the response, "an' all well and hearty."

"Six?" echoed the woman in the victoria, with a hungry gleam in her eyes. "You have six children?"

"It's six I have," the mother answered; "and it's a fine lot they are altogether, though I say it that shouldn't."

The lady put her hand in her purse again.

"Buy something with this for the others," she said, placing a bank-note in the Irishwoman's hands. Then she raised her voice and added, "You may drive on, John!"

As the victoria rolled away to the westward the fruit-vender courtesied, and the children all looked after the carriage with interest.

"That lady must be very rich," said the eldest boy, the one who had the lozenges for sale. "I shouldn't wonder if she had two millions of dollars!"

"She must be very happy," the eldest girl added. "I suppose she can have ice-cream every day, and go to the Seaside Home for two weeks whenever she wants."

"It's a kind heart she has anyway, for all her money," was the mother's comment, as she unfolded the bank-note and saw the X in the corner of it.

Meanwhile the lady in the victoria was eaten with bitter thoughts as the carriage rattled along in the brilliant sunshine beneath the unclouded sky.

"Six children!" she was saying to herself. "That Irishwoman has six children! Why is it that some women have so much luck?"

(1893.)

THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING

The more immaterial part of the banquet was about to begin. The guests had made an end of eating, and the waiters were filling the small cups with black coffee, and passing boxes of cigars and cigarettes. At the five long tables which gridironed the great room the hum of conversation rose higher and higher; while at the shorter table, raised on the platform at the western end of the hall, there was almost silence, as the men who were to make speeches saw the oratorical moment approaching. The musicians, hidden behind a screen of greenery, were playing a medley of the latest popular airs; and here and there, at the tables below, a little group of the diners now and again took up a chorus, with intermittent energy, to the amusement of the ladies who were arriving and filling rapidly the broad boxes in the galleries.

The organizers of the dinner had felt that it was a great occasion, and they had sought to make it memorable artistically. The severe white of the beautifully proportioned concert-hall was relieved by foliage plants, massed and scattered with a delicate understanding of decorative effect; against the absolutely colorless walls, with their carved caryatides, were palms in pots; gayly colored silken banners floated down from the ceiling; and everywhere, on the ceiling and the walls and the balconies and the platforms, the electric lights glowed and twinkled, illuminating the lofty hall with steady brilliancy.

Near the eastern end of one of the long tables there sat a young man--at least, he was barely thirty. He was so placed that he had before him the whole scene. He had an uninterrupted view of the raised table, where the speakers were absorbed in self-communion. He commanded the entrance to the gallery opposite, and he could see the ladies as they arrived in little groups, eager for the unwonted pleasure of attendance at a great public dinner. He could hear the feminine chatter rising shrill above the masculine babble below. He gazed at the boxes curiously, as though he did not know any of the ladies in them; and he remained quiet while the diners about him at that end of the table exchanged salutations with the occupants of one box or another. Apparently he had few if any acquaintances even on the floor of the hall, the men on each side of him being generally engaged in conversation with their neighbors.

Seemingly his solitude was lightly borne, and he found solace for it in amused observation of the gathering. He lighted his own cigar, and was soon helping to make the blue haze which hung over the tables, rising in time almost to the level of the boxes in the long balconies.

Yet he was not averse to conversation, and when his right-hand neighbor turned back to pick up a fresh cigarette, he took occasion to say, "It isn't usual to let ladies in at dinners here in New York, is it?"

"No," his right-hand neighbor responded, with a slight but obvious German accent, "I don't think it is. I've been lifing in New York for a long vile now--'most eleven years--and I never saw it before."

Then the right-hand neighbor, having lighted his cigarette, sat back in his chair again and resumed his interrupted talk with the man on the other side of him.

The young man who was apparently a stranger was allowed to keep silence only for a minute or two, however, as his left-hand neighbor, to whom he had hardly spoken during the dinner, now engaged him in conversation.

