^' ^ V \/ ;:«vWa^. v./ ^^^^^^^ ^ ^^ 3,. V. """ .\^ _. '-^^ ;^ A ^ « - ^ ^^ o^ ' " " " \ V *^ •"o. '\ ,0- ^-'<., A MALE IRISHMAN %MWt ptimjiyiiinidji ■V^^M\^ .-«i^_ "^ J^ ^^.: ?iIEXISBi^l tl l\<~ ""^ >^- ^y^ STEEET THOUGHTS BY :rev. henry m/^ dexter, PASTOR OF FIXE STKEET CHUKCH, BOSTON. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY BILLINGS. BOSTON: CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY^ 117 Washington Street. 185 9. t Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by Ceosby, Nichols, & Co., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. cambridqe: ELECTROTYPE!) AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANT. 'Eyoj be aixrjv rfjV TraiStai/ avecnv re elvai t^s ^/^vx^s, icaX dvaTravcriv tcov (boovTiOoiU. Julian. Ad minora me demittere non rccusabo. QUINTILIAN. "We '11 wander through the streets, and note The qualities of people. Shakespeare. Think naught a trifle, though it small appear ; Sands make the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles, life. Your care to trifles give, Else you may die ere you have learned to live. Young. It ought to be the endeavor of every man to derive his reflec- tions from the objects about him ; for it is to no purpose that he alters his position, if his attention continues fixed to the same ^ ' Dr. Johnson. These straggling tides of life, that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end. Bryant. INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. Among my earliest memories of literature is that of a sentence — out of a review of Mrs. Sedgwick, by the poet Bryant, if I am not mistaken — like this : '' He who goes about among men with his eyes open, Avill learn something better than the lore that is hidden in books." The remark made a deep impression upon my child-mind, and has verified itself with the expe- rience of every succeeding year. Many a knot of thought, which obstinately refused disentanglement elsewhere, has been loosened in the street ; and many a face, inexplicable at the dinner-table and in the draw- ing-room, has been comprehended in the involuntary revelations and cross-lights of the sidewalk. Conse- quently, crowded thoroughfares have become favorite thinking-places with me ; and as a parish and a pulpit well up toward one end of Washington Street, and an editorial chair far down toward the other, necessitate many miles of weekly transition exercise, I have not 1* VI INTRODUCTORY NOTE. been, of late years, without abundant opportunity to gratify my taste in this particular. The following "notes" of this kind of "travel" were written, from week to week during the last year, to fill a small space in each issue of the religious journal with Avhich I am connected. Having been asked for in the form which they now assume, I have not refused to comply with the request, — though deeply sensible of their inconsiderable claim to favor- able regard, — j^^^'^^y because it is believed that they have already exerted some slight influence for good, as they have been read in their original form, and partly because my heart is set upon the great work of se- curing, in connection with the future of my own Church, a place of worship in Boston where the masses of the people may hear the Gospel at a cost within their means; and should a generous public so far patronize this unpretending volume that any profit shall accrue to its author from its issue, that little rill will help to swell the stream "of many littles," which — if God please — may float our enterprise, and make it a success. H. M. D. Hillside, Roxburt, December 9, 1858. CONTENTS PAGE I. The JIan with the Bundle 9 II. Whither are all, these People going? ... 13 III. Midnight Scenes 17 IV. A Winter Experience 22 V. EuM DID it 26 VI. The Old Man and his Son 31 VII. Beards 35 VIII. The Two Clerks 40 IX. Three Funerals 44 X. Street Smokers 50 XI. Cheating Children 55 XII. The Color of Gentlemen 58 XIII. The Anniversaries 63 XIV. Sensible Suits 67 XV. The Tyranny of Strength over Weakness . 71 XVI. Sound Advice 76 XVII. The Poor Woman 80 XVIII. Brighton on Sunday, P. M 85 XIX. The Aristocracy of Gloves 88 XX. Our Methuselahs 91 XXI. Ambitious Architecture 94 XXII. Such Weather! 99 XXIII. What else are you? 102 XXIV. Pat ^Ialoney 106 XXV. The Old Apple-Man 110 XXVI. A Male Irishman 113 vm CONTENTS. XXVII. Strange Contrasts 116 XXVIII. The Lost Child 120 XXIX. Not Convenient, To-Day 125 XXX. Ways of Walking 127 XXXI. Gone to Seed! 132 XXXII. Is SHE VERY Sick? 135 XXXIII. Quack Religion 139 XXXIV. Two Inches! 143 XXXV. "I don't like my Minister" 147 XXXVI. Too Late! 150 XXXVn. Social Highness and Lowness 154 XXXVIIL Speak to that Young Man! 158 XXXIX. How Poor People buy 161 XL. " Want-of-Confidence " Men 164 XLI. Poor Phcebe Murphy 168 XLII. Dead Leasees in State Street 173 XLIIL " Such a Pretty Man ! " 176 XLIV. Pastoral Calls 180 XLV. The Man with a Hard Time 184 XL VI. What the Lady had on 187 XL VII. Business in Business Hours 191 XL VIII. The Best need Watching 194 XLIX. Cooler! 198 L. Stove-Pipb Hats 202 LI. Here a Little and there a Little ... 206 m. Good Bye! 212 STREET THOUGHTS I. THE ]VIAN WITH THE BUNDLE. " For a short essay, take a short subject," was the good old rule of the good old man under whose benign and brazen-spectacled eye fell our first efforts at " composition," years — sad years, sweet years — agone. To honor his memory by the application of his precept on the present occasion, we select for a subject The Man with THE Bundle, who is as short as "subjects" will average, — not being over five feet two. You have met him ? Burly, broad-shouldered, a little careless both in dress and gait, as if con- scientiously opposed to precision of any kind ; and his face — from the shining curve of the smooth-shaven chin to the gleam of the gold spectacles that sit astride his nose — beaming with exhaustless good-humor. About five in the afternoon is his hour, when you can generally see him heading as if homeward, and carrying 10 STKEET THOUGHTS. thitherward a brown, paper-enveloped parcel. From long familiarity with this feature of his ^personality, we had come to designate to ourselves his otherwise anonymousness as " the man with the bundle." It may have been imagination on our part, but, as we met him the other cold after- noon, his face seemed so absolutely radiant with the heat of general benevolence, that we thought the thermometer, at the corner of Milk Street, went up two degrees as he passed. We deter- mined to make an effort to know more about him. To-day our desire was gratified. Turning into Marsh's to purchase the goose-quill now between our fingers — we can't abide mineral pens — who should be standing at the counter, closing, at the same instant, the lid of a magnificent writing- case, and a bargain for its purchase, but our radiant-faced friend ! " To what address shall we send this ? " said the clerk, with a tone and manner indicating extreme respect. " Nowhere," responded the j)urchaser ; " I al- ways carry my own bundles." " Yes, Sir ; but this is heavy, and it will be a pleasure to us to send it." "Young man," replied the other, "I always love to take something home at night, to show my wife and children that I have n't forgotten them while at my business ; and I would n't give THE MAN WITH THE BUNDLE. 11 a pin to make anybody a present without I car- ried it into the house myself. I want to see 'em take it. Besides, Sir, I never allow anybody to be bothered by sending things home for me that I can carry myself. I began life by lugging about parcels as a dry-goods man's boy, and many 's the weary mile of sidewalk I 've trudged, to carry a yard of ribbon or a paper of pins to somebody too proud or too lazy to carry it themselves. I have n't forgot my old thoughts, and, what's more, though times have changed with me since then, I ain't ashamed to be seen in the streets with a bundle." " Yes, Sir, but this is heavy." " No matter, I 'm strong," — and out he went, with such a glow on his face, that one could imagine it lighting up the now dim sidewalk rods ahead, as a locomotive-burner illuminates its track. Another well-known street face passed him in the door coming in. Purchasing a Congress knife, the new-comer said, in a sharp and dictato- rial tone, " Send that to my house (number fif- teen hundred and something, Washington Street) immediately. I shall want it as soon as I get home." " Two different men," suggested we, as the clerk closed the door after him. " Very," was his reply. " The man with the 12 STREET THOUGHTS. bundle is Mr. , the honest owner of hundreds of thousands, and there never was a subscription- paper yet that did n't get his name for something handsome. The other man failed last week — all there was of him to fail — and is n't worth his salt ; but he had rather take the commercial dis- grace of failure any time, than the social disgrace of being seen in the streets with a bundle." Two different men, indeed ! We shall take off our hat the next time we meet Mr. on the sidewalk. Long may he live and carry bundles, to make people happy ! 