The Salamander in the last analysis is a little atom possessed of a brain, thrown against the great tragic luxury of New York, which has impelled her to it as the flame the moth.
She comes roving from somewhere out of the immense reaches of the nation, revolting against the commonplace of an inherited narrowness, passionately adventurous, eager and unafraid, neither sure of what she seeks nor conscious of what forces impel or check her. She remains a Salamander only so long as she has not taken a decision to enter life by one of the thousand avenues down which in her running course she has caught an instant vista. Her name disappears under a new self-baptism. She needs but a little money and so occasionally does a little work. She brings no letters of introduction, but she comes resolved to know whom she chooses. She meets them all, the men of New York, the mediocre, the interesting, the powerful, the flesh hunters, the brutes and those who seek only an amused mental relaxation. She attracts them by hook or crook, in defiance of etiquette, compelling their attention in ways that at the start hopelessly mystify them and lead to mistakes. Then she calmly sets them to rights and forgives them. If she runs recklessly in the paths of danger, it is because to her obsessed curiosity it is imperative for her to try to comprehend what this danger can mean.
She has no salon to receive her guests—she turns her bedroom at noon into a drawing-room, not inviting every one, but to those to whom she extends the privilege fiercely regulating the proprieties. She may have a regular occupation or an occasional one, neither must interfere with her liberty of pleasure. She needs money—she acquires it indirectly, by ways that bear no offense to her delightfully illogical but keen sensibilities. With one man she will ride in his automobile, far into the night—to another she will hardly accord the tips of her gloves. She makes no mistakes. Her head is never dizzy. Her mind is in control and she knows at every moment what she is doing. She will dare only so far as she knows she is safe.
She runs the gamut of the city, its high lights and its still shadows. She enters by right behind its varied scenes. She breakfasts on one egg and a cup of coffee, takes her luncheon from a high-legged stool in a cellar restaurant, reluctantly counting out the change, and the same night, with supreme indolence, descends from a luxurious automobile, before the flaring portals of the restaurant most in fashion, giving her fingers to those who rank among the masters of the city.
This curiosity that leads her to flit from window to window has in it no vice. It is fed only by the zest of life. Her passion is to know, to leave no cranny unexplored, to see, not to experience, to flit miraculously through the flames—never to be consumed!
That her standard of conduct is marvelous, that her ideas of what is permitted and what is forbidden are mystifying, is true. So too is it difficult to comprehend, in the society of men of the world, what is fair and what is unfair, what is "done" and what is not "done." To understand the Salamander, to appreciate her significance as a criticism of our present social forms, one must first halt and consider what changes are operating in our social system.
If one were privileged to have the great metropolis of New York reduced to microcosm at his feet, to be studied as man may study the marvelous organism of the anthill or the hive, two curious truths would become evident. First that those whom the metropolis engenders seldom succeed their fathers, that they move in circles as it were, endlessly revolving about a fixed idea, apparently stupefied by the colossal shadows under which they have been born; secondly that daily, hourly even, a stream of energetic young men constantly arrives from the unknown provinces, to reinvigorate the city, rescue it from stagnation, ascending abruptly to its posts of command, assuming direction of its manifold activities—ruling it.
Further, one would perceive that the history of the city is the result of these two constantly opposed forces, one striving to conserve, the other to acquire. The inheritors constantly seek to define the city's forms, encase its society, limit its opportunities, transform its young activities into inheritable institutions; while the young and ardent adventurers who come with no other baggage than their portmanteaux of audacity and sublime disdain, are constantly firing it with their inflaming enthusiasm, purifying it with their new health, forcing the doors of reluctant sets, storming its giant privileges, modernizing its laws, vitalizing its arts, capturing its financial hierarchies, opposing to the solidifying force of attempted systems their liberating corrective of opportunity and individualism. Of the two forces, only the conqueror from without is important.
This phenomenon of immigration is neither new nor peculiar to our civilization. It is indeed the living principle of a metropolis which, as it requires food, water, fire for its material existence, must also hourly levy, Minotaur-like, its toll on foreign youth. Woman has had no counterpart to this life-giving fermentation of young men. The toll of the metropolis has been the toll of corruption, spreading corruption, and this continuous flow of the two sexes through the gates of the city has been like the warring passage through the arteries of red life-defending corpuscles and disease-bearing germs.