"I thought it was about time they did that," said the neighbor, indicating the waiters who were removing the potted orange-trees and the sugar-trophies from the upper table. "Now we can see who's who."

"I suppose those are the more distinguished guests?" the young man suggested.

"Most of the men who are going to make speeches are up there," the neighbor responded. "Hello, hello! there's Alexander Macgregor down at that end there, the one with the full red beard. He's the President of the St. Andrew's Society. He's a first-rate American, too, for all he was born in Edinburgh. You know, he's the man they call the 'Star-spangled Scotchman.'"

"And who is that clean-shaved, clean-looking, fair-haired man next to him?" asked the young man.

"That?" the neighbor replied, "that's--oh, I forget his name--but he's the President of the St. George's Society, I think. He's an Englishman--that is, he was; I suppose he's been naturalized--but then you can never tell about Englishmen, can you? They will live in a place for years, and they will be Britons to the backbone all the time."

"Who is the presiding officer?" was the next question.

"Don't you know _him_?" the neighbor retorted. "Why, that's Crowninshield Eliot, the lawyer. He used to be President of the New England Society. He's a clever man and he makes a rattling good speech sometimes, but then he's mighty uncertain. He may speak well or he may make a bad break. A speech from him is a regular grab-bag--you never know what you are going to have. But things don't get rusty when he is around, I tell you. You can rely on him to wake all the other speakers up. And I guess we shall have some fun before we get through; it isn't often you see so many representative New-Yorkers together; it's really a typical gathering."

The young man made no response to this, being for the moment busy with his own ironic thoughts.

"Now there's a man who will make the fur fly if he gets a chance," continued the loquacious neighbor, "that tall, thin, dignified-looking man, with the black goatee and mustache; that's Colonel Fairfax. He's Secretary of the Southern Society--all rebels, you know, but reconstructed by this time, most of them. He's District Attorney for the second term now, and you ought to hear him talk to a jury. He could get a verdict against the angel Gabriel for stealing the silver trumpet. When I was on the grand jury last year he--"

Here the young man's neighbor interrupted himself to say, "Hello, hello! that is odd, isn't it? Right next to Colonel Fairfax is the man who was foreman of our grand jury; I didn't catch sight of him till that waiter took away that candy Statue of Liberty. See him? The bald one with the scar on his jaw; it's a bullet wound he got at Shiloh. That's S. Colfax Morrison; he was major of the 200th Ohio, but he's been living in New York for ten years now at least. That's 'the Ohio idea' they talk about: to come to New York to live as soon as they can. I was born in Ohio myself."

And the talker let his loquacity taper off into a laugh, in which the young man joined courteously.

There was a sudden diminution of the roar of talk as the gentleman sitting in the middle of the raised table rose to his feet and rapped for silence. Even in the boxes, now filled to overflowing with ladies, the chatter ceased as the man who had been selected to preside over the dinner began his remarks by recalling the event they had met to commemorate. In felicitous phrases and with neatly turned strokes of humor he declared the reason why they were assembled together. And when he had made an end of this, he announced that the first toast of the evening would be "New York, the Empire City, sitting at the gates of commerce, and holding the highways of trade."

There was a burst of applause and a pushing back of chairs as all the guests rose with their glasses in their hands.

Then the presiding officer prepared to introduce the speaker who was to make the response to this important toast.

"I saw only this morning," he began again, "the report of some remarks made by a Senator from Nevada, in which New York was called a 'city of kites and crows.' There are Congressmen who cannot open their mouths without disseminating miscellaneous misinformation; and the only appropriate retort would be with the plain-spoken bowie of the mining-camp or with the unambiguous derringer of Nevada. No adequate answer is possible in the sterilized vocabulary permitted to us by the conventions of modern society. And yet it is well that once in a while New York should assert herself--that she should celebrate herself--that she should rest from her mighty labors, if only for a moment, to contemplate her own great work. We are fortunate in having with us here to-night a man who can do justice to this imposing theme, a man who loves New York as we all love her, who is proud of New York as we are all proud of her--a man whom there is no need for me to introduce to an assembly of New-Yorkers. Works of supererogation are discountenanced, and who is there here who does not know Horace Chauncy?"