13 II. WHITHER ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING? " Where can all these people have come from, and whither can they be going ? " was the excla- mation of a country friend of ours, as he gazed from our window upon the surging throngs that were rushing hither and thither, jostling each other, and almost choking the sidewalks, in our principal thoroughfare. The exclamation was natural to one accustomed to the quiet scenes and sparse population of a rural district, where so many persons are by no possibility got together in a twelvemonth, as can be seen from the corner of State and Washington Streets at almost any business hour of any busi- ness day of the year. And even those who are accustomed to the crowds of city life sometimes share in the feeling of wonder, as the stream of human forms glides on under their eye, as if fed by some copious and exhaustless fountain, back among the hills. Whence ? Whither ? Who can answer ? 2 14 STREET THOUGHTS. But the law of popular presence in the streets of a great city has more affinity with the inter- mittent ebbings and Sowings of the ocean, than with the regular and ceaseless gliding of a river. The tide sets in during the morning hours, through all the channels furnished by the rail- ways and countless avenues which converge from the whole country toward the city as a com- mon centre. From every side the thronging masses press toward the great mart, eager to rush into the fray of commerce. Some slight undertow makes back simultaneously toward the interior, of those who have concluded their visits and purchases and are homeward bound, or of others who are off for distant cities, or of still others, who seek, for a day, the freshness of the fields, as a relief from toil. And so, at noon, when the tide is at its height, it sways back and forth a little, as South and West-enders go home to dine, and return to fin- ish their day's work. But as the shadows begin to lengthen, the tide turns and retreats with a velocity which soon empties the business streets, and leaves them, for fifteen hours, as bare as the docks that line the shore when the ebb is lowest. Here and there a few men straggle up and down ; and lone news-boys — stuck on a miscalculation of their supply of dailies to the popular want — ever and anon wake the edioes by their unmusi- WHITHER AKE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING? 15 cal cries, — " 'Ere 's Trav'ler, Transc'pt, Jurn'l, 'Er'ld, Daily Courier-r-r, — one cent ! " But the people are not there, and all the travel now passing through bears no greater proportion to the fulness of the noon flood, than the few faint streams that struggle down among the wet sands after the subsiding sea, bear to the resistless tide that floated great navies up to the wharf's edge a little while before. No deeply religious man can look upon these tides of humanity without a feeling of sorrow ; for by their very aspect they certify to him that they are striving after the gold that perisheth, more than for durable riches and righteousness. Surely, every man walketh in a vain show ; surely, they are disquieted in vain. They seem as hot in the strife for wealth, as if the success of life depended upon its acquisition ! They forget that it is not all of life to live ! They forget that the open grave is a great deal nearer to most of their feet, than are the paths of fame or fortune ! The open grave ! Where will all these people be, when but a few years are come ? Look at them and answer ! How many cemeteries will have swung open their hospitable gates to receive them ? How many old family tombs and mouldy vaults will have unlocked their damp portals to admit them? How many distant churchyards, far among the mountains, will be checkered with 16 STREET THOUGHTS. the mounds that are heaped over them ? How many will lie down with the great waves of the sea rolling for ever over them ? Well, it matters little where they lie ! The body can sleep peacefully anywhere after life's fitful fever. The problem of moment lies beyond the grave. It will be solved after they shall have reassembled from their distant and diverse en- tombments, and have put on the spiritual body. Then shall it be manifest who among them were wise, and considered their latter end ! Then shall it become for ever certain who among them shall be entitled to join those glorious throngs which crowd the streets of the celestial city, — concerning whom no one shall need to ask whence ? or whither ? 17 III. MIDNIGHT SCENES. It was midnight long ago, and by the hazy moonlight that faintly gleams upon the tower, we read two (a. m.) upon the Old South dial. Hark ! the bell strikes, pealing that hour. Once — twice ; no more ! The deep tones reverberate along the deserted thoroughfares until they are answered from remote and laggard steeples. It is two o'clock ! Old South says so ! Park Street says so! And, far off, you can hear Hollis Street, and the distant Shawmut, respond affirmatively ; and from farther away you can catch an answer- ing tinkle coming on the still night air from neighbor villages. It is an unwonted hour for us. Alas ! We have been watching — where no watching is needed any more. Wasted and worn, at last she rests ! The light of love has left her eye- balls ; her lips are silent. All through the long evening hours she lay dying, — breathing ever softer, speaking ever fainter, until, after a half- 2# 18 STREET THOUGHTS. hour's quietness, of a sudden her eye brightened with all its old fire, and her cheek flushed with its old beauty, and, leaning upon one elbow, she glanced round the room, and spasmodically said, ''I see the angels, — they are come now for me, and my Saviour waits, — good-by, dar- lings, all, — meet me," — and sank back motion- less. AYe thought she had fainted ; we chafed her hands and temples ; we held the most pun- gent aromas to her nostrils ; we spoke to her passionately ; we did all that skill and love could do, but to no purpose. She responded nothing to all our efforts ; our grief moved her not. Her words were true ; she was gone, with the angels. We knelt together around the bedside, where she lay so strangely still. With voices tremu- lous and intermittent, we thanked God for what she had been to us, — for the precious example left behind, — for the rich blessing of all her yearning and prayerful sympathy. We pledged ourselves anew to her Saviour and ours, — to a closer walk with God, to that final meeting which had lingered last upon her expiring conscious- ness. With swollen eyes, yet with comforted hearts, we rose up and went our saddened way. How strangely do the contrasts of life lie around us ! Upon the very first corner that we turned, plain in sight of the windows of the room where death had just entered, we heard the grat- MIDNIGHT SCENES. 19 ing sound of merry-making. "We looked up to see the mansion blazing with light from every aperture, and, through the gauze that draped the windows of the drawing-room, we could see dancers madly careering in the hot embrace of the polka, while sounds of mirth and jollity ex- haled from every side. If one could throw down all the partitions that lie between, and let those dancers look upon the dead, what a petrifying shock would arrest their revelry ! Wait ! It will come by and by, — they shall all see it ! As we turned the next corner, we came upon a wee child cowering upon a door-step. " Are you lost ? " said we. "No, Sir, I ain't got nobody to lose me." " But you live somewhere ? " " Yes, but the old woman that kept me got shet in jail this day, and now I ain't got nobody, nor nothin'." " Are you going to stay there all night ? " "• No, Sir, but I 'm waiting for the watchman to come along, and may be he '11 let me sleep in the watch-'us. But he 's so long coming, I guess he 's asleep." " Come, poor thing, and I '11 take you to the police station," said we, almost glad of some em- ployment, which should change the current of thoughts. Leaving her at Court Square, we stumbled 20 STREET THOUGHTS. next — turning into Washington Street — upon three young men, uproariously drunk, arm in arm meandering along the street, sometimes in the middle, and anon on either side, — graduates, for the night, of some one of those educational institutions, concerning which the city govern- ment and the " Maine Law " differ in senti- ment. We were in no mood to be annoyed by their vociferous rudeness, and so hurried on, until, as we went by the Old South, the bell struck the hour, as named above. There is something in the tone of a church- bell, — especially sounding in the night, — which has a soothing, yet very solemn influence, upon our mind. It makes us think of George Her- bert's "church-bells beyond the stars heard." And as we walked, we wondered. Can she hear that tone now ? What — how much — is earth to her now ? Is it in her consciousness, or only in her memory ? If it is still in consciousness, how it must sink when brought into direct compari- son with heaven ! And then we thought that, if departed eyes still glance downward upon all their old homes and haunts, one passage in the Bible must rise into more solemn significance to them than can be possible here : " Surely every man walketh in a vain show ; surely they are disquieted in vain ; he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them." Yes, — it must be so. MIDNIGHT SCENES. 21 The street seems wholly empty now. Up and down, and on either side, all is still, — except as our own footfall wakes the echoes. Far as we can see, this great city — such a buzzing, toiling, moiling hive by day — is now just the same as if it were dead. Where you cannot see a paving- stone for the rush of vehicles for fifteen hours, you can now count them, every one. It is a great frame, without any picture in it. But if the spirits of Heaven look down upon State Street and the Exchange twelve hours hence, will not that great crowd seem, to their sharpened eye, even more than this scene now seems to us, a frame without any picture, — outside without any inside, — earth without any heaven ? He only lives ^ who lives for eternal life. All else is living death! 