New York Sketches

by Jesse Lynch Williams

I

In a way, that is rather typical of most of the rurality found within the boundaries of these modern aggregations or trusts of large and small towns, and intervening country, held together (more or less) by one name, under one municipal government, and called a "city" by legislature. There is plenty that is not at all city-like within the city walls—called limits—there is plenty of nature, but in most cases those wanting to commune with it are reminded that it is no longer within the domain of nature. The city has stretched out its hand, and the mark of the beast can usually be seen.

You can find not only rural seclusion and bucolic simplicity, but the rudeness and crudeness of the wilderness and primeval forest; indeed, even forest fires have been known in Greater New York. But the trouble is that so often the bucolic simplicity has cleverly advertised lots staked out across it; the rural seclusion shows a couple of factory chimneys on the near horizon. The forest fire was put out by the fire department.

There are numerous peaceful duck-ponds in the Borough of Queens, for instance, as muddy and peaceful as ever you saw, but so many of them are lighted by gas every evening. Besides the fisheries, there is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections of this city; and in at least one place it can be seen by electric light. There are many potato-patches patrolled by the police.

One of the Farmhouses that Have Come to Town.

The old Duryea House, Flushing, once used as a head-quarters for Hessian officers.

Not far from the geographical centre of the city there are fields where, as all who have ever commuted to and from the north shore of Long Island must remember, German women may be seen every day in the tilling season, working away as industriously as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads, and all: while not far away, at frequent intervals, passes a whining, thumping trolley-car, marked Brooklyn Bridge.

East End of Duryea House, where the Cow is Stabled.

In another quarter, on a dreary, desolate waste, neither farm land, nor city, nor village, there stands an old weather-beaten hut, long, low, patched up and tumbled down, with an old soap-box for a front doorstep—all beautifully toned by time, the kind amateurs like to sketch, when found far away from home in their travels. The thing that recalls the city in this case, rather startlingly, is a rudely lettered sign, with the S's turned the wrong way, offering lots for sale in Greater New York.

It is not necessary to go far away from the beaten paths of travel in Greater New York to witness any of these scenes of the comedy, sometimes tragedy, brought about by the contending forces of city and country. Most of what has been cited can be observed from car-windows. For that matter, somewhat similar incongruity can be found in all of our modern, legally enlarged cities, London, with the hedges and gardens of Hampstead Heath, and certain parts of the Surrey Side, or Chicago, with its broad stretches of prairie and farms—the subject of so many American newspaper jokes a few years ago.

The Old Water-power Mill from the Rear of the Old Country Cross-roads Store.

The Old Country Cross-roads Store, Established 1828.

In the background is the old water-power mill.

Interior of the Old Country Cross-roads Store.

But New York—and this is another respect in which it is different from other cities—our great Greater New York, which is better known as having the most densely populated tenement districts in the world, can show places that are more truly rural than any other city of modern times, places where the town does not succeed in obtruding itself at all. From Hampstead Heath, green and delightful as it is, every now and then the gilded cross of St. Paul's may be seen gleaming far below through the trees. And in Chicago, bucolic as certain sections of it may be, one can spy the towers of the city for miles away, across the prairie; even when down in certain wild, murderous-looking ravines there is ever on high the appalling cloud of soft-coal smoke. But out in the broad, rolling farm lands of Long Island you can walk on for hours and not find any sign of the city you are in, except the enormous tax-rate, which, by the way, has the effect of discouraging the farmers (many of whom did not want to become city people at all) from spending money for paint and improvements, and this only results in making the country look more primitive, and less like what is absurdly called a city.

The Colony of Chinese Farmers, Near the Geographical Centre of New York City.

But the best of these rural parts of town cannot be spied from car-windows, or the beaten paths of travel.