As the chairman ceased the gentleman who had been sitting at his right rose, and immediately there was great applause from all parts of the hall. Men clapped their hands and rapped upon the table with the handles of their fruit-knives. Even the ladies in the boxes waved their handkerchiefs.

Then, as the chairman, having done his duty, took his seat, there was the customary hum of anticipated enjoyment, dying away swiftly as Mr. Chauncy prepared to speak.

The left-hand neighbor of the young man down at the far end of the long table turned to him again, and said, "Now you keep your eyes open. I shouldn't wonder if this was the speech of the evening."

The young man looked at the new speaker and liked his face, at once masterful and intelligent. Mr. Chauncy's attitude was one of conscious strength and of perfect ease. He was a man of fifty, perhaps, with gray hair and a curling gray mustache.

"Upon a mellow October night like this," the speaker began, and his voice was rich and firm, while his delivery was as clear as a line engraving--"upon a mellow October night like this, possible in no other city in this country or in Europe, I think, and illustrative of the fact that here in New York we have really a climate, while most of the other great towns of the world have only weather--upon a night like this, and under this graceful tower, uplifting its loveliness into the azure air and topped by a Diana fairer than that of the Ephesians smiling down upon gardens more beautiful than any ever hanging in Babylon, there is no need for me to present any defence of the Empire City, or to proffer any apology for her. If you seek for proof of her superiority, look about you here to-night, and remember that nowhere else in the United States could any such company as this be gathered together; nowhere else in the United States is there a banquet-hall so beautiful; nowhere else in the United States would a feast like this be graced by the presence of so many lovely women. Yet I feel that I should be derelict to my duty--that I should let slip a precious occasion--if I did not dwell for a while upon a few of the many things in the history of this city which give her proud pre-eminence; which make her what she is--the mighty and magnificent metropolis of a great people."

Again the applause broke forth. After a pause the speaker continued, having the attention of every man and woman in the hall. Even as he warmed to his subject he preserved the perfection of his delivery, and he poured forth facts, figures, illustrations, one after the other, with never a broken accent or a blurred syllable.

"I will not detain you by detailing the many natural advantages of New York--the noble river which sweeps by on one side and the arm of the ocean which embraces the other, and the spacious and beautiful bay, with its harborage ample for all the fleets of all the nations of the earth. It is not my purpose to-night to linger long over the works of art which make this island of ours distinguished as the works of nature have made possible her prosperity; and therefore I shall say nothing of the Statue of Liberty, of the Brooklyn Bridge, of the Riverside Drive, of the libraries and the museums and the colleges and the churches; I shall even say nothing of Central Park, truly the finest single work of art yet produced by any American, and, simply as a work of art, unequalled by any pleasure-ground of Europe."

There was another burst of applause, but the speaker scarcely waited for it to die down before he began again.

"Passing by these works of God and man, ever present before our eyes, I am going to call your attention to things less material--to things which do not cling to our remembrance as they ought. Secure in our material prosperity, we New-Yorkers do not always recall those incidents in the history of the city which deserve to be forever memorable. We are not often accused of modesty--but we are over-modest, are we not?--when we allow our children to be taught that the first bloodshed of the Revolution was in the Boston Massacre, forgetting that the Liberty Pole fight took place in New York six weeks earlier. It was here in New York that the Stamp Act Congress met, the forerunner of the federation of the American colonies which cast off the British yoke. And in the long and weary war of the Revolution only one of the thirteen colonies furnished its full quota of men, money, and supplies--and that colony was the colony of New York!"

Once more was the speaker interrupted by a tumult of approval; and once more he went on again as soon as he could make himself heard.