22 IV. A WINTER EXPERIENCE. Winter has thrown down upon our streets her white robe of triple thickness, and so muffled the town with its fleecy abundance, that one hardly knows where he is. The most well-known cross- ings have an altogether Arctic and foreign look. The street railroad is nowhere. The omnibi pitch about, like fishing-smacks in a short sea, and the manifold sleighs, cutters, pungs, et id omne genus ^ labor profoundly, somewhat as flies wriggle through thick molasses. The chief call to the door-bell is now to answer the shovel-boys, who have been known to agree, with great alac- rity, to transfer a six or eight foot bank from the sidewalk to the middle of the street for a dime, (when competition was superabundant,) and who, after shovelling half an hour, and thinning down the bank about as much as an able-bodied dog would paw away in the same length of time, have made off for parts unknown, and said noth- ing about the dime. A WINTER EXPERIENCE. 23 Locomotion has much more of the " loco " than of the '' motion." Snow-slides are not uncom- mon, warning the street folk to maintain an up- ward eye as they grope along. Retail dry-goods merchants — who make their hay when the side- walks are full of crinoline — have a look of hope deferred. Spinsters, whose main industrial labor is the manufacture of street yarn, are laid up for a season, and that large branch of domestic in- dustry is obliged to " suspend " until more favor- able weather. Are the old winters coming back again ? We remember just such a snow-storm more than twenty years ago, — but we don't remember any since. Where is the oldest inhabitant ? Where is our Boston Mr. Merriam, — like him of Brook- lyn, — to sit up all night with the weather three hundred and sixty-six nights in the year, and sleep with one eye open all day, so that no move- ment of ether in the heaven above, or of mercury in the thermometer beneath, escapes his unweary- ing vigilance ? Human nature is naturally driven in-door s, and the streets are not so suggestive as is their wont. Still something is to be seen and learned everywhere. We learned something yesterday — which would be worth a trifle to somebody's peace. Passing by a well-known establishment upon one of our prominent thoroughfares, we 24 STREET THOUGHTS. heard its proprietor turn, as he was closing the outside door, and direct a clerk to " go up to the house, and say to Mrs. (^his Mrs.) that he should be engaged that evening until very late with pressing business, and shouldn't be home to tea, and she need n't sit up for him." We thought nothing of it, until, a half-hour after- wards, we saw a party headed for Brighton, in a several-horse sleigh, who appeared to be a little jolly in advance, and among whom, as they sped past, we recognized, conspicuous among the fur- clad roisterers, a cigar with a spot of fire at one end and Mr. , " the man of pressing business until very late, and she need n't sit up for him," at the other. An hour later, having occasion to drive past a well-known " half-way house " in the suburbs, we saw the same equipage under its shed, and recognized the same party coming out from " liquoring," and, by the way the gentleman above mentioned measured his length in the snow-drift which surrounded the sleigh, in his efforts to get in, we concluded that his business was very "pressing" indeed, and that it would be quite as well, on the whole, not to sit up for him, especially as Brighton was yet to come. Alas, poor human nature ! As if money was to be got just to degrade one's self below the beasts that perish, but are not beasts enough to commit suicide by gulping bad liquor ! A WINTER EXPERIENCE. 25 And alas for the inequality of justice 1 We saw, to-day, a policeman arrest a poor drunken man, with a coarse and torn coat, and march him off with great sternness to the lock-up, and ten minutes after ayo saw the same policeman bow with great respect, and a sympathizing and confi- dential wink, to a well-dressed inebriate, who had to be held into his sleigh by his companion to keep him from lurching overboard. Circumstances alter cases. 26 V. BUM DID IT. " I SHOULD think a man might enjoy himself in such a house as that." "Well, yes, — -if he can out of it. But, you may depend upon it, this man will find that his great rooms are haimted. He '11 hear noises there some of these nights, or I miss my guess." " Will ! What for ? " " Because, if his great freestone palace with plate-glass windows had the whole truth told about it, it would have one of Coroner Pratt's verdicts chalked all over it, so that every stone in the front would say confidentially to every passer-by, ' KuM did it.' " " You don't say so ! " " I do say so. Every dollar that has been paid for that lot, and all that magnificence that is piled upon it, has come, at first or second hand, in small coin, out of the pockets of poor, thirsty drunkards. That house is the price of more murders than there are days in a year ; and if some of those RUM DID IT. 27 ghosts don't haunt him, then there ain't so much justice in things as I believe there is. I tell jou I 'd rather live in a cave on cold potatoes without any salt, than live there, fine as it looks ! " Thus communed two men in our hearing, the other day, as, in front of us, they passed one of the most showy mansions newly built in one of our fashionable quarters. It is a goodly house to look upon. Architects and builders have done their best, and the result is '' a credit to the city." We had often admired it ; but the suggestive remarks of our unknown friend set us on a dif- ferent train of thinking. "We remembered read- ing, a short time since, in some work of Eastern travel, a description of the vandalism which has not merely rifled old shrines of their ornaments, but has even torn down the most exquisitely sculptured temples, and used the delicately carved blocks to pile up rude hovels for the shelter of native banditti. And as we gazed again at this towering mansion, it seemed to transform itself before our eyes into just such a structure, — built from the dilapidated and ravished remnants of innumerable "temples of the living God." Here is visible a shattered shaft; there lies a crushed column ; yonder protrudes the curve of a Corinthian capital, — all once humanity, — ly- ing helter-skelter, heads and points, — a confused and mournful jumble, breathing of rapine and 28 STREET THOUGHTS. violence ; — a thousand beautiful things disman- tled and destroyed to make a shelter for ruthless selfishness to occupy for a little tarrying-place on its way to its long and terrible account. " Haunted ! "— he will haunt it himself ! Mem- ory will live there with him ; and memory will haunt it ! Imagination will dwell there with him ; and imagination will haunt it ! God will dwell there with him ; and God's vengeance will haunt it ! A palace ? Nay ; rather call it a pandemo- nium ! Will he die there ? In which room ? Which four walls shall be compelled to witness that scene ? Which door shall the avenging Furies seize and shake as they hurry to dip their burning talons in his heart's blood ? Talk about the horrors of death by delirium tremens ! If you want to see horrors, sit down by the death-bed of the man that manufactures delirium tremens, and sells it by the cask and glass, — sells it in spite of supplicating wives and starving children and a frowning God, — sells it in spite of all heaven and all earth and all hell, for the " fair living profit " that he makes ! If some honest angel would paint a portrait of the proprietor of this palace as God sees him, and hang it " in a good light" over the fireplace of the library, would he stay in the house to face it, think you? Nay, what if some prophetic pencil should limn RU3I DID IT. 29 the scene of his own last agony, that is coming, and suspend it, like a great historical picture, in that drawing-room, — would he stay there to realize it, think you ? Gray hairs are already here and there upon him. It will be history soon ! What new light would break upon our appre- ciation of men and things if every house in Boston — say only, every house in Beacon Street and its kindred avenues — had advertised upon its outer walls its secret history ! Would there be any symbols of the old slave-traffic there ? Would there be any sharp jDractice in note-shaving hinted thereon ? Would there be any symptoms of the Coolie trade ? If every trafficker in Boston knew that to- morrow morning there would appear, patent to public gaze, written ineffaceably, by the finger of the God who cannot lie, upon the outer wall which shelters him, the exact and entire truth in regard to all the story of his gains, — let it canonize him or cauterize him as it might, — • would all of our business men have a good night's rest ? Would they, as a general rule, go out with an untroubled gaze to read the record, and invite their stranger customers round to look at it, as an inducement to confidence in their dealings ? If it could be known that, a year hence, such a record would be made of all the 3# 30 STREET THOUGHTS. transactions of the year, would it not modify some methods of trade ? Yet there is a day coming when a much more public exposition shall be made, with terrible exactitude, of all the affairs of life ! Why is not that day more kept in view ? I HAVE SEEN A CURIOUS CHILD." The Excursion. 