THE MAYOR OF AVENUE A
Three or four blocks east of the Bowery and lying north of the Jewish quarter is a little region somewhat less crowded, somewhat quieter, somewhat more clean, than the rest of the tenement country that lies about it. It is held by Germans—Americanised Germans. But Poles and Magyars, Jews of Roumania, Hungary and Russia, are edging their way into it; such frequent signs as "Gyogyszertár," which, evil as it strikes the eye, signifies nothing more malignant than "drugstore," announce this invasion even to casual passers-by. Some day the region will know the children of Germany no more; it will be a Babel of the tongues of central Europe. But as yet, if you walk along its four avenues, A, B, C and D, all lined with little shops, or lounge about its shady Tompkin's Square, you will see many a face that will carry your memory back to Berlin and Cologne and the beer-gardens and Sunday promenades of their work-people and petty bourgeois.
It was the evening after David's adventure with Kate Morgan. From the snowy air of broad Avenue A a good-natured crowd was turning into a gilded entrance, over which incandescent lights pricked the words "Liberty Assembly Hall." The crowd was chiefly German, but in it were many of the newer peoples of the neighbourhood. There were broad husbands and broad wives; children led by hand, babies carried in arms; young people in couples and in hilarious groups; solitary and furtive men and women. Most were in their finest, and some of the finery would not have made the opera ashamed; but many were dressed in shabbiness—though they, too, wore their best.
David, who had wandered into Avenue A, as he often did in his aimless night walks, paused momentarily and listlessly watched the in-going stream of people. A New Year's ball, he decided; but the word "Mayor" recurred so often in the bits of conversation he overheard that his inert curiosity prompted him to draw near a friendly-looking man who stood without the entrance.
"What's going on in there?" he asked.
"Installing the Mayor of Avenue A," the man returned.
David had vaguely heard of the "Mayors" who exercise an unofficial authority in several districts of New York. "How's the Mayor chosen?" he asked. "By election?"
"No. Carl Hoffman's the most popular man on the Avenue; he's got coin and influence; we all want him. That's how it is."
"What does he do?"
"If you need a dollar, and ain't got it, you go to Carl. If a poor woman ain't got any coal, she lets Carl know and she's got it. If you're dispossessed or in trouble with the police, Carl fixes you up. If you can't get work, you go see Carl. He's the poor man's friend—everybody's friend."