"When the critical period in the history of this country came--that is, when the need of a new constitution was felt by all--no men had a larger share in the making of that constitution than two New-Yorkers, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, while the nervous English of that great instrument was due to a third New-Yorker, Gouverneur Morris. It was in New York that the foundations of American literature were laid, by the publication of _Knickerbocker's History_, the earliest book to be printed in America which keeps its popularity to-day--and more than fourscore years have not yet tarnished its humor. To the author of this immortal book, to Washington Irving, was due the first work of American authorship which won acceptance outside of the boundaries of the United States. And as it was the _Sketch-Book_ of Washington Irving which was the first American book to win its way in England, so it was the _Spy_ of another citizen of New York, Fenimore Cooper, which was the first American book to achieve fame outside of the English language. It was here in New York that our American literature was first fostered, as it is here in New York that our American authors are most abundant, most highly honored, and most richly rewarded."

The speaker paused again, but only for a moment.

"As in letters, so in the arts. Here in New York the National Academy of Design was founded, and later the Society of American Artists; and to two painters of New York, to Robert Fulton and to Samuel F. B. Morse, we owe the steamboat and the telegraph. Here in New York was founded the Children's Aid Society--than which no city in the world has a nobler charity--the first of the kind and the most successful. Here in New York, also, Peter Cooper established the first institution intended to provide instruction to all ambitious youth--an institution that has been imitated in almost every city of the Union, although no city of the Union has ever had a citizen more esteemed or better beloved than was Peter Cooper here in New York. It is not in 'a city of kites and crows' that men of Peter Cooper's character choose to dwell; it is not in 'a city of kites and crows' that men of Peter Cooper's character are cherished and revered."

Here the speech was again broken into by prolonged applause. Men rose to their feet and cheered, waving their napkins over their heads.

When there was quiet once more the speaker went on:

"After years of peace and of prosperity, the people of the United States suddenly found themselves face to face with armed rebellion, and war loomed before us inevitable. New York was ready then as always. The first regiment to reach the capital of the country--to secure it against traitors--was a regiment of New York City militia. Nor was there ever after any lack of men here in this city who despised the snares of death and defied the pains of hell, and who went into battle bravely, and gayly, and glad that--in the words of one of them--glad that 'there is lots of good fighting along the whole line.' I have been told--I confess I have not been able to verify the figures--but I have been told, that the number of men who enlisted into the army and the navy of the United States from this city of ours during those four long years of doubt and anxiety exceeded the number of the male inhabitants of fighting age in the year when the rebellion broke out. And not content with furnishing men to fight, the city of New York saw to it that the wounded were duly attended to and their anguish lightened as far as might be--for it was here that the United States Sanitary Commission was organized."

There were cheers once more and yet again, and it was not for a full minute that the speaker was enabled to continue.

"Your applause tells me that I need say no more," he began. "A successful city is the spoiled child of fortune, and perhaps, like other spoiled children, it is all the better for a sound thrashing now and then. But what has New York done amiss now, that she should be scourged with scorpions? In the welter of politics it may be considered adroit to suggest that your opponent is either a wolf in sheep's clothing or an ass in a lion's skin; but it is more adroit still, it seems to me, to avoid personality altogether. The louder the report of the gun, the more violent the kick is. When a New-Yorker hears his beloved town called 'a city of kites and crows' his first impulse is to laugh; his second is to inquire as to the man who said it; and his third is to laugh again and louder when he discovers that the author of this assertion is from Nevada, a state where even Santa Claus on Christmas Eve does not dare go his rounds for fear of being held up by road-agents!"

This time a burst of hearty laughter mingled with the abundant applause as the speaker sat down.

"That's a very good speech," the young man who seemed to be a stranger said to his left-hand neighbor.

"Good speech?" echoed the other enthusiastically; "I should think so. It's the speech of the evening, sure! There's not one of them can beat that."

"I've been in Japan for the past five years, and I seem to have lost track of people here in the city," said the young man. "What is the name of the gentleman who made the speech?"

