The Literary Shop, and Other Tales

by James L. Ford

In that novel the “local color” will be found in the blood and bones: it will not be smeared over the outside surface with a flannel rag. And men and women will read the story and talk about it and think about it, just as they are reading and talking and thinking about “Trilby” now.

Did you ever hear any one talk about Mr. Du Maurier’s “local color”? I never did.

But it was for the best of reasons that the barbed-wire fence was stretched across the city just below Cooper Union, although it shut out from view a quarter of the town in which may be found a greater and more interesting variety of human life and customs than in any other region that I know of. Of course this literary quarantine was not effected for the benefit of men and women of clean, intelligent, cultivated minds, but to avoid giving offense to the half-educated and quarter-bred folks whose dislike for what they consider “low” and “vulgar” is only equaled by their admiration of all that is “genteel” and their impassioned interest in the doings of “carriage company.”

I have sometimes accompanied parties of sight-seers through what was to them an entirely unknown territory, south of the barbed-wire fence, and I have noticed in almost every instance that it was only the men and women of a high social and intellectual grade who showed any true interest in, or appreciation of, what they saw there. There have been others in these little expeditions who looked to me as if they stood in perpetual fear of running across some of their own relations, and one of these once gravely assured me that Hester Street was not at all “nice.”

Chinatown is to me a singularly attractive spot, because of its vivid colors, its theatre, joss-house, restaurants, and opium-joints—those mysterious dens in which the Occident and Orient are brought into the closest companionship, while the fumes of the burning “dope” cloy the senses, and outcasts from every clime—the Chinese highbinder jostling against the Broadway confidence man—smoke and drink side by side, talking the while with a looseness of tongue that would be impossible under any influence other than that of opium. Mr. William Norr, a New York reporter, has told us a great many interesting and curious things about the human types—Caucasian as well as Mongolian—to be found in this quarter, and his book, Stories from Chinatown, possesses the rare merit of being absolutely true in color, fact, and detail.

But there is something in this alien settlement that seems to me to possess a greater interest, a deeper significance, than the garish lights of the colored lanterns or the pungent smoke of the poppy-seed, and that is the new hybrid race that is growing to maturity in its streets and tenements. There are scores of these little half-breeds to be seen there, and one of them has just come prominently before the American public in the person of Mr. George Appo, the son of a Chinese murderer and an Irishwoman, and himself a pickpocket, green-goods operator, as well as one of the most entertaining and instructive of all the witnesses examined before the Lexow Committee.

The Chinese and Italians rub elbows in this corner of the town, and a single step will bring us into Mulberry Bend, bright with red handkerchiefs and teeming with the olive-skinned children of Italy. Nowhere in the whole city is there a stronger clan feeling than here—a feeling that manifests itself not only in the craft and ferocity of the vendetta, but also in a spirit which impels these poverty-stricken exiles to stand by one another in the hour of trouble. There is no better-paying property to be had than one of these Mulberry Street tenements, for it is seldom, indeed, that the Italian poor will permit one of their number to be turned into the street for want of a month’s rent.

The Jewish old-clothing quarter that lies close to the Five Points is near by. The “pullers-in,” as the sidewalk salesmen are termed in the vernacular of the trade, transact business with a ferocity that can be best likened to that of Siberian wolves; but over beyond Chatham Square lies the Hebrew burying-ground, an ancient patch of sacred soil which all the money in New York could not buy from the descendants of those whose ashes repose there.

A few short blocks north of this old landmark lies one of the most famous political districts in the town, one which is liable to become the pivotal point in an exciting and closely contested election. There is a saloon here on one of the side-streets which it may be worth your while to visit. It is a dark, uninviting place, and its interior, with its rows of liquor barrels and boxes and its throng of blear-eyed, tough-looking customers, suggests anything but wealth and power. Nevertheless the taciturn little Irishman whose name is over the door has grown rich here and is the Warwick of the district so far as the minor city offices are concerned. And it was to this rumshop, as the whole ward knows, that a President of the United States came in his carriage one Sunday morning not many years ago, to make sure of the fealty of its proprietor and pour the oil of patronage on the troubled political waters.

And furthermore it is related of this district boss—who stands in the same relation to his constituents that the Roman senator of old did to his clients—that once at the close of an election day of more than ordinary importance one of his lieutenants burst in upon him, as he sat with a few faithful henchmen in the back room of his saloon, and announced triumphantly that his candidate had carried a certain election district by a vote of one hundred and fifty-five to one. And at this intelligence the east-side Warwick swore a mighty oath, and, striking his clenched fist fiercely on the table before him, exclaimed: “What I want to know is the name of the wan sucker that voted agin us!”