31 VI. THE OLD ]MAN AND HIS SON. " I SAY, Frank, who is that old fellow with a second-hand hat, and a great-coat that looks as if it had been made by the Queen of Sheba's tailor as a present to Solomon's gardener, and had been in the family ever since, who keeps eyeing you so closely from the other side of the street? " " I don't know, I am sure. I never saw him before." " Well, I hope he ain't a policeman in disguise, who is after you for some of your pranks. Take care, — good by," — laughingly said the first speaker, as he turned off into a side street, and left his viseed friend to walk on before us. From the movements of this " unexceptionably got-up" youth thus preceding us, we very soon became satisfied that, despite his denial, he had seen the old man on the other side before, and was in momentary expectation of seeing him again. His eye shot uneasy glances across ; and as that venerable and fine-looking, though very \ 32 STREET THOUGHTS. plainly and imfashionably dressed person, began to show symptoms of crossing over, he cast a hurried look up and down the street, apparently to see if any of his boon companions were in sight anywhere, — to witness and report the dis- grace of the impending interview. As the two faces, young and old, were thus projected in pro- file before us, as they exchanged stares, we made up our mind that the same blood was in both, and were querying the reason for their singular demeanor, when we heard a loud voice approach- ing from the middle of the street. " Francis Ebenezer, my son, dew tell if that are 's you. I 've been a watchin' on you this haaf-hour ; and you 've got on such a kind o' spruced-up riggin', and so much hair on your countenance, that I could n't tell, ef I 'se to be skinned, whether 't was you or not ; and yet I 'most knew that are nose couldn't be nobody else's. How de dew ? " A fine young man that, coolly to deny that he ever before saw his own father because that father happened to be dressed more sensibly (though less a la mode) than himself! But there are some men — and women - — who appear to think that the attention of the entire universe is concentrated exclusively upon them, whenever they show themselves upon the sidewalk. As a matter of course, a proper respect on their part THE OLD MAN AND HIS SON. 33 for the said universe, and for themselves, requires that they exercise the utmost care as to costume, conduct, and companionship, that no suspicion of commonness of any sort may attach to them. Three hundred and sixty-five pairs of gloves per annum are essential to their peace of mind. Their accumulation of pantaloons is prodigious. Their superfine hats are renewed or ironed with a fre- quency very gratifying to the hatters, and ex- tremely encouraging to that branch of domestic industry. To see one of them, when he has been fully prepared, and indulges the town with his society for a promenade, you would suppose that one of those dummies — wooden within and waxen without — which Parisian artistes use for the display of their handiwork had been ani- mated and endowed with locomotion, or that Oak Hall liad sent forth a promenading advertise- ment ; and you feel a well-nigh irresistible incli- nation to pin a label, calling attention to 34 North Street, to his coat-tail. Non omnia possumns omnes, says Yirgil. We cannot all do everything. It is a great truth. Peacocks have more tail than brains. And, if we have read natural history aright, those four- footed beasts, and fowls, and creeping things, which have the most astonishing outsides, com- pensate therefor by internal leanness, insipidity, and uselessness. The same great law jDrevails in regard to humanity. We have seen old books, 34 STREET THOUGHTS. wherein, by the similarity in the shape of the sixth and nineteenth letters of the alphabet, the words foppij and sappy could with difficulty be distin- guished. It struck us as an instructive fact. A fop-head and a " sap-head" are much alike in sev- eral other things beside their orthography. And that a man who prides himself mainly upon " a good port and bearing in society " shovild ignore his own father, if he happen to be unfashionably dressed, is a thing to be naturally expected, be- cause love to parents is an affair of the heart; and a dandy has no more heart than a dummy aforesaid, which the carpenter knocks up out of common stuff, without much regard to the inte- rior, but merely to furnish a scaffolding to sup- port the goodly and simpering outside, upon which the tailor and the hatter and the boot- maker can advertise their wares. But it is a sad thing to see a young man given over to the clothes-mania. '' Once a coxcomb, always a coxcomb," was a maxim of Dr. John- son ; and he who begins life by fearing to go into the street in any comely, clean, and com- mon-sense clothes, lest some fool or other should think he is not as well dressed as he ought to be, will be very apt to die, eventually, leav- ing the largest part of his assets in the shape of tailors' bills, the largest part of his influence among the old-clo' men, and the largest part of his memory among the denizens of the street. 35 VII. BEARDS, "Is it possible ! -^ is it possible! — can it be you, my old friend ? I feared you were in your grave ! " "It is I, myself!" " But so stalwart, and round-faced, and robust, and with such a blessed beard, — you, who used to be so hollow-chested and lantern-jawed! Why, I cannot believe my eyes! And yet the old facial landmarks are there, — it must be you!" "His I, myself!" " But what saved you ? Have you been cod- livered back to health ? Or how was it ? " " The ' blessed beard ' did most of it, though the wheels were greased a little with the nause- ous extract to which you allude, and the whole was somewhat propelled by a good saddle-horse between my legs six hours per day." " Come home with me, and enlarge." And the first speaker drew off his resuscitated friend by the arm, roimd the corner of Winter, up toward 36 STREET THOUGHTS. Beacon Street, and the regions beyond, — leaving us to admire the fair and manly proportions of the "blessed" remedy first named, and to pon- der upon the general subject. We concluded — for the statistics of the thing — to count the beards, full and otherwise, met from State to Chester, on our way up Washington Street, at an hour when the street was full. It strained our counting machine to the utmost, and we may have blundered a little in the minutias, but here are the " documents," for what they are worth. We met five hundred and forty-three men. Of these, one had a countenance smooth-shaven throughout, glossy beaver, gold spectacles, and white cravat, with jet-black drapery, and was, in short, a thoroughgoing specimen of the D. D., got up on the most correct and elaborate principles, without regard to expense. Thirteen were young men, whose tarry at Jericho had, as yet, been unproductive of appreciable results. Four were men of the old school, smooth-shaven, with the exception of slight tufted promontoi'ics jutting downward from either ear, as if designed for a compromise measure between the good old doc- trine and modern radicalism. Twenty-seven had what used to be called " whiskers," looking very much like straps to hold their hair on. Thirty wore the regular penthouse French moustache, — smooth-shaven beside, — looking as if by far the most convenient method of feeding them would be BEARDS. 37 to hang tlicm up by the heels and slide necessary victuals down the inverted sugar-scoop thus pre- sented, into the orifice of the xuouth. Forty-three wore the moustache, with a fancy tuft upon the clihi, but with smooth cheeks, — looking as if a semicolon would be the best extant representation of their idea of facial adornment. Eighty-seven had the upper lip shorn, and the beard clipped close, and shaven down an inch or so from the crown of the under lip, in crescent form, — as if they had tied up their jaws in a hair muffler, in consequence of the toothache. Eighty-nine had full beards, moustache included, more or less flowing, and looked like sensible men, as God meant to have them look. The remaining tivo hundred and forty-nine wore the full beard, with- out the moustache, and looked like sensible men who had not quite moral courage enough to do a just and natural and healthy thing, for fear of the reproach of dandyism, or of censure from those whose " weak consciences " are apt to be offended by any attempt to follow nature which leads people across-lots with regard to the con- ventional fences which men have builded. Such a census five years ago would have pro- duced far other results. But the progress of sound sense, Avhen its attention is turned to a subject, though slow, is generally sure. And many a man, who would then as soon have gone 4 38 ' STREET THOUGHTS. down town of a morning undressed, as unshaven, now shaves only with the scissors. There seem to be two prominent reasons which influence the lingerers in this heard movement. Some of them say they think it uncomely, and others allege that it is an unfriendly departure from the good old customs of our fathers. To this it may first be replied, that what is natural is always, in the long run, comelier than that which is unnatural. The mere fact that our eyes get temporarily accustomed to tight-waisted women, does not prove that corsets are an element of female beauty. That which we see every day, and thus come to associate with those whom we love and admire, seems pleasant to us from that association, however ungainly it may be in itself ; but simple adher- ence to nature is always pleasing. Go into galleries of old portraits, and while all those faces and forms which are peruked, or peri- wigged, or frizzled, or furbelowed unnaturally, according to the freak of fashion at the moment of their date, seem now unnatural, unpleasant, and even ludicrous, you will find that those which have the hair parted and put away plainly over the ears, and the person wrapped in some simple drapery, are now as beautiful and grace- ful as if taken yesterday. The true method of putting the question of beauty, with regard to BEARDS. 