"Horace Chauncy," was the answer. "I thought everybody knew him. His father was United States Senator from West Virginia, and his mother was a famous Kentucky belle in her day. He himself used to be the leader of the California bar before he moved here a few years ago. He caught on at once in New York; he's one of the most popular speakers we have now; some fellows call him 'Our Horace.' Haven't you ever heard about him, really?"

"Well," the young man retorted, "you mustn't expect me to know all these people. You see, I was born in New York."

(1894.)

A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER

Thanksgiving Day had dawned clear and cold, an ideal day for the foot-ball game. Soon after breakfast the side-streets had been made hideous by small bands of boys, strangely disguised as girls some of them, or as Indians and as negroes, with improvised costumes and with staring masks; they blew fish-horns, and besought coppers. A little later in the day groups of fantasticals paraded on horseback or in carriages; and straggling target companies--some of them in the uniforms worn during the political campaign which had culminated in the election three weeks earlier--marched irregularly up the avenues under the elevated railroads, preceded by thin lines of pioneers, and by slim bands of music that played spasmodically before the many adjacent saloons, at the doors of which the companies came to a halt willingly.

The sun shone out and warmed one side of the street as people came from church; and the wind blew gently down the avenues, and fluttered the petals of the yellow chrysanthemums which expanded themselves in many button-holes. Little groups of young people passed, the girls with knots of blue at their throats or with mufflers of orange and black, the young men with college-buttons or with protruding handkerchiefs of the college colors. The fashionable dealers in men's goods had arranged their windows with impartial regard for future custom--one with blue flannels and scarfs, shirts and socks, and the other all orange and black. Coaches began to go by, draped with one set of colors or the other, and filled with young men who split the air with explosive cheers, while waving blue pennants with white letters, or yellow pennants with black. The sun shone brightly, and the brisk breeze shivered the bare branches of the trees. It rippled the flags which projected from the vehicles gathering at Madison Square and streaming up the avenue in thick succession--coaches, private carriages, omnibuses, road-wagons of one kind or another.

Towards nightfall the tide turned and the coaches began to come back, the young men hoarse with incessant shouting of their staccato college cries. Some of them, wild with joy at the victory of their own team, had voice still for exulting yells. Others were saddened into silence by the defeat of their side. Most of those who had gone out to see the game belonged neither to the college of the blue nor to the college of the black and orange, but they were all stimulated by the struggle they had just seen--a struggle of strength and of skill, of gumption and of grit. The sun had gone down at last, and the bracing breeze of noon had now a touch of dampness which chilled the flesh. But the hearty young fellows paid no heed to it; they cheered and they sang and they cried aloud one to the other as though the season were spring, and they were alone on the sea-shore.

Robert White caught the fever like the rest, and as he walked down the avenue to the College Club he was conscious of an excitement he had not felt for years. He was alone in the city for a week, as it happened, his wife having taken the children into the country for a long-promised visit; and he had been spending his evenings at the College Club. So it was that he had joined in chartering a coach, and for the first time in a dozen years he had seen the foot-ball game. He had been made happy by the success of his own college, and by meeting classmates whom he had not laid eyes on since their Commencement in the heat of the Centennial summer. One of them was now the young governor of a new Western State, and another was likely to be a member of the new President's cabinet.

On the way out to the game White had sat beside a third classmate, now a professor in the old college, and they had talked over their four years and their fellow-students. They recalled the young men of promise who had failed to sustain the hopes of the class; the steady, hard-working fellows, who were steady and hard-working still; the quiet, shy man who had known little Latin and less Greek, but was fond of science, and who was now developing into one of the foremost novelists of the country; the best base-ball player of the class, now the pastor of one of the leading churches of Chicago; and others who had done well for themselves in the different walks of life. They talked over the black sheep of the class--some dead, some worse than dead, some dropped out of sight.

"What has become of Johnny Carroll?" asked the professor.

"I have not seen him since class-day. There was some wretched scandal before Commencement, you know, and I doubt if Johnny ever got his degree," White answered.

"I know he didn't," the professor returned. "He never dared to apply for it."

