Farmer Hayn was old and weary; he was alone in his rambles about the metropolis, and he kept close guard on his pocket-book; but no country youth who ever hurried to the city to squander his patrimony could have had so good a time. He saw everything that the local guide-books called attention to, and so much else which was interesting that Tramlay, whom he had occasion to see for a few minutes each day, said one morning at the breakfast-table,—
“I wish, my dear, that I could steal a week or two from business, so that you and I could poke about New York, personally conducted by that old farmer.”
“Edgar!” exclaimed Mrs. Tramlay, “I sometimes fear that old age is taking sudden possession of you, you get such queer notions. The idea of New York people seeing their own city with a countryman for a guide!”
“There’s nothing queer about facts, my dear,” replied Tramlay, “except that they may be right under our eyes for years without being seen. A few years ago you and I spent nearly a thousand dollars in visiting some European battle-fields. To-day that old fellow has carefully done the Revolutionary battle-fields of New York and Brooklyn, at a total expense of a quarter of a dollar: even then he had a penny left to give to a beggar.”
“I never heard of a battle-field in New York or Brooklyn,” said Mrs. Tramlay.
“Nor I,” her husband replied; “at least not in so long a time that I’d forgotten the localities. But that old fellow knows all about them: when I drew him out a little he made me plans of each, with pencil on the back of an envelope, and explained how we lost Long Island and New York, as well as nearly two thousand men, when men were far scarcer than they are now. Here”—the merchant drew a mass of letters from his pocket and extracted from them a scrap of paper,—“here’s the way it happened; let me explain——”
“I’m not interested in those stupid old times,” said Mrs. Tramlay, with a deprecatory wave of her hand. “I’ve heard that in those days there wasn’t a house above Wall Street, no Park to drive in, and parties began before sunset.”
“Ah! to be sure,” said Tramlay, with a sigh. “But old Hayn has seen modern New York too: I was intensely interested in his description of the work being done in some of the industrial schools, where hundreds of little street Arabs are coaxed in by a promise of full stomachs, and taught to be good for something; the boys learn how to use tools, and the girls are taught every branch of housekeeping.”
“I really don’t see,” said Mrs. Tramlay, as she nibbled a roll, “what there is to interest us in the doings of such people.”
“They’re the people,” said her husband, raising his voice a little, “who generally supply us with paupers and criminals, they being untaught at home, and consequently having to beg or steal for a living. It is because of such people that we have iron bars on our dining-room windows and area-door, and hire a detective whenever we give a party, and put a chain on our door-mat and pay taxes to build jails and asylums and——”