39 the beard, is to ask what is nearest nature, and sinaplest. Whatever that may be, men ought to like best, and will like best, as a matter of per- manent taste, without regard to the accidental mode of the moment. And there can be no question that this is a full beard and moustache, kept clean and comely. The most rabid advocates of razors would stand aghast, if our Saviour were to revisit the earth in the costume of a modern divine, with smooth face, and stiff collar with white cravat. And, with regard to the matter of fealty to the fathers, we have only to open tlie early volumes of our own history, to discover that fealty to the Pilgrim fathers would lead us to full beard and moustache, and that from them back to Ridley, and Wickliffe, and Knox, and Melancthon, and Camerarius, and Beza, and Calvin, the same custom was well-nigh universal. Our immediate fathers — seduced from the good old natural and manly paths in this respect, by that foolish fashion which originated in the fact that Louis XIII. ascended the throne of France when only nine years old, and his courtiers shaved them- selves out of foppish adulation to his beardless face — are the men who are justly exposed to this charge of lack of fealty to the old times ; and we, their sons, who are retracing their un- natural and unmanly steps of departure, are the true followers of the old heroes of the Church. 40 VIII. THE TWO CLERKS. " Yaas, it IV as late this morning when I got home, let me say to you ; and I 've been so tired with dancing all night, that I 've done nothing but yawn about the store all day." " What did the old man say ? or did n't he notice it ? " " Notice it ! I guess he did n't do any thing- else ; but I told him I sat up with a sick friend from the country, who was here alone, and dan- gerous bad. And don't you think the old hunks actually gave me a quarter to go into Jameson's and get a bowl of hot tea to brighten me up. Was n't that rich ? " " Was n't it though ? my ! " and the speaker, upon the excitement of the thought, proceeded to cut a " pigeon- wing " extemporaneously upon the sidewalk, to the dismay of a meek-faced maiden, whom it crowded uncomfortably against the wall, and to the discomfiture of our third en- ergetic attempt to get out of his cigar-smoke by THE TWO CLERKS. 41 edging by, without pitching into the street bodily. Thus hemmed up, or dammed up, by the un-get- round-ability of the obstruction in the narrow part of our principal thoroughfare, there was nothing for it but to follow quietly behind, and take the cigar-smoke and the " revelations," as they might be graciously imparted by the two slender-limbed but loud-voiced swaggerers, who, arm in arm, were on their way to the theatre, as it afterward appeared. " Jim," said the second speaker, as he subsided from his pirouette , '-' how you contrive to dress so well as you do on your salary, and go it at such a rate besides, is beyond my guessing 1 Got any suburban resources ? Is the paternal in funds ? Or how is it?" "Why, no, Joseph, to be candid, — and I don't mind it with you^ — I have n't got any father, and my mother is as poor as Job's turkey, and I expect is waiting anxiously for some future time when she can get a little something out of me. So I don't absorb there ! " '' Well, how do you do it ? There ain't a bet- ter-dressed fellow on Hanover Street, and you are always at the " Boston,' or the ' Howard,' or at billiards, or at a dance-hall, or somewhere." " Yaas, I suppose you are right about that." " And you always pay, too, and are always flush. How much is your salary, any way ? " 4* 42 STREET THOUGHTS. "Five hundred, — nominally, that is. But, then, you know, of course, the old man knows that, with my habits, I don't, and can't live on three times that; and he expects that I get it somehow and out of somebody, — he don't care who, if it ain't him." " Well, suppose it is him ? " " Waall, suppose it is. You don't suppose it is anybody else, do you ? You are old enough for that, I take it, ain't you ? You have to live yourself, don't you ? " " Why, Jim, to own up unanimously, I have a little help from my father, and so I screw along with my three hundred for the present, and live in hopes of more soon." " Yaas, Joseph, — pleasant way to live, that. Well now I '11 tell you how I live. My old man gives me, as I said, five hundred. He expects me on that to be dressed as well as the best, so as to do honor to his counter, secure custom, and so on, — which, of course, I proceed to do. Don't he know what a Calrow coat costs, and a Cook hat, and a pair of Gan's boots ? Heh ! Don't he wear 'em ? To be sure, he knows that three times what he gives me won't pay my bills. I tell you he must know it, and he knows I don't have an honest copper but what he gives me ; and yet he 'd turn me off to-morrow if I did n't dress as well as I do. I tell ye, he 's an old head. THE TWO CLERKS. 43 — he's a member of the chnrch, he is, — he knows a thing or two. He thinks I win enough gambhng to keep myself along, and he don't care a counterfeit cent if I do, if it saves him some- thing for my fit-out, and if I don't goug-e him in consequence. He keeps a sharp look-out for that, I '11 bet you a dollar. But, let me say to you, that, if I do sivinge a little at cards and billiards once in a while, I ain't such a fool as to do it for his benefit. I earn him two thousand dollars a year, clear cash, and if he don't give it to me by hook, I '11 see to it that he does by crook, that 's all. Noiv do you understand ? " " But, how can you, Jim ? Don't he keep too sharp a look-out for them kind of things ? " " Joseph, there is an old proverb in reference to the removal of a skin from a cat, which may have come to your ears." " Come, tell a fellow how you operate ? To be candid, it would be mighty convenient for me to know that same." " I '11 tell you some time. Now for something pleasanter." And the hopeful pair turned into the tessellated vestibule of the " Boston," leaving a clear passage for us to pass on, and thoughts enough to last us home. Perhaps you can guess what some of them were. u IX. THREE FUNERALS. Three funerals ! Three companies of mourn- ers going about the streets toward the same place of graves, on the same sad errand, — yet how different in aspect ! We met them all, and, as they passed slowly by, had time to conjecture something of the reality that was within the outer processional paraphernalia of woe. The first, indeed, had little to mark its fune- real purpose, — nothing to attract toward it the gaze of passers-by. It was but a single hackney- coach, of the poorer sort ; and if we had not caught a glimpse of a face which could belong to none other than a young mother in her agony, and had not seen the little coffin lying upon the front seat, we should not have recognized the errand on which it was bound. The throng of drays and wagons hedged up its progress for a moment just against the spot where we were standing, and gave us time to comprehend enough to compel our deep and heartfelt sympathy. They THREE FUNERALS. 45 were but two, — father and mother, alone with their dead. The young man — perhaps thirty- five — had a low English face, such as one sees hanging around the door of a London gin-palace, — freckled and red, but not with weeping, — and was, to all appearance, so far intoxicated as to comprehend but dimly the import of the occa- sion. When the coach, in its attempt at extri- cation, suddenly started back from the position where it had been wedged in among other vehi- cles, he fell over, by the sudden jerk, upon tlie little coffin before him, and was only raised by the aid of his weeping companion, whose grief burst forth afresh, and whose mild reproof, " William ! " had such an intonation in it as would have gone to the bottom of any man's heart who retained possession of his proper humanity. She was answered by a gruff oath directed toward the driver. She turned from him, and cast toward heaven such a gaze of agony and suppli- cation, as comforted us with the hope that she knew where to go for sympathy in those sorrows, which, it was obvious, were manifold, and pressed heavily upon her. They were poor ; their dress, and the cheapness of the casket in which their lost jewel was lying, betokened that. Doubtless they were recent emigrants from fatherland, who had been here only long enough to suffer from loneliness and poverty, not long enough to make 46 STREET THOUGHTS. any friends. God bless thee, mother, and com- fort thee ; for thy heart aches, and if Heaven help thee not, thou hast poor comfort of earth ! A little further on, a dark-draped funeral car, with its cortege in all the sombre pom]o and cere- mony of the most elaborate obsequies, turns into Washington Street, round the corner of Boylston, and blocks the way. Far as the eye can see, toward the Common, it extends, with its showy coaches and prancing horses. The undertaker — he who sits upon the box of the first carriage, with the coachman — is at the head of his profes- sion, and has disregarded expense. Through the glass sides of the dashy hearse can be seen the burial-case, with its dark cloth, and shining orna- ments, and the great silver plate, which bears engraven the name and age of the departed, — a well-known name ; an advanced age. The first carriage, with the nearest mourners, has its shades drawn, and one cannot see whether it is full or empty. The second contains two men and two women, in half mourning, and with sufficient consciousness of passing events to ex- press considerable curiosity as to the cause of the annoying delay in getting on, and the probable relation of the cars of the Metropolitan Railroad thereto. The next three carriages contain, we should conclude, miscellaneous friends, engaged in miscellaneous converse. Then come three or THREE FUNERALS. 