"They managed to keep the trouble very quiet, whatever it was," White went on. "I never knew just what the facts were."

"I didn't know then," responded the professor; "I have been told since. But there is no need to go into that now. The girl is dead long ago, and Johnny too, for all I have heard."

"Poor Johnny Carroll," White said; "I can remember how handsome he looked that last night, the night of class-day. But he was always handsome and always well dressed. He was not very clever or very anything, was he? Yet we all liked him."

"I remember that he tried to get on the Freshman crew," the professor remarked, after a pause, "but the temptations of high living were too much for him. He wouldn't train."

"Training was just what he needed most," White added; "moral and mental as well as physical. Fact is, he always had more money than was good for him. His father was in Wall Street then, and making money hand over fist."

"It wasn't till the year after we were graduated that old Carroll committed suicide, was it?" the professor inquired. "Blew out his brains in the bath-tub, didn't he?"

"And didn't leave enough money to pay for his funeral," White answered. "Johnny was in hard luck always: he had too much money at first, and none at all when he needed it most."

"His great misfortune," said the professor, "was that his father was 'one of the boys.'"

"Yes," White agreed, "that is pretty rough on a fellow. I wonder where Johnny is, if he is alive? Out West, perhaps, prospecting on a grub stake, or else stoker on an ocean steamer, or perhaps he's a member of the Broadway squad, earning a living by elbowing ladies over the crossing."

"I hope he has as good a berth as that," the professor answered; "but I don't believe that Johnny Carroll would stay on the force long, even if he got the appointment. Do you remember how well he sang 'The Son of a Gamboleer'?"

It was this question of the professor's which Robert White remembered after he had got off the coach and was walking towards Madison Square. Three young fellows, mere boys two of them, were staggering on just in front of him. They were arm in arm, in hope of a triplicate stability quite unattainable without more ballast than they carried, and they were singing the song Johnny Carroll had made his own in college. The wind was still sharpening, and the wooden signs which projected across the sidewalk here and there swung heavily as they felt its force. There were knots of eager young men and boys going to and fro before the brilliantly lighted porticos of the hotels.

As White stepped aside to get out of the way of one of these groups, rather more hilarious than the others, he knocked into a man who was standing up against the glaring window of a restaurant. The man was thin and pinched; his face was clean-shaven and blue; his clothes were threadbare; his attitude was as though he were pressing close to the glass in the hope of a reflected warmth.

"I beg your pardon," cried White.

The man turned stiffly. "It's of no con--" he began, then he saw White's face in the bright light which streamed across the sidewalk. He stopped, hesitated for a moment, and then turned away.

The moment had been enough for White to recognize him. "Johnny Carroll!" he called.

The man continued to move away.

White overtook him in two strides, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Johnny!" he said again.

The man faced about and answered doubtfully, "Well, what do you want?"

"Is this really you, Johnny Carroll?" asked White, as he held out his hand.

"Oh yes," said the other, "it's Johnny Carroll--and you are Bob White."

White's hand was still extended. After a long pause his classmate took it. White was shocked at the chill of Carroll's fingers. "Why, man," he cried, "you are cold."

"Well," the other answered, simply, "why not? It isn't the first time." Then, after a swift glance at White's face, he turned his own away and said, "I'm hungry, too, if you want to know."

"So am I," said White, cordially. "I was going to have my Thanksgiving dinner alone. Will you join me, Johnny?"

"Do you mean it?" asked the other.

"Why shouldn't we dine together?" White responded, setting off briskly and putting his arm through his classmate's. "Our team has won to-day, you know--eighteen to nothing; we'll celebrate the victory."

"Where are you taking me?" inquired Johnny, uneasily.

"To the College Club, of course," answered White. "We'll--"

"I mustn't go there," said Johnny, stopping short. "I couldn't face them now. I--oh, I couldn't!"

"Very well, then," White agreed. "Where shall we go? What do you say to Delmonico's?"

Again Johnny asked: "Do you mean it? Honest?"

"Of course I mean it, Johnny," he replied.

