ABOUT SOME THINGS IN NEW YORK WHICH HAVE INTERESTED ME.
HE Battery was my first New York love. I shall never forget how completely it took possession of me, or how magnetically it drew me under the shade of its fine trees, to breathe the fresh sea-breeze, and watch the graceful ships come and go, or lie calmly at anchor, with every line so clearly defined against the bright sky. It was not "the fashion," even then, to go there; so much the better. It is still less the fashion now; but there I found myself, one bright Sunday not long since, as I left the leafy loveliness of Trinity church, with its sweet choral music still sounding in my ears.
Alas! for my dear old Battery. The sea is still there, to be sure—no "corporation" can meddle with that; and still the picturesque ships come and go; but the blades of grass grow fewer and thinner, and the dirty, dusty paths call aloud for a "vigilance committee." What a sin and shame! I exclaimed, that this loveliest spot in New York should present so forlorn an appearance. Is there not room enough in the purses and affections of New Yorkers for the Central Park and the Battery too? In good truth, when I reflect upon it, I am jealous of this new aspirant for the public favor. What is a horse to a ship? sacrilege though it be to say so. What is the gaudy, over-dressed equestrian "swell" of fine ladies and fine "Afghans" to the majestic swell of the sea? What are the stylish equipages and liveries, to the picturesque crowd of newly-arrived emigrants, with their funny little, odd-looking babies, their square, sturdy forms and bronze faces, chattering happy greetings in an unknown tongue, and gazing about them bewildered, at the strange sights and sounds of a great new city; or sauntering up to Trinity church, and in happy ignorance of novel steeples and creeds, dropping on their catholic knees in its aisles, in thankful, devout recognition of their safe arrival in a new country. What is the pretty toy-lake, and the hearse-like "gondola," and "the swans," and the posies, and the "bronze-eagle," and the blue-coated policemen, who stand ready to handle rogues with gloves, and white ones at that, to my dear old Battery, battered as it is.
I call capricious, fickle New York to order, for thus forsaking the old love for the new. I demand an instant settlement of any protracted dispute there may be on hand, as to "whose business it is" to renovate the Battery, before it quite runs to seed, like the City Hall Park. Not that I won't keep on going to the Battery, though they should build a small-pox hospital on it; for it is not my way to forsake an old friend because he is shabby; but I should like to be a female General Butler, for one month, and put this business through in his chain-lightning executive fashion.
It is a great plague to be a woman. I think I've said that before, but it will bear repeating. Now the wharves are a great passion of mine; I like to sit on a pile of boards there, with my boots dangling over the water, and listen to the far-off "heave-ho" of the sailors in their bright specks of red shirts, and see the vessels unload, with their foreign fruits, and dream away a delicious hour, imagining the places they came from; and I like to climb up the sides of ships, and poke round generally, just where Mrs. Grundy would lay her irritating hand on my arm and exclaim—"What will people think of you?"
I am getting sick of people. I am falling in love with things. They hold their tongues and don't bother.