Let us cross the Park. There’s an Irishman seated on the withered grass, with his spade beside him, leaning wearily against that leafless tree. I wonder is he ill? I must walk that way and speak to him. What a sudden change comes over his rough face! it looks quite beautiful. Why do his eyes kindle? Ah, I see: a woman approaches from yonder path; now she seats herself beside him on the grass, and drawing the cover from a small tin kettle, she bends over the steaming contents, and says with a smile that is a perfect heart-warmer, “Dear Dennis!” Oh, what a wealth of love in those two simple words; what music in that voice! Who says human nature is all depravity? Who says this earth is but a charnel-house of withered hopes? Who says the “Heart’s Ease” springs never from the rock cleft? Who says it is only on patrician soil the finer feelings struggle into leaf, and bud and blossom? No—no—that humble, faithful creature has travelled weary miles with needful food, that “Dennis” may waste no unnecessary time from labour. And there they sit, side by side, happy and blessed in each other, deaf to the ceaseless tide of business and pleasure flowing past, blind to the supercilious gaze of the pompous millionaire, the curious stare of pampered beauty, the derisive laugh of “Young America,” and the little romances they have set my brain a-weaving! What a pretty episode amid all this Babel din! What a delicious little bit of nature amidst this fossil-hearted Gotham!
How true—how beautiful the words of Holy Writ! “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
What an immensely tall man! he looks like a barber’s pole in those serpentine pants. Why does he make those gyrations? Why does he beckon that short man to his side? Well, I declare! everything comical comes to my net! He has taken out a slip of paper, and using the short man’s head for a writing-desk, is scribbling off some directions for a porter in waiting! The lamb-like non-resistance of the short man is only equalled by the cool impudence of the scribe! What a picture for Hogarth!
CITY SCENES AND CITY LIFE.
NUMBER TWO.
The fashionables are yet yawning on their pillows. Nobody is abroad but the workies. So much the better. Omnibus drivers begin to pick up their early-breakfast customers. The dear little children, trustful and rosy, are hurrying by to school. Apple women are arranging their stalls, and slily polishing their fruit with an old stocking. The shopkeepers are placing their goods in the most tempting light, in the store windows; and bouquet vendors, with their delicious burdens, have already taken their stand on the saloon and hotel steps.
Here come that de-socialized class, the New York business men, with their hands thrust moodily into their coat pockets, their eyes buttoned fixedly down to the side-walk, and “the almighty dollar” written legibly all over them. If the automatons would but show some sign of life; were it only by a whistle. I’m very sure the tune would be
“I know a—Bank!”
See that pretty little couple yonder, crouched upon the side-walk? What have you there, little ones? Five little, fat, roly-poly puppies, as I live, all heads and tails, curled up in that comical old basket! And you expect to get “a dollar a-piece” for them? Bless your dear little souls, Broadway is full of “puppies,” who never “bring” anything but odious cigar smoke, that ever I could find out. Puppies are at a discount, my darlings. Peanuts are a safer investment.
Here we are at Trinity Church. I doubt if human lips within those walls ever preached as eloquently as those century gravestones. How the sight of them involuntarily arrests the bounding footstep, and the half-developed plan of the scheming brain, and wakes up the slumbering immortal in our nature. How the eye turns a questioning glance from those moss-grown graves, inward—then upward to the soft, blue heavens above us. How for a brief moment the callous heart grows kindly, and we forget the mote in our brother’s eye, and cease to repulse the outspread palm of charity, and recognise the claims of a common brotherhood; and then how the sweeping tide comes rolling over us, and the clink of dollars and cents drowns “the still small voice;” and Eternity recedes, and Earth only seems tangible, and Mammon, and Avarice, and Folly rule the never returning hours.