Now glance over the churchyard yonder into the street below. Cholera and pestilence, what a sight! flanked on one side by the charnel-house, on the other by houses whose basements are groggeries and markets, and at whose every pane of glass may be seen a score of dirty faces; the middle of the street a quagmire of jelly-mud, four inches deep, on which are strewn, ad infinitum, decayed potatoes and cabbage stumps, old bones and bonnets, mouldy bread, salt fish, and dead kittens. That pussy-cat New York corporation should be put on a diet of peppered thunder and gunpowder tea, and harnessed to a comet for six months. I doubt if even then the old poppies would wake up.
Do you see that piece of antiquity playing the bagpipe? He is as much a fixture as your country cousin. There he sits, through heat and cold, squeezing out those horrible sounds with his skinny elbow, and keeping time with his nervous eyewinkers. He gets up his own programme, and is his own orchestra, door-keeper, and audience; nobody stops to listen, nobody fees him, nobody seems to enjoy it so hugely as himself.
Who talks about wooden nutmegs in the hearing of Gotham? Does a shower come up? Men start up as if by magic, with all-sized India rubbers for sale, and ragged little boys nudge your elbows to purchase “cheap cotton umbrellas.” Does the wind veer round south? A stack of palm-leaf fans takes the place of the umbrellas. Have you the misfortune to trip upon the side-walk? a box of Russia salve is immediately unlidded under your nose. Do you stop to arrange your gaiter boot? whole strings of boot-lacings are dangled before your astonished eyes. Do your loosened waistbands remind you of the dinner hour? before your door stands a man brandishing “patent carving knives,” warranted to dissever the toughest old rooster that ever crowed over a hen-harem.
Speaking of hens—see that menagerie, in one of the handsomest parts of Broadway, defaced by that blood and murder daub of a picture, representing every animal that ever flew or trotted into Noah’s ark, beside a few that the good old gentleman never undertook to perpetuate. See them lashing their tails, bristling their manes, ploughing the air and tossing high above their incensed horns, that distracted gory biped, whose every individual hair is made to stand on end with horror, and his coat-tail astonishingly to perpendicularize. Countrymen stand agape while pickpockets lighten them of their purses; innocent little children, with saucer eyes, shy to the further edge of the side-walk, and hurry home with an embryo nightmare in their frightened craniums. “Jonathan” pays his “quarter,” and is astonished to find upon entering a very tame collection of innocent beasts and beastesses, guiltless of any intention to growl, unless poked by the long pole of curiosity. Dissatisfied, he descends to the cellar, to see the elephant, who holds a sleepy levee, for all who feel inclined to pack his trunk with the apples and cakes, which a shrewd stall-keeping Yankee in the corner disinterestedly advises them to buy, “just to see how the critter eats.”
Well; two-headed calves, one-eyed buffaloes, skeleton ostriches, and miles of serpents, are every day matters; but yonder is an announcement that “Two Wild Men from Borneo” may be seen within. Now that interests me. “They have the faculty of speech, but are deficient in memory.” Bless me, you don’t mean to say that those little Hop-o’-my-Thumbs have the temerity to call themselves “Men?” little humbugs, pocket editions. But what pretty little limbs they have, and how they shiver in this cold climate, spite of the silk and India-rubber dress they wear under those little tights. “The youngest weighs only twenty-seven, the oldest thirty-four pounds;” so the keeper says, who, forming a circle, lays one hand on the head of each, and commences his stereotyped, menagerie exordium, oblivious of commas, colons, semicolons, periods, or breath; adding at the close, that the Wild Men will now shake hands with any child who may be present, but will always bite an adult. Nothing like a barrier to make femininity leap over. I’m bent upon having the first “adult” shake. The keeper says, “Better not, Ma’am” (showing a scar on his finger), “they bit that een-a-most to the bone.” Of course, snapping at masculinity is no proof to me of their unsusceptibility to feminine evangelization; on the contrary. So, taking a cautious patrol around the interesting little savages, I hold out my hand. Allah be praised! they take it, and my five digits still remain at the service of printers and publishers!
CITY SCENES AND CITY LIFE.
NUMBER THREE.
What a never-ceasing bell-jingling, what a stampede of servants, what a continuous dumping down of big trunks; what transits, what exits, what a miniature world is a hotel! Panorama-like, the scene shifts each hour; your vis-a-vis at breakfast, supping, ten to one, in the Rocky Mountains. How delightful your unconsciousness of what you are fore-ordained to eat for dinner; how nonchalantly in the morning you handle tooth-brush and head-brush, certain of a cup of hot coffee whenever you see fit to make your advent. How scientifically your fire is made, without any unnecessary tattooing of shovel, tongs and poker. What a chain-lightning answer to your bell summons; how oblivious is “No. 14” of your existence; how indifferent is “No. 25” whether you sneeze six or seven times a day; how convenient are the newspapers and letter-stamps, obtainable at the clerk’s office; how digestible your food; how comfortable your bed, and how never-to-be-sufficiently-enjoyed the general let-aloneativeness.
Avaunt, ye lynx-eyed “private boarding-houses,” with your two slip-shod Irish servants; your leaden bread, leather pies, ancient fowls, bad gravies, omnium gatherum bread puddings, and salt fish, and cabbage-perfumed entries; your washing-day “hashes,” your ironing-day “stews,” and all your other “comforts of a home” (?) not explicitly set forth in your advertisements.
Rat-tat, rat-tat-tat! what a fury that old gentleman seems to be in. Whoever occupies No. 40, must either be deaf or without nerves. Rat-tat! what an obstinate human; there he goes again! ah, now the door opens, and a harmless-looking clergyman glides past him, down the stairs. Too late—too late, papa,—the knot is tied; no use in making a fuss. Just see that pretty little bride, blushing, crying, and clinging to her boy-husband. Just remember the time, sir, when the “auld wife” at home made you thrill to the toes of your boots; remember how perfectly oblivious you were of guide-boards or milestones, when you went to see her; you how you used to hug and kiss her little brother Jim, though he was the ugliest, mischievous est little snipe in Christendom; how you used to read books for hours upside down, and how you wondered what people meant by calling the moon “cold;” how you wound up your watch half-a-dozen times a-day, and hadn’t the slightest idea whether you were eating geese or grindstones for dinner; how affectionately you nodded to Mr. Brown, of whom her father bought his groceries; how complacently you sat out the minister’s seventh-lie by her side at church; how wolfy you felt if any other piece of broadcloth approached her; how devoutly you wished you were that little bit of blue ribbon round her throat; and how, one moonlight night, when she laid her head against your vest pattern, you——didn’t care a mint julep whether the tailor ever got paid for it or not! Now, just imagine her papa, stepping in and deliberately turning all that cream to vinegar; wouldn’t you have effervesced? Certainly.
See that little army of boots in the entry outside the doors. May I need a pair of spectacles, if one of their owners has a neat foot! No. 20 turns his toes in, No. 30 treads over at the side; No. 40 has a pedestal like an elephant. Stay!—there’s a pair now—Jupiter what a high instep! what a temper that man has! wonder if those! are married boots? Heaven help Mrs. Boots, when her husband finds a button missing! It strikes me that I should like to mis-mate all those boots, and view, at a respectful distance, the young tornado in the entry, when the gong sounds!