47 four filled with State Street faces, — business acquaintances of the deceased, — who drop an occasional word, as they drive by, with regard to the probable " amount of his property," and " whether he has given anything to public chari- ties." One old man is gratifying his limited audience with various reminiscences of the ear- lier days of him whose body is going on before them toward the grave, and of his acquaintance with some of the methods in which he made such great gains. It would be difficult to decide, from anything in the appearance or language of the occupants of the remaining coaches, whether they are going to a funeral or to an ordinary afternoon ride. It would be quite safe to say, even if one could lift the blinds of the first car- riage and take an observation, that there are more tears in one of those sad eyes which are gazing, in mute anguish, upon the little pine cofhn in the old hackney-coach far ahead, than there are in all this lengthened train, — more real grief in her poor, aching heart than in those of all who are in any manner affected by the departure of him who is being buried with such imposing state. But here another procession crowds almost upon the heels of the last. It is a long one, too. We count fifteen carriages, from the coach which leads, to the open wagon which brings up the 48 STREET THOUGHTS. rear. A son of Erin is going to his rest, and his compatriots crowd thickly after him to do him honor. A brick fell on his head from a high story, and killed him — withont a word. The priest has performed his last office, and received his fee. The wake has been duly solemnized; and now, three on a seat, the mourners are doing the last honors to his corpse. The hungry cemetery will receive them all with equal alacrity. The little babe will lie down in the " common ground " ; the Irishman will repose in the " consecrated corner " ; and the millionnaire will sleep in his private tomb, built long ago by himself upon a site selected for the fine view which it has of the distant hills, — as if his eyes were to look upon them ! The same sky will bend itself above them ; the same stars look down by night. Earth will claim them with im- partial inexorableness, — ashes to ashes, dust to dust ! Other millionnaires and other laborers and other babes shall come and lie down by their side ! And when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, and these three who went to the grave in the same hour, though not in the same company, shall awake out of the dust, which shall look up with meekest hope and most trusting joy to catch the glance of " Him who sit- teth on the throne " ? Shall it be he whom the THREE FUNERALS. 49 priest has certified to have a right to heaven ? or he who left so many millions for those who came after him ? or the clear babe that but opened its tender ear on earth to hear Jesus say, " Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God," and closed its eyes, and died ? 50 STREET SMOKERS. '' I WOULD n't be seen in the street with a man that smoked anything less than a first-class fancy brand, at five cents apiece by the dozen ! " " Well, I know they taste better, and it looks better, — but how can you afibrd it ? It makes something of a little bill in a week, if you smoke much." " I make it a rule always to smoke in the street, and as I make — evenings included — several journeys down town and back, a day, I never get through with less than a half a dozen ; though, to be sure, when it storms, or is very dark, and there is n't anybody round to see, why, it don't pay, and I don't smoke ; but I average near three dozen a week, the year round." " Three dozen ! That — let me see — is nigh on to two dollars a week ; near a hundred dol- lars a year! How do you contrive it? Why, my salary is the same as yours, and yet I feel as STREET SMOKERS. 51 if I had been awfully extravagant, if I go more tlian two of these five-centers a day ! " " Well, what 's the use of living in Rome, if you don't ' do as the Romans do,' as Shakespeare says ? ^Tis expensive ; but, as Ike Potiphar, or George W. Marvel, — which was it ? — had it be- fore the Mercantile : ' Something must be con- ceded to society.' I make it up in other ways. I 'd rather go without one meal a day, than my street cigar, — it gives a fellow such a free and easy and well-developed sort of air." "Well-developed sort of air!" Yes, thought we, as we perforce inhaled a direct blast from the speaker's lungs as we crowded by, — that is not a bad way to state it ! We have always thought that the young men whom we have seen puffing along the sidewalks, like puny locomo- tives with weak boilers and a very low head of steam, had a " well-developed sort of air." The chicken stage is evidently outgrown, and young roosterhood is reached. Those slight ties which bind " un-developed " men to mothers and sis- ters, and to all womankind for their sweet sake, have been rudely ruptured by their immense " social progress," and they enjoy exhaling the plague of their poisoned and fetid breath under the bonnets of feminine passers-by, as if they were doing them the greatest favor in the world, and momentarily expected to hear from their 52 STREET THOUGHTS. red lips the Eastern supplication, " Let it please your Highness graciously to spit upon me, and I shall die in peace." These fellows — to quote a verse from the Canticles — " come out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, as if perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, and with all powders of the mer- chant," and they scatter odors along the pave, as freely as if employed by the health department to fumigate the city. Now, we never smoked a cigar in our life, and are therefore, possibly, a poor judge of the mat- ter ; but we will venture to say, notwithstanding, that it always seemed to us, if we did love to- bacco-smoke, we should prefer to manufacture our own. It may be an unjust prejudice which we entertain against second-hand articles, but we would quite as lief go into Brattle Square, and don the first greasy and half-worn suit there exposed for sale, as take a second-hand article of smoke from the private manufactory of a street loafer. It is said there are differences in the grade of the article, and we believe it is generally under- stood that a cigar which costs a good deal of money is more fragrant than a cheap twist, and that anything which can be rolled up and burnt between the lips, without the aid of a machine, is more balmy than that which is burned in clay. STREET SMOKERS. 53 As a mere outsider, we never could appreciate the difference. We have walked after a Paddy with a pipe, and behind a Cockney with a cheroot, and, all things considered, we hold the former to be the least nauseous of the two. The Irishman smokes in the street in a clever, self-possessed, and business-like manner, as if it was a great comfort to /u'w^, and he did n't mean any harm to anybody ; but, having pressing engagements with a hod for ten hours out of the twenty-four, he presumed so far upon the public forbearance as to make the most of his brief leisure. The street snob, on the contrary, does it for effect. He goes without his dinner, or takes it in an abridged and pocket edition, so as to afford to expand, on Washington Street, in all the glory of a first- class Havana. He mumbles it a long time between his lips, as feeling that it is an investment too important to be used up in haste. He "begs the favor of a light," with a gesture which reminds one. of an organ-monkey asking for a cent. He knocks off the accumulating ashes with his little finger, as if that member had lateral spasms. He takes it out of his mouth, ever and anon, with an air like that of a clarionet-player, waiting for his score to come round, in an orchestra. He puffs straightways, and sideways, and anyways, and 5* 54 STREET THOUGHTS. all ways, as if intending to be se^n of men, and women, at all events. What cares he for law? Does n't everybody break the law about smoking and drinking? What cares he for the comfort of the fifty per cent of men, and the ninety-nine per cent of women, whose occasions call them through the streets, who abominate the sickening odor ? Tom and Dick and Harry — who are the gentry of the town in his estimation, and to follow humbly and afar