As soon as the aged negro's white head was visible he paused, and leaning over the light iron railing he addressed himself to the young Englishman.
"Misto' Parsons," he said, solemnly, "yo' lord knows a good thing when he gets it, sah! He tasted my celery salad, and he said to Mrs. Van Allen that he hadn't never eaten no better salad than that, sah, and I don't believe he never did, neither!"
So saying he slowly withdrew up-stairs again, as the cook advanced to the dumb-waiter carrying the Nesselrode pudding.
(1896.)
A WALL STREET WOOING
T had poured all the night before, and even now, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the air had the washed clearness that follows a warm rain. Fortunately the sun had shone forth before the church bells summoned the worshippers to kneel in front of the marble altars, banked high with scentless white flowers. It was Easter, and the first of April also; and, furthermore, the first warm Sunday of the spring. So the young men and maidens who clustered about the doors of the churches that afternoon were decked out in fresh apparel—the young men in light overcoats, and the maidens in all the bravery of their new bonnets.
In the corner of one of the cable-cars which were sliding along under the skeleton of the elevated railroad there sat a young man looking at his neighbors with begrudging interest, and pulling at the ends of an aggressive black mustache. Filson Shelby was not yet at home in the great city, and he knew it, and he silently protested against it. He was forever on the watch for a chance to resent the complacent attitude of city folks towards country people. Yet the metropolis had so far conquered him that his hat and his shoes and his clothes were city made.
It was six months now since the young Southwesterner had left his native village, and already he thought that he knew New York pretty well, from Harlem where he boarded to Wall Street where he worked. He was sure that he was well informed as to the customs of New-Yorkers, although the New-Yorkers changed their customs so rapidly that it was not so easy to be certain about this.
There were white flowers blossoming in the parlor windows of many of the houses in Fifty-third Street, through which the cable-car was passing, and as the car clanged around the curve and started on its way down Seventh Avenue it grazed the tail of a florist's wagon, the box of which was piled high with palms. Filson Shelby was aware that it was now a practice of New-Yorkers to give one another potted plants at Easter.