My Day: Reminiscences of a Long Life

by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

"Very truly yours,
"ROGER A. PRYOR."

CHAPTER XXXII

Early in the spring of 1868 we removed to Brooklyn Heights near the Ferry, much nearer my husband's office in Liberty Street. New York had not then stretched an arm across East River and taken into its bosom Brooklyn—already the third city in the Union. The two cities, now one in name, were practically one in interest as early as 1867. A great multitude of the dwellers of Brooklyn crossed the ferry every morning on their way to their daily work in New York. Brooklyn was a huge, overgrown village; a city of churches, a city of homes, and of children innumerable. Every year in May a mighty army—thousands and thousands—of these children paraded the streets under banners from their respective Sunday-schools,—a unique spectacle well worth a pilgrimage thither, provided one could content himself with a precarious footing on a crowded sidewalk; for these children had the "right of way"—and knowing their right, dared maintain it.

In 1867 streets were so deserted—was not everybody in New York for the day?—that little children adopted them as a perfectly safe playground. There were no elevated railroads, no trolley cars, no automobiles, no bicycles, no electric lights, no telephones.

Our move was signalized by a complication of difficulties. Four of my younger children found this an altogether suitable time to indulge in measles. Hasty visits to a near-by auction room resulted in a few needful articles of furniture which were lent to us—for we could not purchase. The auctioneer was to own them, and reclaim them if not paid for in a certain time. A small room was shelved for the books that had survived the sacking of our house, and to our great satisfaction we found that the much-used books—books of reference—had proven too bulky or too shabby to be stolen. These and other well-worn, well-read books became the nucleus of a large library, and hold to-day in their tattered bindings places of honor denied newer lights of more creditable appearance. We were not aware when we moved to Brooklyn Heights that we had descended into the very centre of the wealthiest society of the city. Had we known this, it would have signified nothing to us. Our extreme poverty forbade any expectation of indulgence in social life, even had we felt we had the smallest right to recognition. We had never known anything about the social ambition of which in later years we hear so much—still less did we now regard it. We "asked our fellow-man for leave to toil," and asked nothing more.

We soon discovered that the people around us lived in affluent ease and elegance—but that was not our affair! We had no place in their world, nor did we desire it. To conceal our true condition was our instinctive impulse, and to that end we shunned notice. Sometimes a great wave of desolation and loneliness—a longing inexpressible for companionship—would possess me. At this time there was a bridge over Broadway below Cortlandt Street. I sometimes, at seasons of great depression, accompanied my husband to his office, and would ascend the steps to this bridge and look up and down the restless sea of passing crowds. Such a sickening sense of loneliness would come over me, I would feel that my heart was breaking. All seemed so desolate, so hopeless, for us in this great unknown world. We knew ourselves not only strangers but aliens, outcasts.

Dear little Willy came to me one day and advised me to change his terrier's name, "Rebel,"—a name he had borne by reason of his own disposition, and not at all in honor of the "lost cause." "The boys will stone him," said Willy; "I am going to call him 'Prince' in the street and 'Rebel' at home." On another day his younger sisters were decoyed into the garden of a neighbor, and there informed by the children of the house that we would not be allowed to live in the street—that we were "Rebels, and slave-drivers, and awful people!" These painful incidents were of everyday occurrence. "Mamma told me," said one of the little ones, "that God loves us. Will everybody else hate us?" Before very long, however, the little rebels made friends and were forgiven all their enormities.

The good people of Brooklyn at that time were taking up their cobblestones and laying a wooden pavement on Pierpont Street, and fascinating blocks of wood were piled at intervals in the street. Of course, the boys immediately built of them a village of tiny houses, and one day a committee of bright-eyed fellows—Tom and Charley Nichols and Dr. Schenck's boys—waited on me with a request that my little girls be permitted to "come out and keep house" for them. The little girls, they added gallantly, would be allowed to choose the boys! That was not difficult. The small housekeepers walked off with Tom and Charley. "Say," said one of the proud owners of real estate, with a pristine recognition of woman's place in the household, "will your cook give you some potatoes and apples? We've got a splendid fire around the corner."

"Sure, an I'll not lave you do it," said Anne out of the basement window. "Is it burnin' down the place ye'll be afther doin'?"—but a "Please, Anne, dear," from the smallest housekeeper settled the matter. A fire in the street would be a strange spectacle in the Borough of Brooklyn to-day.