Sometimes I feel that Williams has no right to be walking down Broadway on business when there is a stricken child at home. The world cannot possibly need him at that moment as much as his own flesh and blood does. It is not courage; it is brutish indifference. At such times I am tempted to dismiss as mythical all this fine talk about feelings that run deep beneath the surface, and bruised hearts that ache under the smile. If a man really suffers he will show it. If a man cultivates the habit of not showing emotion he will end by having none to show. How much of Broadway's optimism is—But here I am paraphrasing William James's Principles of Psychology, which the reader can just as well consult for himself in the latest revised edition of 1907.
Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely Williams's children are all in perfect health, and my envelope from the editor has brought a check instead of a rejection slip. It is on such occasions that Williams and I, after shaking hands the way a locomotive takes on water on the run, wheel around, halt, and proceed to buy something at the rate of two for a quarter. If any one is ever inclined to doubt the spirit of American fraternity, it is only necessary to recall the number of commodities for men that sell two for twenty-five cents. In theory, the two cigars which Williams and I buy for twenty-five cents are worth fifteen cents apiece. As a matter of fact they are probably ten-cent cigars. But the shopkeeper is welcome to his extra nickel. It is a small price to pay for the seal of comradeship that stamps his pair of cigars selling for a single quarter. Two men who have concluded a business deal in which each has commendably tried to get the better of the other may call for twenty-five cent perfectos or for half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I understand there are such. But friends sitting down together will always demand cigars that go for a round sum, two for a quarter or three for fifty (if the editor's check is what it ought to be).
When people speak of the want of real comradeship among women, I sometimes wonder if one of the reasons may not be that the prices which women are accustomed to pay are individualistic instead of fraternal. The soda fountains and the street cars do not dispense goods at the rate of two items for a single coin. It is infinitely worse in the department stores. Treating a friend to something that costs $2.79 is inconceivable. But I have really wandered from my point.
'Well, be good,' says Williams, and rushes off to catch his boat.
The point I wish to make is that on Broadway people pay tribute to the principle of goodness that rules this world, both in the way they greet and in the way they part. We salute by asking each other what the good word is. When we say good-bye we enjoin each other to be good. The humorous assumption is that gay devils like Williams and me need to be constantly warned against straying off into the primrose paths that run out of Broadway.
Simple, humorous, average American man! You have left your suburban couch in time to walk half a mile to the station and catch the 7.59 for the city. You have read your morning paper; discussed the weather, the tariff, and the prospects for lettuce with your neighbor; and made the office only a minute late. You have been fastened to your desk from nine o'clock to five, with half an hour for lunch, which you have eaten in a clamorous, overheated restaurant while you watched your hat and coat. At odd moments during the day the thought of doctor's bills, rent bills, school bills, has insisted on receiving attention. At the end of the day, laden with parcels from the market, from the hardware store, from the seedman, you are bound for the ferry to catch the 5.43, when you meet Smith, who, having passed the good word, sends you on your way with the injunction to be good—not to play roulette, not to open wine, not to turkey-trot, not to joy-ride, not to haunt the stage door. Be good, O simple, humorous, average suburban American!
I take back that word suburban. The Sunday Supplement has given it a meaning which is not mine. I am speaking only of the suburban in spirit, of a simplicity, a meekness which is of the soul only. Outwardly there is nothing suburban about the crowd on lower Broadway. The man in the street is not at all the diminutive, apologetic creature with side whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought forth and named Common People, who begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the Rent-Payer and the Ultimate Consumer. The crowd on lower Broadway is alert and well set up. Yes, though one hates to do it, I must say 'clean-cut.' The men on the sidewalk are young, limber, sharp-faced, almost insolent young men. There are not very many old men in the crowd, though I see any number of gray-haired young men. Seldom do you detect the traditional signs of age, the sagging lines of the face, the relaxed abdominal contour, the tamed spirit. The young, the young-old, the old-young, but rarely quite the old.
I am speaking only of externals. Clean-cut, eager faces are very frequently disappointing. A very ordinary mind may be working behind that clear sweep of brow and nose and chin. I have known the shock of young men who look like kings of Wall Street and speak like shoe clerks. They are shoe clerks. But the appearance is there, that athletic carriage which is helped out by our triumphant, ready-made clothing. I suppose I ought to detest the tailor's tricks which iron out all ages and all stations into a uniformity of padded shoulders and trim waist-lines and hips. I imagine I ought to despise our habit of wearing elegant shoddy where the European chooses honest, clumsy woolens. But I am concerned only with externals, and in outward appearances a Broadway crowd beats the world. Æsthetically we simply are in a class by ourselves when compared with the Englishman and the Teuton in their skimpy, ill-cut garments. Let the British and German ambassadors at Washington do their worst. This is my firm belief and I will maintain it against the world. The truth must out. Ruat cœlum. Ich kann nicht anders. J'y suis, j'y reste.
Williams laughs at my lyrical outbursts. But I am not yet through. I still have to speak of the women in the crowd. What an infinitely finer thing is a woman than a man of her class! To see this for yourself you have only to walk up Broadway until the southward-bearing stream breaks off and the tide begins to run from west to east. You have passed out of the commercial district into the region of factories. It is well on toward dark, and the barracks that go by the unlovely name of loft buildings, are pouring out their battalions of needle-workers. The crowd has become a mass. The nervous pace of lower Broadway slackens to the steady, patient tramp of a host. It is an army of women, with here and there a flying detachment of the male.
On the faces of the men the day's toil has written its record even as on the women, but in a much coarser hand. Fatigue has beaten down the soul of these men into brutish indifference, but in the women it has drawn fine the flesh only to make it more eloquent of the soul. Instead of listlessness, there is wistfulness. Instead of vacuity you read mystery. Innate grace rises above the vulgarity of the dress. Cheap, tawdry blouse and imitation willow-plume walk shoulder to shoulder with the shoddy coat of the male, copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may attain to five dollars. But the men's shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman transfigures and subtilizes the cheap material. The spirit of grace which is the birthright of her sex cannot be killed—not even by the presence of her best young man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by the heritage of her sex, and America has accentuated her title. This America which drains her youthful vigor with overwork, which takes from her cheeks the color she has brought from her Slavic or Italian peasant home, makes restitution by remoulding her in more delicate, more alluring lines, gives her the high privilege of charm—and neurosis.