in whose wake is his daily struggle and nightly dream — smoke in the streets, and so he smokes there, and enjoys it; and supposes that he creates a sensation ; and that that low hum which he often perceives about the city, among the jar and conflict of its various sounds, is a subdued buzz of stifled admiration of his manly appearance as he vapors along ! Bah ! he is a nuisance, a whole nuisance, and nothing but a nuisance ! A street smoker — so says a naturalist friend of ours (it is a hard word, and a little dubious in its redolence, but we must use it, for there is no other that is up to the mal-odorous mark) — is the skunk of civiliza- tion! 55 XI. CHEATING CHILDREN. "Now come along, — that's a good boy, — and when we get home, I will give you all sorts of goodies." " What '11 ye give me ? " " 0, I '11 give you a stick of candy, and some peppermints, and a sugar heart, and an orange, — if you are very good." " I know better." " Why, my son, what do you mean, to speak so to your mother ? " "I don't mean nothin', only I sha'n't get 'em." ''Do you think that your mother would tell a lie to you ? " " No, — H airiH lying' for you^ hut H ivould he lying for me; and I should catch a big lickin', if /did as you do." " Why, Johnny, what do you mean ? " " I told you once, I don't mean nothin', only, last time I went down town with you, you 56 STREET THOUGHTS. promised to give me a piece of pie, and a slice of plum-cake, and a great apple, and twenty-four pea-nuts, and ever so many gum-drops, when I got home, if I would be good, and not play horse, and tip over the chairs, in that big house where we went ; and when I got home, you slapped me, and put me to bed, 'cause I give the kitty your bonnet to play with, — and I didn't git none on 'em. And I know you won't now, 'cause I shall do something' that you '11 make some kind of a 'scuse of, to cheat me. But then 't ain't lyings — 'cause I 'm a little boy, and you're a big woman. If ever I get big, 't won't be lying for me to tell wrong stories, — but 't is now." " Hush, hush, Johnny ! — you must n't talk so in the street ; for people will hear you, and think you are a very naughty boy, and won't love you." " I don't want 'em to. I don't care notliin' about nobody's loving me ; but when they say they '11 give me sticks of candy, and things, I want 'em to do it, and not cheat me, 'cause I 'm little and they 're big, and 't ain't lying for big folks to lie to little folks." " Johnny, if you say that again, I '11 put you to bed the very minute we get home, and you shall stay there till to-morrow morning." " There, — I told you so. I knew you 'd have CHEATING CHILDREN. 57 dear ! — I wish 't wa'n't lying for little boys to lie ! " " Johnny, what did I tell you ? " — and here commenced a street scuffle ; the enraged mother wringing the arm of the boy, and dragging him along with stern force, — he resisting, kicking, and screaming stoutly. It was a sad scene. It lifted the curtain upon home mismanagement. It revealed a little soul, capable of a noble destiny, suffering under the dwarfing and deforming process of a false theory of domestic discipline. His bit of philosophy on the practical difference between untruthfulness in high and low places evidently cut to the quick, because it was edged with truth. When will fathers and mothers learn to apply the golden rule to the concerns of the nursery, and to train children for life, by making them feel that all the great laws of righteousness rest upon all alike — in their own sphere and meas- ure — there ? 58 XII. THE COLOR OF GENTLEMEN. " I 'VE a great mind not to sj^eak to you.'* " Why not ? " " Because I saw you in such company yes- terday." " You saw me in no company, yesterday, that was not good and reputable." '' I saw you walking, yesterday, in close and apparently interested and congenial intercourse, with a Miigger' as black as the darkest night, when the moon does n't shine because it can't push any shine through the clouds, and the street- lamps don't shine, out of politeness to the moon." " Granted. Yet your implied assertion, that you saw me in bad company, remains unproven. ' Black ' is hardly synonymous with ' bad.' " '^I would n't have been seen in the streets in that condition." " I have seen you in worse." " Take care, Edward. What do you mean ? " " I mean, William, that I have many times met THE COLOR OF GENTLEMEN. 59 you on Washington Street, walking arm in arm, well pleased, with both gentlemen and ladies, as they are popularly called, of vastly less intelli- gence and moral worth than the individual whom you are pleased to style ' a nigger,' and with whom you saw me conversing." " I don't care if he were an angel. J would n't be seen publicly disgracing myself by contact with him. If I must swallow such a black dose, I would keep it, as the doctors sometimes direct their medicines containing iodine to be kept, in some congenially dark corner." " Pray, William, where is the disgrace of being seen to treat a gentlemanly person who has a black skin as a gentleman ? " " Gentleman ! A ' nigger ' a gentleman ! I should think you had better emigrate to Liberia at once. I knew you were a rabid Republican, but I did n't know you had gone clean over to the Amalgamationists." " I beg pardon, William; but you have n't an- swered my question." " What question ? " " Why a gentlemanly negro is not as really a gentleman as a gentlemanly white person ? " " I tell you the idea is absurd." " Still you don't answer. Do you, from your ancient reminiscences as a schoolmaster, happen to remember Webster's definition of a gentle- man ? " 60 STREET THOUGHTS. " I can't say that I do." "Let me refresh your memory : ' a man of education and good breeding, of any occupation,' — or something like that ; in short, a man who is reputable in character, and courteous in man- ners, as distinguished from the reverse. Now, where does such a definition necessarily exclude the negro ? Is he not a man ? And, being a man, may he not so culture himself as to come up most fully to the requirement of such a defi- nition ? " " He is n't a man." " I know that remarkable person who once un- rolled a mummy before a Boston audience, with some of his ' scientific ' friends, and, latterly, the Supreme Court, would like to make people be- lieve that ; yet you don't believe it, though you say it." " You can't prove that he is a man." " You used to teach Physiology, I presume. Let me remind you that the only essential physi- cal difference between yourself, and the person with whom you saw me walking yesterday, is, that there is a little more coloring-matter in the cells on the under side of his cuticle, than there is in the corresponding cells on the under side of your own. You are dark brown in complexion ; the granules of your under-skin are something more than amber-colored ; those of his are a dark THE COLOR OF GENTLEMEN. 61 copper-color ; — that is all the difference between you. You are a ' white man,' and he is a ' ne- gro,' in consequence of it. But are you ready to assert that the mere physical difference of a degree or two in the depth of coloring-matter in these epidermal cells — all other component parts of the animal and mental and moral or- ganism remaining identical between the two — constitutes a difference as between manhood and beasthood ? " '^ Well, if a negro is a man, he is n't a gentle- man." " Not unless he behaves like one. If he does, why is he not? " " Society does n't recognize him as such." " Society does n't do a great many things it ought." " Society is my rule." " It is not mine, nor God's. Its rule is iron, and not golden." " Such as it is, we are bound to keep it." " By what authority ? " "That of necessity." " So that, in a society of pirates, you would be a pirate? " " No ; but in little matters like this, we must do as others do." '^ Suppose yourself in the negro's place, — would it be a ' little ' matter ? " 62 6TKEET THOUGHTS. " You pester me with questions." "You annoy me with answers. The fact is, William, you have been untrue to yourself and your better nature in all that you have said. You know that a negro is a man, and may be a gentleman, and that when he is so he ought to be treated as such, just as well as I do. You know that society is mean, as well as wrong, in thus consenting to be unjust to the weak, out of courtesy to the strong. Of course, none of us advocate the superior desirableness of intimate association between black and white, as a gen- eral thing ; but we do urge, that when a black man has brain, and uses it, and cultures himself to a position equal, or superior, to our own, he ought to have the credit of it, and the courtesy that belongs to it, — and the man who is afraid to accord it to him, through fear of what society will say, is a pellucid poltroon. So say I ; so says your inner soul ! " And so said we, — as we alighted from the omnibus in which we had been an interested listener to the dialogue thus far. 63 XIII. THE ANNIVEESAHIES. " There ! that 's an Anniversary going round that corner ; don't you see him, — that great tall fellow, with a white neck and a black body ? " " What, — that one with an umbrella in one hand, and a valise in t' other, and that walks kind' as though he didn't know the way ? " " Yes, that 's him. You '11 always see 'em round, about the time the grass gets real green on the Common, as thick as soldiers to a train- ing. Don't you know they call this time o' year Anniversaries ? That's why." There 