"I haven't been in Delmonico's for ten years and more," said the other. "I'd like to have just another dinner there. But you can't take me there. Look at me!"

White looked at him. The thin coat was buttoned tight; it was very worn, and yet it was not ragged; it was in better condition than the hat or the boots.

As the two men stood there facing each other on the corner of the street there was a foretaste of winter in the wind which smote them and ate into their marrow.

White linked his arm again in his classmate's. "I've seen you look sweller, Johnny, I confess," he said; "but I haven't dressed for dinner myself to-night."

"So it's Delmonico's?" Johnny asked.

"It's Delmonico's," White responded.

"Then take me into the cafe," said the other. "I can stand the men, I think, but I'm not in shape to go into the restaurant where the women are."

"Very well," agreed White. "We'll try the cafe."

When they entered the cafe it was crowded with young men. There was already a blue haze of smoke over the heads of the noisy throng. Boys drinking champagne at adjacent tables were calling across to each other with boisterous merriment.

White was able to secure a small table near the corner on the Broadway side. As he walked over to it he nodded to half a score of acquaintances, some of whom looked askant at his companion, and exchanged whispered comments after he had passed.

Apparently Johnny neither saw the looks nor heard the whispers. He followed White as if in a dream; and White had noticed that when they had entered the heated room Carroll had drawn a long breath as though to warm himself.

"I don't need an overcoat in here," he said, as he took the chair opposite White's with the little marble-topped table between them.

When the waiter had deftly laid the cloth, Johnny fingered its fair softness, as with a cat-like enjoyment of its cleanness.

"Now, what shall we have?" asked White, as the waiter handed him the bill of fare in its narrow frame. "What would you like?"

"I?" the guest responded; "oh, anything--whatever you want--some roast beef."

"Then your taste has changed since you left college," White declared. "I asked you what you would _like_."

"What _I'd_ like?" echoed Johnny. "Do you mean it? Honest?"

White smiled as the old college phrase dropped again from the lips of his classmate.

"Of course I mean it," he said; "honest. There's the bill of fare. Order what you please. And remember that it is Thanksgiving, and that I'm hungry, and that I want a good dinner."

"Very well, then," said Johnny, as he took the bill of fare. He was already warmer, and now he seemed to expand a little with the unwonted luxury of the occasion.

He looked over the bill of fare carefully.

"Blue Points on the half-shell, of course," he began, adding to the waiter, "be sure that they are on the deep shell. Green turtle soup--the green turtle here used to be very good fifteen years ago. _Filet de sole, a la Mornay_--the sole is flounder, I suppose, but _a la Mornay_ a man could eat a Hebrew manuscript. Then a canvas-back apiece--two canvas-back, you understand, real canvas-back, not red-head or mallard--with samp, of course, and a mayonnaise of celery. Then a bit of Chedder cheese and a cup of coffee. How will that suit you, White?"

"That will suit me," White responded. "And now what wine?"

"Wine, too?" Johnny queried.

White smiled and nodded.

"Well, I'll go you," the guest went on. "I might as well see the thing through, if you are bound to do it in style." He turned over the bill of fare and scanned the wine list on the under side. "Yquem '74 with the oysters; and they tell me there is a Silver Seal Special '84 _brut_ that is better than anything one has tasted before. Give us a quart of that with the duck. And let us have it as soon as you can."

He handed the bill of fare to the waiter, and then, for the first time, he ventured to glance about the room.

The oysters were brought very soon, and when Johnny had eaten them and part of a roll, and when he had drunk two glasses of the Yquem, White said to him: "Tell me something about yourself. What have you been doing all these years?"

Johnny's face fell a little. "I've done pretty nearly everything," he answered, "from driving a Fifth Avenue stage to keeping books for a Third Avenue pawnbroker. I've been a waiter at a Coney Island chowder saloon. Two summers ago I waited on the man who has just taken our order--I waited on him more than once. I've dealt faro, too."

The waiter brought the soup and served them.

