Crook. “Blood and thunder dramas,” they are called in the city. The titles are stunning—the plays themselves even more so. A writer in one of the current publications of the day gives the following truthful picture of a “Saturday night at the Bowery:”
“I had not loitered long at the entrance after the gas blazed up, when from up the street, and from down the street, and from across the street, there came little squads of dirty, ragged urchins—the true gamin of New York. These at once made a gymnasium of the stone steps—stood on their heads upon the
pavements or climbed, like locusts, the neighboring lamp-posts; itching for mischief; poking fun furiously; they were the merriest gang of young dare-devils I have seen in a long day. It was not long before they were recruited by a fresh lot of young ‘sardines’ from somewhere else—then they went in for more monkey-shines until the door should be unbarred. They seemed to know each other very well, as if they were some young club of genial spirits that had been organized outside of the barriers of society for a long while. What funny habiliments they sported. It had never been my experience to see old clothes thrown upon young limbs so grotesquely. The coat that would have been a fit for a corpulent youth nearly buried a skinny form the height of your cane.
“And on the other hand, ‘young dropsy’s’ legs and arms were like links of dried ‘bolonas’ in the garments which misfortune’s raffle had drawn for him. Hats without rims—hats of fur, dreadfully plucked, with free ventilation for the scalp—caps with big tips like little porches of leather—caps without tips, or, if a tip still clung to it, it was by a single thread and dangled on the wearer’s cheek like the husk of a banana. The majority seemed to have a weakness for the costumes of the army and the navy. Where a domestic tailor had clipped the skirts of a long blue military coat he had spared the two buttons of the waist-band, and they rested on the bare heels like a set of veritable spurs. Shoes and boots (and remember it’s a December night) are rather scarce—and those by which these savoyards could have sworn by grinned fearfully with sets of naked toes. One ‘young sport,’ he had seen scarcely ten such winters, rejoiced in a pair of odd-mated rubber over-shoes, about the dimensions of snow-shoes. They saluted him as ‘Gums.’ A youngster, with a childish face and clear blue eyes, now shuffled upon the scene.
“‘O Lordy, here’s Horace, jist see his get up.’ A shout of laughter went up, and Horace was swallowed in the ragged mob.
“‘Horace’ sported a big army cap like a huge blue extinguisher. He wrapped his wiry form in a cut-down, long-napped white beaver coat, the lapels of which were a foot square, and
shingled his ankles as if he stood between a couple of placards. I had seen the latest caricature on the philosopher of the Tribune, but this second edition of H. G. swamped it. I knew that that young rogue had counted upon the effect of his white coat, and he enjoyed his christening with a gleeful face and a sparkle in his blue eyes. O, for the pencil of a Beard or a Bellew, to portray those saucy pug-noses, those dirty and begrimed faces! Faces with bars of blacking, like the shadows of small gridirons—faces with woful bruised peepers—faces with fun-flashing eyes—faces of striplings, yet so old and haggard—faces full of evil and deceit.
“Every mother’s son of them had his fists anchored in his breeches pockets, and swaggered about, nudging each other’s ribs with their sharp little elbows. They were not many minutes together before a battle took place. Some one had tripped ‘Gums,’ and one of his old shoes flew into the air. I think he of the white coat was the rascal, but being dubbed a philosopher, he did his best to look very wise, but a slap on the side of the ridge of his white collar upset his dignity, and ‘Horace’ ‘went in,’ and his bony fists rattled away on the close-shaven pate of ‘Gums.’
“The doors are now unbarred, and this ragged ‘pent up little Utica’ rends itself, but not without much more scratching and much swearing. O, the cold-blooded oaths that rang from those young lips! As the passage to the pit is by a sort of cellar door, I lost sight of the young scamps as the last one pitched down its gloomy passage.