John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

Here I might have committed anything short of murder or suicide without comment, and might have committed both without any one outside of the reporters and the police and Dix caring a straw about it.

I felt peculiarly lonely because I was inclined to be social and preferred to associate with the first man I met on the street to being alone. In fact, I have always accounted it one of my chief blessings that I could find pleasure and entertainment for a half-hour in the company of any man in the world except a fool or a man of fashion, as the old writers used to speak of them, or as we call them now, members of the smart set.

The first things that struck me as I stepped out into the thronged streets of the city were the throngs that hurried, hurried, hurried along, like a torrent pouring through a defile, never stopping nor pausing—only flowing on, intent on but one thing—getting along. Their faces, undistinguished and indistinguishable in the crowd, were not eager, but anxious. There was no rest, and no room for rest, more than in the rapids of Niagara. It was the bourgeoisie at flood, strong, turgid, and in mass, ponderant; but inextinguishably common. As I stood among them, yet not of them, I could not but remark how like they were in mass and how not merely all distinction but all individuality perished in the mixing. I recalled a speech that my father had once made. "I prefer countrymen," he said, "to city men. The latter are as like as their coats. The ready-made-clothing house is a great civilizer, but also a great leveler. Like the common school of which you boast, it may uplift the mass, but it levels—it destroys all distinction."

This came home to me now.

I had a proof of its truth, and, I may add, of the effect of urban influences not long after I launched on the restless sea of city life. I was passing one day along a street filled with houses, some much finer than others, when my way was blocked by a child's funeral in front of a small but neat house beside one much more pretentious. The white hearse stood at the door and the little white coffin with a few flowers on it was just about to be borne out as I came up. A child's funeral has always appealed to me peculiarly. It seems so sad to have died on the threshold before even opening the door. It appeared to me suddenly to have brought me near to my kind. And I stopped in front of the adjoining house to wait till the sorrowing little cortege had entered the carriage which followed behind the hearse. A number of other persons had done the same thing. At this moment, the door of the larger house next door opened, and a woman, youngish and well-dressed, appeared and stood on her steps waiting for her carriage which stood at some little distance.

As I was standing near her, I turned and asked her in an undertone:

"Can you tell me whose funeral this is?"

"No, I cannot," she said, so sharply that I took a good look at her as she stood trying to button a tight glove.

"Oh! I thought, perhaps, you knew as they are your next-door neighbors."

"Well, I do not. It's no concern of mine," she said shortly. She beckoned to her carriage across the way. The coachman who had been looking at the funeral caught sight of her and with a start wheeled his horses around to draw up. The number of persons, however, who had stopped like myself prevented his coming up to her door, which appeared to annoy the lady.