I.
Baltimore street is the Broadway of the Monumental City. It also suggests Chestnut street in Philadelphia, more particularly in the matter of signboards. A city of stores and offices, it proclaims its various businesses in signs of every conceivable shape. They swing from ornamental brackets over door-ways, and hang right across the sidewalk. They are of many shapes, but as to color are invariably black and gold. The inscriptions upon them are characteristic; some of them are strange to the non-travelled Englishmen. I note a few of them: “Gent’s Neck Wear,” “Fine Jewelry,” “Men’s Furnishing.” This latter is the general sign of American hosiers and shirt-makers. “Diamonds,” “Fine Shoes,” “Dry Goods,” “Imported Goods,” “Books,” “Cheap Railroad Tickets,” “Cheap Tickets for Chicago,” “Saddlery,” “Adams’ Express.” To these are added the names of the dealers. The “Cheap Railroad Tickets” is a branch of the speculative operations in theatrical admissions. “Adams’ Express” is a familiar sign everywhere. It represents the great and universal system of baggage distribution. Adams and other firms will take charge of a traveller’s luggage, or any other kind of goods, and “check” it through to any part of the United States, possibly to any corner of the world. To-day, in honor of Christmas, the ordinary signs have been supplemented by such attractive proclamations as “Holiday Presents,” “Toys for the Season,” “For Christmas and New Year’s,” “Home-made Christmas Puddings.” At the doors of tobacco stores the figure of a North American Indian, in complete war-paint, offers you a bundle of the finest cigars, and his tomahawk is poised for action in case you decline his invitation to “Try them.” In New York this colored commercial statuary is varied with an occasional “Punch,” and by many buxom ballet-girls in short dresses and chignons. But the taste of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago runs in the direction of the Indian. Nowhere do you see the blackamoor, once popular at the door of English tobacconists; nor, except at Brooklyn, have I seen on the American side of the Atlantic the kilted Highlander, with his “mull” as a sign for the information or temptation of snuff-takers. At Chicago there is a Scotch sculptor, who has ornamented the exterior of more than one store with life-size realizations of the heroes of some of Burns’s most popular poems. Several of these are represented as snuff-takers; but the collection includes a few really admirable studies. The city architect, by the way, at Chicago, is a Scotchman, and he is responsible for the fine designs of the chief public buildings. Baltimore is not singular in its habit of pictorial signs, the origin of which may possibly be traced to old English custom. The saddler exhibits the gilded head of a horse; the watchmaker hangs out a clock; the glover a hand; the dry-goods stores display bright rugs and carpets. Now and then the cabinet-makers show their goods on the sidewalks. Many stores erect handsome outside glass-case stands for exhibiting knick-knacks at their door-ways. The fruit shops open their windows on the street. Itinerant dealers in oranges, bananas, and grapes rig up tent-like houses of business under the windows of established traders (for which heavy rents are paid, notably “down-town” in New York), and all this gives a pleasant variety of life and color to the street. One is everywhere reminded of the excellence of English Manufactures, “English Tanned Gloves,” “English Storm-coats,” “English Cloth”; and many other commercial compliments are paid to “Imported Goods.”
It is three o’clock in the day, and while Irving, his lieutenant, Loveday, and his able subalterns, Arnot and Allen, are getting the stage of the Academy of Music into some kind of shape for the Christmas-eve performance, I plod through the rain and slush to make my first acquaintance with this chief street of Baltimore. It is curiously picturesque, in spite of the weather and the dirty snow, which is melting and freezing almost simultaneously. Here and there the sidewalks are slabs of ice; here and there they are sloppy snow-drifts. But a surging crowd covers every foot of them. The roadway presents a continual block of tram-cars, buggies, wagons, carts, and carriages. Women leaving and getting upon the cars plunge in and out of snow-heaps and watery gutters. It is a very democratic institution, the American car. The people crowd it as they please. There is no limit to its capacity. It may carry as many persons as can get into it or stand upon its platforms. This afternoon the cars are human hives on wheels. One notices that the crowd chiefly consists of women. They fill the sidewalks. All of them are shopping. They are all talking, and all at the same time. This is a peculiarity of our charming cousins. Their costume on this wet afternoon is a very sensible one. It might almost be called a uniform. A black water-proof cloak and hood is all the costume you can see. Often it is a pretty, bright face that the hood encases. Now and then some woman, a trifle more vain or reckless than her sisters, wears a hat and feathers with her water-proof cloak. This incongruous arrangement, however, helps to give color to the crowd,—a desirable point on so dull, grey, and cloudy a day as this. The men who move about here are mostly smoking. They do not appear to have any hand in the shopping. The ladies are evidently doing all that, and they are very much in earnest. Not one of them but deigns to carry a parcel. The children are evidently coming in for precious gifts. In one shop window “Father Christmas” himself is busy showing his toys to a numerous audience. He is made up with white flowing locks and beard, and ruddy, though aged, features. His dress is an ermine tippet, scarlet frock trimmed with gold, and top-boots of patent leather,—quite the nursery ideal of his genial majesty. Another store has filled its window with a skating scene. A company of gay dolls are sliding for their very lives. They go through their lively work without any change of expression, and their gyrations never alter; but the spectators change, and the store within is full of bustle. I look around for the poor people we would see in a London group of this character. I seek in vain for the Smikes and Twists who would be feasting their sunken eyes on such a free show in London. I try to find the slipshod women, with infants huddled to their cold bosoms. They are not here. A boy of twelve, with a cigarette in his hand, asks me for a light. Another “guesses” his “papa” will buy “the whole concern” for him if he wants it. No poor people. The Irish are a small community here. How one’s mind goes wandering to the West End of London and to the Strand and Fleet street, to the Seven Dials and to Ratcliffe highway, where (it is five hours later there than here) Christmas eve is being celebrated with such contrasts of fortune and variations of wealth and poverty, of joy and sorrow, as make the heart ache to think upon! Not a single poor-looking person do I note in this long, busy street of Baltimore. Nobody begs from me; and the hawkers on the sidewalk offer me their wares with an air of almost aggressive independence. “Japanese silk, ten cents,” one cries, with a bundle of small handkerchiefs in his hand. “The magic mouse,” says another, vending a mechanical toy. “Now, then, one dime a packet,” is the proposal of a third, offering material for decorating Christmas trees. “Try ‘em!” almost commands a fourth, as I pause opposite his stand of peanuts. If you buy nobody thanks you, and if you thank the vendor he is surprised, and will probably stammer out, “You’re welcome.” Yet “this is the Cavalier city,” a friend reminds me, “and aristocratic to the core.”
The fruit-stores are bright with tropical fruits; but not with the roses, carnations, pinks, and smilax creeper, so plentiful in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. I pause to scan the faces of the crowd. It is a popular fiction in England that the women of the South are brunettes. The truth is, the further South you go, the fairer the women, and the more delicate their complexions. On Baltimore street I observe quite a number of ladies with red hair. Many of them are blondes, who might have been natives of Lincolnshire. They are all pretty; some are beautiful; and their charms certainly obtained no fictitious aid from their dress or surroundings. Water-proof cloaks and a muddy street could not help them. Baltimoreans may say I should look for beauty in North Charles street, or Mount Vernon place, if I expect to see it en promenade. But I am not looking for it. I find it in the great, busy, Christmas crowd, tramping through the snow, and buying toys and candies for the children. The “carriage ladies” wear furs, and those everlasting diamond ear-rings, without which expensive ornament few American women appear to consider themselves “real ladies.” New York and Boston modify the fashion in this respect, though you may still see women sitting down to breakfast at hotel restaurants in silks, satins, and diamonds.