And so it proved after a time.
The truth was that the city then, for the first time in a half century if not longer, was but beginning to emerge from a frightful period of misrule at the hands of as evil a band of mercenaries as ever garroted a body politic. It was still being looted and preyed upon in a most shameful manner. Graft and vice stalked hand-in-hand. Although Tammany Hall, the head and center of all the graft and robbery and vice and crime protection, had been delivered a stunning blow by a reform wave which had temporarily ousted it and placed reform officials over the city, still the grip of that organization had not relaxed. The police and all minor officials, as well as the workmen of all departments were still, under the very noses of the newly elected officials, perhaps with their aid, collecting graft and tribute. The Reverend Doctor Parkhurst was preaching, like Savonarola, the destruction of these corruptions of the city.
When I arrived, the streets were not cleaned or well-lighted, their ways not adequately protected or regulated as to traffic. Uncollected garbage lay in piles, the while the city was paying enormous sums for its collection; small and feeble gas-jets fluttered, when in other cities the arc-light had for fifteen years been a commonplace. As we dragged on, on this slow-moving car, the bells on the necks of the horses tinkling rhythmically, I stared and commented.
“Well, you can’t say that this is very much.”
“My boy,” cautioned my good and cheerful brother, “you haven’t seen anything yet. This is just an old part of New York. Wait’ll you see Broadway and Fifth Avenue. We’re just coming this way because it’s the quickest way home.”
When we reached Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue I was very differently impressed. We had traveled for a little way under an elevated road over which trains thundered, and as we stepped down I beheld an impressively wide thoroughfare, surging even at this hour in the morning with people. Here was Macy’s, and northward stretched an area which I was told was the shopping center of the vast metropolis: Altman’s, Ehrich’s, O’Neill’s, Adams’, Simpson-Crawford’s, all huge stores and all in a row lining the west side of the street. We made our way across Fifteenth Street to the entrance of a narrow brownstone apartment house and ascended two flights, waiting in a rather poorly-lighted hall for an answer to our ring. The door was eventually opened by my sister, whom I had not seen since my mother’s death four years before. She had become stout. The trim beauty for which a very few years before she had been notable had entirely disappeared. I was disappointed at first, but was soon reassured and comforted by an inherently kindly and genial disposition, which expressed itself in much talking and laughing.
“Why, Theodore, I’m so glad to see you! Take off your things. Did you have a pleasant trip? George, here’s Theodore. This is my husband, Theodore. Come on back, you and Paul,” so she rattled on.
I studied her husband, whom I had not seen before, a dark and shrewd and hawklike person who seemed to be always following me with his eyes. He was an American of middle-Western extraction but with a Latin complexion and Latin eyes.
E——’s two children were brought forward, a boy and a girl four and two years of age respectively. A breakfast table was waiting, at which Paul had already seated himself.
“Now, my boy,” he began, “this is where you eat real food once more. No jerkwater hotels about this! No Pittsburgh newspaper restaurants about this! Ah, look at the biscuit! Look at the biscuit!” as a maid brought in a creamy plateful. “And here’s steak—steak and brown gravy and biscuit! Steak and brown gravy and biscuit!” He rubbed his hands in joy. “I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything like this since you left home. Ah, good old steak and gravy!” His interest in food was always intense.