Employed by my friend as a tutor for his children was an unfrocked French curate, and he was always arguing that the German women were plain. I was asked as an artist to judge. At four o’clock in the afternoon, we went out to the promenade and watched the beauties of the city pass by. From that motley crowd I was able to pick out only eight who were at all pretty. Of these, they told me that two were American, two English, one Swedish, and two Viennese, while only one of the whole galaxy was from Stuttgart.
Chapter IX: First Decorations
Coming home—somehow it did not seem as if it could be a reality. I had begun to feel quite American when my fellow passengers started calling me “Colonel Cody.” In Europe I had passed easily for an Englishman and sometimes a Swede, it being very foolish to admit a residence in the U. S. A. unless one was prepared to be cheated on every hand. But as the boat neared American soil I felt my patriotism rising every minute. Thirteen years is a long time for a man to be away from his native land.
A Canadian on board the English ship became a kindred spirit—we “Westerners” finding it necessary to form a close alliance. He and I played bridge every day with two men, one from Glasgow and one from Liverpool. During a heated conversation, one of them made the remark that we were getting quite cocky over in the States, adding that England would “have to be sending some ships and men over to settle America before long.” At that, a little voice piped up (the Canadian’s) saying:
“What! again?”
The steward was sent for and drinks ordered, for the British do know how to pay when they are beaten.
At ten one morning, when the first pilot boat loomed into sight and I leaned over the rail and saw these men in oilskins busying themselves about the craft, my calm, joyous attitude suddenly deserted me. The thought had burst into my mind that this boat must have put out from New York and these men were Americans. My heart came up in my throat and I had to go below. At four o’clock that afternoon we docked, and as I walked away from the ship, all the familiar sights and sounds coming upon me with a rush; I stopped and, utterly unmindful that I might be run in for a lunatic, kissed the post of the Ninth Avenue Elevated. Homesickness and love of my native land, qualities I did not realize that I possessed, had taken hold of me.
New York had never been my home before, so I did not know it well enough to recognize much change; but from ’91 until the present day the city has altered beyond recognition. A Dutch banker once told me that if the money that his countrymen paid the Indians for the island of Manhattan had been put out to interest, it would be sufficient to purchase the land to-day. I wonder if that be true?
Most of the life of those days centered about Union Square, with tentacles reaching down to Washington and up to Madison Squares. On the Seventeenth Street side of Fourth Avenue was the Clarendon, and, opposite, the Everett House, that famous rendezvous for politicians. On Twenty-third Street was the Academy of Art, which housed itself in a building evidently copied from the Doge’s palace in Venice, while next to it was the Lyceum Theater, upon the stage of which most of the famous actors of the day played at one time or another.
Niblo’s Garden, in what would be downtown Broadway to-day, was another famous amusement place, but of a different character. The owner had a large private box which was always filled with parties of friends. It was practically on the stage, and one could reach down and touch the shoulders or heads of the chorus girls. Behind it was a reception room, and a bathroom with a stairway which led to the green room, and here many gay suppers took place after the show.