Impressions of a War Correspondent

by George Lynch

A STREET IN THE CITY OF UNREST

It was a very wonderful sight last night, looking down from that height at the black pool of New York specked with star-like lights—a pool of darkness, where three million people slept, or tried to sleep; but it was like looking into a cup of ink to read destinies. Now, twelve hours afterwards, let us step down below into the centre of the city, when the limelight of a glaring, cloudless sun is turned full on it—when the living microcosm of its active life is thrown on the magic-lantern screen of our retina. Now we are at the base of these high buildings, and no city in Europe can show anything like them. It is difficult to know what to compare them to. We cannot compare Broadway to an avenue of poplars in stone, for the poplars are out of proportion to the avenue—far too high and far too irregular. There is no regular design, no continuous outline; immense, costly, new, they sprout upwards—sprout as if under the drawing-up power of a tropical sun, sprout as if fed with the superabundant fecundity of virgin soil. Unless they were as high, there would not be room for the people down at this crowded end of the wedge-shaped town. The want of finality about them is no less apparent in their irregularity of size than in their sides, generally blank of windows, in expectancy of buildings going up beside them probably higher still. Some of them are to be seen with white marble façades crowned with Corinthian pilasters, and the sides are of red or yellow brick, on which is probably some huge, ugly advertisement announcing that some fine five-cent cigar is "generously good," or holding out hope of relief in the shape of a pill to liver-troubled humanity. Parenthetically, I may remark that this city is, if anything, rather worse than London in the way of placards that scar the face of it. The goblin-like advertisements that spit soap and other things at unoffending eyes at night in Trafalgar Square are bad enough, but the advertisements in New York are worse still. There is a fine square here called Madison, in the centre of which trees rise from fountain-watered grass, and statued figures of people who were men in their day and did things, palatial buildings, dignifying commerce, form the square. Yet while I have been here I have watched, right over a house on one side of it, a huge white hoarding being erected, and have watched a great vulgar advertisement of cigarettes being daubed upon it. A beastly, ugly smear on one of the beauty-spots of the city.

Artillery Crossing A Drift Near Ladysmith.

Bang-bang; bang-bang; bang—loud, insistent; ping-ping—sharp, piercing; the first from the trolly-car, the second from a steam-trailing automobile; a booming roar from the ground accompanying the first, a buzzing rattle the second. Just a block away a far louder rattle still comes from the elevated railway. Here, down town, the streets are paved with cobble stones, and the severity of the climate in the winter is given as the excuse for the irregularity of the surface. Heavy lorries and wheels of horsed vehicles jangle over them, but the general uproar is so great that the bells on the horses' collars are inaudible, and sight is the only sense that makes their approach perceptible. The stream of trolly-cars passes and re-passes, perpetually making short pauses for the passengers to nip in quickly or—get left. Across from where I write is a restaurant with a legend above it, "Quick Lunch." This, I think, is rather peculiar to New York; in other cities it would be either "Good Lunch," or "Cheap Lunch;" here the attraction is that it is "quick." It is only necessary to watch the way that the customers hurry in and hurry out to see the significance of it. The day is not half long enough for the workers down here, and the work is at such high pressure that time for feeding can hardly be spared; it is not feeding or taking a meal, it is just stoking the human engine, and quick stoking at that.

The streets of London, even in the City, are calm and peaceful in comparison with those here in New York. The very ground throbs with vibration, the air throbs with the medley of noises, the buildings throb with both. It is not quite obvious why the streets should be so noisy. All the bells and gongs and danger-signals, one would think, would be equally effectual if they were not so loud, but now the competition of sounds is so great that any warning must almost be explosive in its violence to be audible at all. It is no wonder that we find in this city so many people suffering from nerves; it is quite surprising the number of men I have met who dare not drink coffee, men who have had to give up smoking, men and women who were too nervous to travel in a hansom, and who at frequent intervals have to retire to the country owing to various kinds of nervous trouble. There seems to be no question but that this suffering from nervous disorders is on the increase; it would be surprising if it were otherwise, considering the pace at which these people live; and when one sees thin, pallid, spectacle-wearing little children, one sees specimens of the rising generation who are destined to be still greater sufferers. As against this, and off-setting it, the taste for outdoor games seems to be on the increase, and for young business men who have little time for taking exercise nothing can be more admirable than clubs such as the athletic and the racquet clubs here, which give opportunities of taking indoor exercise on a scale unapproached by any similar institution in London.

When I left London in August and came here, it would be difficult to determine in which city the streets were more torn up. The construction of the underground railway here is in evidence all over the city; explosions from blasting are to be heard at intervals throughout the day, and in various directions huge caverns yawn, at the bottom of which hundreds of men and steel drills are hard at work. I have noticed within the last few years how the power of the street policeman has increased for regulating traffic. In return for the potatoes which Ireland originally received from America, she has ever since been supplying this country with policemen and politicians, and these former great burly, beltless Milesians now despotically rule the traffic as effectually as the London bobbies. It is characteristic that the youngsters about the streets should be keener, sharper, more active even than the youngsters of London. The lithe, thin, cigarette-smoking gamins that sell newspapers down town are a study in themselves as they dart and double through the traffic and the crowded sidewalks, selling innumerable editions of voluminous papers throughout the day.

Early in the morning going down town, during the luncheon hour, or going up town in the evening, one is struck by the enormous number of women workers who now find employment in this great city—in some offices hundreds of women, forming almost the entire staff, are employed. Their competition must make it harder still for the male clerks. Independent, self-reliant, business-like, a curious type is being developed of these bread-earners—a type that suggests the evolution of a neutral sex. Perhaps it is not altogether to be wondered at, and is only a manifestation of the idea of equality, that in the down-town cars the man no longer gives up his seat to the woman who stands holding on to the leather strap over her head in the crowded car, and does not remove his hat in the elevator when a woman enters.

Now a black-plumed vehicle comes spinning round the street corner, followed by three or four carriages with the crape-wearing drivers: apparently it is only the denseness of the traffic that prevents the hearse galloping and compels the driver to be content with a quick trot. Quick lunch, rapid life, fast funeral, devouring cremation, or else the weary toiler is laid down to have a first try at a real long sleep in the quivering bosom of the City of Unrest.