New York Sketches

by Jesse Lynch Williams

RURAL NEW YORK CITY

THERE is pretty good snipe shooting within the city limits of New York, and I have heard that an occasional trout still rises to the fly in one or two spots along a certain stream—which need not be made better known than it is already, though it can hardly be worth whipping much longer at any rate.

A great many ducks, however, are still shot every season in the city, by those who know where to go for them; and as for inferior sport, like rabbits—if you include them as game—on certain days of the year probably more gunners and dogs are out after rabbits within the limits of Greater New York than in any region of equal extent in the world, though to be sure the bags brought in hardly compare with those of certain parts of Australia or some of our Western States. Down toward Far Rockaway, a little this side of the salt marshes of Jamaica Bay, in the hedges and cabbage-patches of the "truck" farms, there is plenty of good cover for rabbits, as well as in the brush-piles and pastures of the rolling Borough of Richmond on Staten Island, and the forests and stone fences of the hilly Bronx, up around Pelham Bay Park for instance. But the gunners must keep out of the parks, of course, though many ubiquitous little boys with snares do not.

In such parts of the city, except when No Trespassing signs prevent, on any day of the open season scores of men and youths may be seen whose work and homes are generally in the densest parts of the city, respectable citizens from the extreme east and west sides of Manhattan, artisans and clerks, salesmen and small shopkeepers, who, quite unexpectedly in some cases, share the ancient fret and longing of the primitive man in common with those other New Yorkers who can go farther out on Long Island or farther up into New York State to satisfy it. To be sure, the former do not get as many shots as the latter, but they get the outdoors and the exercise and the return to nature, which is the main thing. And the advantage of going shooting in Greater New York is that you can tramp until too dark to see, and yet get back in time to dine at home, thus satisfying an appetite acquired in the open with a dinner cooked in the city.

Flushing Volunteer Fire Department Responding to a Fire Alarm.

Once a certain young family went off to a far corner of Greater New York to attack the perennial summer problem. By walking through a hideously suburban village with a beautifully rural name they found, just over the brow of a hill, quite as a friend had told them they would, tucked away all alone in a green glade beside an ancient forest, a charming little diamond-paned, lattice-windowed cottage, covered thick with vines outside, and yet supplied with modern plumbing within. It seemed too good to be true. There was no distinctly front yard or back yard, not even a public road in sight, and no neighbors to bother them except the landlord, who lived in the one house near by and was very agreeable. All through the close season they enjoyed the whistling of quail at their breakfast; in their afternoon walks, squirrels and rabbits and uncommon song-birds were too common to be remarked; and once, within forty yards of the house, great consternation was caused by a black snake, though it was not black snakes but mosquitoes that made them look elsewhere next year, and taught them a life-lesson in regard to English lattice-windows and American mosquito-screens.

But until the mosquitoes became so persistent it seemed—this country-place within a city, or rus in urbe, as they probably enjoyed calling it—an almost perfect solution of the problem for a small family whose head had to be within commuting distance of down-town. For though so remote, it was not inaccessible; two railroads and a trolley line were just over the dip of the hill that hid them, so that there was time for the young man of the house to linger with his family at breakfast, which was served out-of-doors, with no more objectionable witnesses than the thrushes in the hedges. And then, too, there was time to get exercise in the afternoon before dinner. "It seemed an ideal spot," to quote their account of it, "except that on our walks, just as we thought that we had found some sequestered dell where nobody had come since the Indians left, we would be pretty sure to hear a slight rustle behind us, and there—not an Indian but a Tammany policeman would break through the thicket, with startling white gloves and gleaming brass buttons, looking exactly like the policemen in the Park. Of course he would continue on his beat and disappear in a moment, but by that time we had forgotten to listen to the birds and things, and the distant hum of the trolley would break in and remind us of all things we have wanted to forget."

A Bit of Farm Land in the Heart of Greater New York.

"Acre after acre, farm after farm, and never a sign of city in sight."