When he left them alone again, White asked: "Can't some of your old friends help you out of this--give you a start and set you up again?"

"It's no good trying," Johnny replied. "You can't pull me up now. It's too late. I guess it was too late from the start."

"Why don't you drop this place?" White queried, "and go out West, and--"

"What's the use of talking about that?" Johnny interrupted. "I can't live away from New York. If I got out of sight of that tower over there I'd die."

"You will die here soon enough at this rate," White answered.

"That's so, too," admitted Johnny; "but it can't be helped now." He was eating steadily, sturdily, but not ravenously.

After the waiter had served the fish, White asked again, "What can we do for you?"

"Nothing," Johnny answered--"nothing at all. Yes, you can give me a five, if you like, or a ten; but don't give me your address, or the first time I'm down again I'd look you up and strike you for ten more."

A band of undergraduates, twenty of them or more, four abreast, arm in arm, went tramping down Broadway, yelling forth the chorus of a college song.

"You used to sing that song, Johnny," said White.

"I used to do lots of things," he answered, as the waiter opened the champagne.

"I never heard anybody get as much out of 'The Son of a Gamboleer' as you did," White continued.

"I joined a negro-minstrel troupe as second tenor twelve years ago, but we got stranded in Hartford, and I had to walk home. I've tried to do a song and dance in the Bowery dime museums since then, more than once. But it's no use."

When they had made an end of the canvas-backs and the _brut_ '84, Johnny sat back in his chair and smiled, and said, "Well, this was worth while."

Then the coffee came, and White said, "You forgot to order the liqueur, Johnny."

"You see what it is to be out of practice," he replied. "I'd like some orange curacoa."

"And I will take a little green mint," said White to the waiter. "And bring some cigars--Henry Clays."

"That's right," Johnny declared. "My father was always a Henry Clay man, and I suppose that's why I like those cigars."

After the cigars were lighted White looked his companion square in the face. "Are you sure," he asked, "that we can do nothing for you?"

"Dead sure," was the answer.

"Nothing?"

"You have given me a good dinner," said Johnny. "That's enough. That's more than most of my old friends would give me. And there's nothing more to be done."

White held his peace for the moment.

Johnny took a long sip of his coffee, and drew three or four times at his cigar. "That's a first-rate cigar," he said. "I haven't smoked a Henry Clay for nearly two years, and then I picked up one a man had lighted, between the acts, outside of Daly's."

He puffed at it again with voluptuous appreciation, and then leaned across the table to White and remarked, confidentially, "Do you know, Bob, 'most everything I've cared for in this world has been immoral, or expensive, or indigestible."

"Yes," White admitted; "I suppose that's the cause of your bad luck."

"I've had lots of luck in my life," was the response, "good and bad--better than I deserved, most of it--this dinner, for example; I should remember it even without to-morrow's dyspepsia. But what's the use of anticipating evil? I'll let the next day take care of itself, and make the best of this one. There are several hours of it left--where shall we go now?"

(1892.)

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

It was late in the afternoon when John Suydam turned into Twenty-third Street, and he remarked the absence of the gleam of color generally visible far away to the westward beyond the end of the street and across the river. There was no red vista that Christmas Eve, for the sky was overcast and lowering, and there was a damp chill in the air, a premonition of approaching snow. It was about the edge of dusk as he skirted Madison Square and saw the electric-lights twinkle out suddenly up and down Fifth Avenue, and in the square here and there.

The young man crossed Broadway, skilfully avoiding a huge express wagon, and springing lightly out of the path of a clanging cable-car. He crossed Fifth Avenue, threading his way through the carriages and the carts piled high with paper-covered packages. The white walls of the hotel on the opposite side of Twenty-third Street were dingy under the leaden sky as the haze of the swift twilight settled down. The wind died away altogether, and yet the atmosphere was raw and dank. Suydam bought an evening paper from the crippled newsboy who sat in his rolling-chair, warmly wrapped against the weather, and seemingly cheerful and contented with his takings.