New York: Its Upper Ten and Lower Million

by George Lippard

Arrived at the Astor House he registered his name, Gaspar Manuel, Havana.

He had just landed from the Havana steamer.

As he wrote his name on the Hotel book, he uncovered his head, and—by the gas light which shone fully on him,—it might be seen that his dark hair, which fell to his shoulders, was streaked with threads of silver. The vivid brightness of his eyes, the death-like pallor of his face, became more perceptible in the strong light; and when he threw his cloak aside, you beheld a slender frame, slightly bent in the shoulders, clad in a dark frock coat, which, single breasted, and with a strait collar, reached to the knees.

His face seemed to indicate the traveler who has journeyed in many lands, seen all phases of life, thought much, suffered deeply, and at times grown sick of all that life can inflict or bestow; his attire indicated a member of some religious organization, perchance a member of that society founded by Loyola, which has sometimes honored, but oftener blasphemed, the name of Jesus. Directing his trunks,—there were some three or four, huge in size, and strangely strapped and banded—to be sent to his room, Gaspar Manuel resumed his cloak and sombrero, and left the hall of the hotel.

It was an hour before he appeared again. As he emerged from one of the corridors into the light of the hall, you would have scarcely recognized the man. In place of his Jesuit-like attire, he wore a fashionably made black dress coat, a snow-white vest, black pants and neatly-fitting boots. There was a diamond in the center of his black scarf, and a massy gold chain across his vest. And a diamond even more dazzling than that which shone upon his scarf, sparkled from the little finger of his left-hand.

But the change in his attire only made that face, framed in hair and beard, black as jet, seem more lividly pale. It was a strange faded face,—you would have given the world to have known the meaning of that thought which imparted its incessant fire to his eyes.

Winding his cloak about his slender frame, and placing his sombrero upon his dark hair, he left the hotel. Passing with his quick active step along Broadway, he turned to the East river, and soon entered a silent and deserted neighboring house. Silent and deserted, because it stands in the center of a haunt of trade, which in the day-time, mad with the fever of traffic, was at night as silent and deserted as a desert or a tomb.

He paused before an ancient dwelling-house, which, wedged in between huge warehouses, looked strangely out of place, in that domain of mammon. Twenty-one years before, that dwelling-house had stood in the very center of the fashionable quarter of the city. Now the aristocratic mansions which once lined the street had disappeared; and it was left alone, amid the lofty walls and closed windows of the warehouses which bounded it on either hand, and gloomily confronted it from the opposite side of the narrow street.

It was a double mansion—the hall door in the center—ranges of apartments on either side. Its brick front, varied by marble over the windows, bore the marks of time. And the wide marble steps, which led from the pavement to the hall door—marble steps once white as snow—could scarcely be distinguished from the brown sandstone of the pavement. In place of a bell, there was an unsightly-looking knocker, in the center of the massive door; and its roof, crowned with old fashioned dormer-windows, and heavy along the edges with cumbrous woodwork, presented a strange contrast to the monotonous flat roofs of the warehouses on either side.

Altogether, that old-fashioned dwelling looked as much out of place in that silent street of trade, as a person attired in the costume of the Revolution,—powdered wig, ruffled shirt, wide skirted coat, breeches and knee-buckles,—would look, surrounded by gentlemen attired in the business-like and practical costume of the present day. And while the monotonous edifices on either side, only spoke of Trade—the Rate of Exchange—the price of Dry Goods,—the old dwelling-house had something about it which breathed of the associations of Home. There had been marriages in that house, and deaths: children had first seen the light within its walls, and coffins, containing the remains of the fondly loved, had emerged from its wide hall door: dramas of every-day life had been enacted there: and there, perchance, had also been enacted one of those tragedies of every-day life which differ so widely from the tragedies of fiction, in their horrible truth.