No one to-day can possibly foresee [wrote the critic of the Weekly Review] to what heights the dance, as the expression of all life, will be carried. We can only call attention to the plans recently formulated by one of our leading publishers for a library of the world's best thought, to be issued at a price that will bring it within the reach of people of very moderate means. The library will consist of bound volumes of photographs showing the world's greatest dancers in their interpretation of famous authors. Twenty young women from the Paris and St. Petersburg conservatories of dancing have already been engaged. Among other works they will dance the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, the second book of the Iliad, "Œdipus the King," the fifth Canto of Dante's "Inferno," Spinoza's "Ethics," "Hamlet," Rousseau's "Confessions," "Mother Goose," Tennyson's "Brook" and the "Charge of the Light Brigade," Burke's "Speech on Conciliation," "Alice in Wonderland," the "Pickwick Papers," the Gettysburg Address, Darwin's "Origin of Species," and Mr. Dooley.
XIII
ON LIVING IN BROOKLYN
Perhaps the principal charm about living in Brooklyn lies in the fact that strangers can find their way there only with extreme difficulty. The streets in Brooklyn are to me a perpetual source of joy and wonderment. Like the city itself, they have kept the slow-paced habits of a former age. No city is more easy to be lost in, and Brooklyn is at all times full of people from across the river, who ask the way to Borough Hall. For that matter, one may easily be lost on Staten Island, where the inhabitants are reputed to pass the pleasant summer evenings in guiding strangers to the trolley lines. But a person naturally expects to lose his bearings on Staten Island. On the other hand, to be lost in Brooklyn irritates as well as confuses. It is like starving in the midst of plenty. One always has the choice of half a dozen surface cars, but one is always sure to be directed to the wrong one.
So I repeat: Brooklyn's tangled streets serve their highest purpose in safeguarding its inhabitants against the unwelcome visitor. Because of our American good nature we are always inviting people to call; and when they accept we immediately feel sorry. It is a law with us that if two utterly unsympathetic persons meet by chance at the house of a common friend, they shall insist on having each other to dinner on the following two Sundays. Or, again, you may be shaking hands with a very dear friend in the presence of a third person whom you dislike. And you are extremely anxious to have your friend come up for tea on Sunday, and you cannot do it without asking the other man.
Under such circumstances, it is well to live in Brooklyn. All you need say then to the person you have an aversion for is: "I should be delighted to have you call on us Sunday afternoon. We live in Brooklyn, you know, at No. 125 Bowdoin Place." You may then go home in peace, confident that your undesired visitor will never find you. At eight o'clock on Sunday night he will be wearily asking a policeman on Flatbush Avenue what the shortest way is to Borough Hall. Long before that he will have given up hope of finding No. 125 Bowdoin Place. His only object is to get home before midnight. Now it is plain that such an excellent defence against unpleasant people is unavailable in Manhattan. Ask a man to look you up at No. 952 West One Hundred and Twelfth Street, and though your heart loathes him, you shall not escape. But in Brooklyn you are safe until the moment your doorbell actually rings. For even if your visitor should find Bowdoin Place, many streets in Brooklyn have two, three, or four systems of numbering. Some will maintain that it is not rigidly honest to give a stranger your Brooklyn address without giving him detailed directions for finding his way from the station, illustrating your argument with a sketch map. But there will always be Puritan consciences.
As a matter of fact, some of the kindest and most enlightened people I know live in Brooklyn. And I cannot see why that in itself should make them a subject for general satire. I have been told that a professor at Harvard has recently made the calculation that the drama and the art of conversation in America would be poorer by 33-1/3 per cent. if the joke about living in Brooklyn were to disappear. When a visitor from Brooklyn drops in unexpectedly at a Harlem flat, the proper thing for the host to say is, "Well, well, what a task it must have been to find your way out," and when the visitor starts for home his host remarks, "Sorry you can't stay; but we all know how it is—in the midst of life you are in Brooklyn. Goodnight."
Of course I don't mean to deny that the people who live in Brooklyn are themselves largely responsible for the perpetuation of the silly jest. They subscribe to it in a spirit of meekness that is characteristically local. Ask a man from Cherry Springs or Binghamton where is his home and he will quietly say, Cherry Springs or Binghamton, as the case may be. But the resident of Brooklyn is apologetic from the start. He anticipates criticism by saying, "Well, you know, I live in Brooklyn," and he looks at you in tremulous expectation of the usual condolences. If by any chance one should omit the traditional reply, the man from Brooklyn begins to fear the worst. On both sides of the East River the principle seems to be accepted that inasmuch as there are places like Cherry Springs or Binghamton there must be people who live in them, but that it is by definition impossible to bring forward a valid reason why one should live in Brooklyn.
The question is really a complicated one. Harlem's disapproval of Brooklyn is not of a piece with Harlem's disapproval of localities outside itself. Living in Brooklyn is something utterly different from living in New Jersey or the Bronx. New Jersey and the Bronx are so entirely out of the ordinary that they call for no explanation. Living there has at least the merit of originality. A great poet might choose to live in the Bronx. Minor poets have been known to commute across the Hudson. But Brooklyn cannot be dismissed so easily. She is too big, too close, and, for all her timidity, too contented. Her people come under the head of those who ought to know better and do not try. Thus, while living in New Jersey is a matter of taste, and living in the Bronx is a matter of necessity, living in Brooklyn is a matter of habit.