About the time that Alonzo bids his Melissa the fourteenth farewell at the garden gate, and pater familias calls angrily from his noisily raised window, there sets forth into the city a straggling army of toilers whose duties lead them into laborious ways while the great world slumbers more or less sweetly upon its pillow.
Time was when all honest burghers were night-capped and somnolent at an early hour, and the silent streets knew naught but the echoing tread of the watchman who swung his lantern down the lonesome ways and started at his own loud cry of “All’s Well.” But modern ideas have almost turned the night into day. While we slumber at home, hundreds are toiling that we may have our comforts in the morning. The baker is at work upon our morning rolls; the milkman is at his pump; the butcher is busy choosing his oldest cow to kill; the poor watchman is slumbering in a cold doorway; the fireman is on the alert; the drug clerk sits heavy-eyed, prepared to furnish our paregoric or court plaster; the telephone girl chews gum and reads her novels while the clock chimes wearily on; the printer clicks away at his machine; the reporter prowls through the streets hunting down items to go with our coffee and toast; the policeman lurks at a corner, ready to smash our best hat with his deadly locust.
These night workers form a little world to themselves. They grow to know each other, and there seems to be a sympathy among them on account of their peculiar life. The night policemen, and morning newspaper men, the cab drivers, the street cleaners (not referring to Houston now), the late street car drivers, the all-night restaurant men, the “rounders,” the wiernerwurst men and the houseless “bums” come to know and greet one another each night on their several regular or aimless rounds. Only those who are called by business or curiosity to walk into this night world know of the strange sights it presents.
At 12 o’clock the night in the city may be said to begin. By that time the day toilers are at home, and the night shift is on. The street cars have ceased to run, and the last belated citizen, hurrying home from “the lodge” or the political caucus is, or should be, at home. Even the slow-moving couples who have been to the theater and partaken of oysters at the “café for ladies and gents,” have bowed to the inevitable and reluctantly turned homeward.
And now come forth things that flourish only in the shade; white-faced things with owl-like eyes who prowl in the night and greet the dawn with sullen faces and the sunlight with barred doors and darkened windows.
Here and there down the streets are arc lights, and swinging doors, and about are grouped a pale and calm-faced gentry with immaculate clothes and white flexible hands. They are soft-voiced and courteous, but their eyes are shifty and their tread light and cruel as a tiger’s. They are gamblers, and they will “rob” you as politely and honestly as any stock broker or railroad manipulator in Christendom. Byron says:
“The devil’s in the moon for mischief; not the longest day;
The twenty-first of June sees half the mischief in a wicked way
As does three hours on which the moonshine falls.”
And still worse; a night when there is no moon to shine. Darkness is the great awakener of latent passions and the chief inciter to evil. When night comes, the drunkard doubles his cups; the roisterer’s voice is unrestrained; even the staid and sober citizen, the bulwark of civil and social government looses the checkrein of his demeanor and mingles in the relaxations of the social circle. The tongue of gallantry takes on new license, and even the brow and lip of innocence itself invite admiration with a bolder and a surer charm. What wonder, then, that lawlessness o’erreaches itself, and sin flaunts her flaming skirts in the very face of purity when darkness reigns!
In the all-night saloons there is always someone to be found. At little tables in the corners one can always see two or three worn and shady-looking customers, sitting silent, brooding over the wrongs the world has dealt them, or talking in low, querulous tones to each other of their troubles. A smart policeman, with shining buttons and important step, goes down the street twirling his club. He tries the doors carefully of the big stores, the wholesale houses and the jewelry stores to see if they are securely locked. He never makes a mistake and wastes his time trying the fastenings of the small shops.
A few gay young men stroll by occasionally, with their coat collars turned up, laughing loudly and scattering slang and coarse jests. Down gloomy side streets steal a few dim figures, clinging to the shadows, walking with dragging, shuffling feet down the inclined plane of eternity. These are disreputable, but harmless, creatures, who have stolen out to buy cocaine and opium with which to dull the bite of misery’s sharp tooth. In high windows dim lights burn, where anxious love watches by the bedside of suffering mortality through the long night watches, listening to the moans that it cannot quiet, and wondering at the mysterious Great Plan that so hides its workings toward a beneficent end.