's a good deal of philosophy in this world, thought we, as we overheard this boyish colloquy, that comes about as near the truth as this juvenile specimen, and is quite as confidently held, and authoritatively promulged. There 's many a man ready to go to the stake — in a metaphorical point of view — for a dogma that has fewer and remoter relations to the truth as it is in Jesus, than the " Anniversaries " have to 64 STREET THOUGHTS. the presence in our streets of an unusual per- centage of white cambric and black broadcloth. But what a difference there is between the whole business of " Anniversaries " now, and a genera- tion ago ! Well do we remember the eventful period when, after no little previous pondering on the part of the whole household, and a serious meditation upon the perils of the uncertain way, the old white horse, currycombed for the occasion with unwonted care, and the venerable chaise, fresh washed in the neighbor brook, were brought to the door, bright and early on Monday morn- ing, and our honored sire, with appropriate part- ing counsels, commenced that quiet family pace, which it was anticipated — wind, weather, and casualties permitting — would bring up at the Bromfield stables, somewhere among the hours of declining day. Suburban driving was com- paratively tranquil then, for the railroad that carried granite from the Quincy quarries to the Quincy wharf — pa7'vus pater maximariim famili- arum — was alone in its glory, and the scream of a locomotive was an acoustic phenomenon that prophecy had not foretold. Progress was slow, but sure, and the ministry of the State trotted gravely into the metropolis with dust on their coats, instead of, as now, being whisked and rumbled in with sparks in their eyes. It was their yearly visit. It cost something, and meant THE ANNIVERSARIES. 65 something, and tvas something. If there were fewer assemblies, they made more of them ; and if the speaking was not quite so rousing, they took it in larger doses. Meetings, from invoca- tion to benediction, were then done by the job ; and a minister would as soon have thought of going out of his own church in sermon- time, as of omitting or curtailing anything that made a part of the regular programme of holy week. The idea of " dropping in " upon two or three simultaneous services, so as to get a bird's-eye view, say of one sermon, two addresses, three speeches, an abolition meeting, several old friends, and a few new books, with a little shop- ping for home thrown in, all in the compass of one forenoon's time, would have been some- what confusing, and indeed quite shocking, to our fathers. They walked about the streets with a ponderous gravity, which has passed away from these tumultuous and telegraphic times. They gallantly waited upon the ladies, their hostesses, to and from church, as if they were here on a family visit, and had no extraneous claims upon their attention. At a proper time, and when there was no service in progress, they went into Samuel T. Armstrong's, or Crocker and Brewster's, — as it was in old Scott's Bible times, — and carefully considered the ten or a dozen new books of the last twelvemonth ; paid good 6* 6G strep:t thoughts. round prices for such as they liked, and felt able to buy ; settled for the Panoplist for the year ; called round ujDon Father Willis, and squared up for the Boston Recorder and Youtli's Com- panion ; possibly bought somewhere a small package of something useful for wife and chil- dren at home ; and, the duties of the week having been conscientiously performed, duly bade courteous farewell to their city entertainers, paid their stable bills in Bromfield Street, and were off in good season on Friday morning for home, and the toil of another year. Safely back, the incidents of the journey furnished material for many an hour's chat, and its pleasant mem- ories cast a savor of sunshine over following months. All which things are managed differently now. The prevalent unrest has dislocated the old quiet order ; and residents and visitors, speakers and hearers, and lookers-on, all partake of the high- pressure impulses of the times, — what Juvenal calls tliQ fu7rium et opes, strepitmnque RomcB. 67 XIV. SENSIBLE SUITS. " George, what makes you try to look so much like a minister ? " " How do you mean ? " " I mean in your dress. You always wear a black dress-coat, and black vest and pants, and often a neck- tie that is almost white." " Yes, — I think it is becoming ; and, besides, it is of some consequence to me, in my business, to have men think I 'm able to dress well." " I don't call that dressing well." " It 's dressing as ' our first men ' dress." " A man may do a great many things as ' our first men ' do them, and make a big fool of himself for his pains. I go in for doing what is really sensible, without regard to the habits of men, first or second, great or small." " Why is n't it ' sensible ' to wear a black suit ? " " In the first place, because it costs the most and comes to the least, in the amount of the real 68 STREET THOUGHTS. wear and tear wliicli it will bear, of any descrip- tion of clothing which men ordinarily use. It is almost always tender and half rotten, so that a slight strain or rub, which a substantial cloth of another color would n't mind in the least, rends and ruins it. In the second place, it is wholly unsuitable to all business purposes. Every float- ing speck of dirt sails for it, as steel goes to mag- net ; every thread of lint is sure to find it ; the ordinary smut of the shop and street gives it a second-hand and seedy look, even when compara- tively new ; you can't lay your hand, of a sudden, to lift or move anything, without sacrificing your coat, or stopping to take it off ; and, in general, and on the whole, it is every way as unsuitable to all the purposes of a business man, as the tight, full-dress, and elaborately stuffed uniform of a dandy volunteer city company would be to the rough and tumble of the actual service of a campaign." " Well, would you have me look like an expressman ? " " I 've seen good-looking expressmen, — who would compare favorably with your comely and gentlemanly self, in their appearance on the street." '' Yes, — doubtless ; but that does n't precisely answer my question." " I will answer it, then. I hold that every SENSIBLE SUITS. 69 sensible man will dress according to liis position and its claims upon him. I like to see a minis- ter wear a black suit — though I 'm not so par- ticular about the white neckcloth as some — in the pulpit, and when engaged in strictly pro- fessional service ; but it seems to me as perfectly ridiculous for ministers, because they are such, to travel, and rough it on their farms, or about their parishes, in pulpit rig, as for a bride to wear her wedding dress and white bonnet through all the sparks and dust of her wedding journey. I respect a clergyman in gray clothes, when he is where gray clothes are more suitable, economical, and every way convenient and be- coming, than any other. And I apply the same law, for substance, to all men. As a business man, I would have you dress appropriately, in colors ; and when you temporarily abdicate the business man, and assume your position as a private gentleman, I am perfectly willing you should look as ministerial as you please." " I don't know but you are right." " You '11 find, when you go abroad, that our rage (thank Heaven, it is passing away) for black coats upon all occasions, is a distinctively American folly. No Englishman of sense, from the Duke of Devonshire to the pettiest employe, thinks of such a thing as a black coat, except when in full dress. At all other times, some 70 STREET THOUGHTS. gray and comfortable and work-suiting garb meets at once his necessities, and ministers to his comfort. Try it, I say, and see if you don't like it." Words of sense, in our judgment, which, if generally heeded, would save many a poor man many a dollar, — ministering, at the same time, to his comfort and sense of respectability, while in a costume appropriate to his calling. 71 XV. THE TYRANNY OF STRENGTH OVER WEAKNESS. It was early morning in Market Square. Coun- try wagons, laden with produce, were pouring in to dispose of their freight inside and outside the market, as occasion should serve. And those migratory dealers who buy to sell again were there, making the best bargains that they could with those whose carts contained the products of the soil in their " original packages." All was bustle and business. One of this last class, — an old man, in a garb whose neatness bespoke his carefulness as truly as its coarseness declared his extreme poverty, with a face of simple honesty, itself a sufficient certificate that his low estate was not the result of vice, but of misfortune, — with a venerable horse, and a wagon whose appointments were of the humblest description, drove up, and, meekly bestowing his unpretending equipage in the most out-of-the-way corner, commenced his morning purchases, — the capital upon which he was to 72 STEEET THOUGHTS. trade, from street to street and house to house, during the day, slowly earning the pittance that must keep his feeble wife and their invalid son in bread. While he was thus employed, one of those huge four-horse teams, which, with immensely projecting hubs and a general give-me-the-whole- street-and-nothing-less air, make themselves a fre- quent nuisance, as they recklessly truck heavy goods through our narrow thoroughfares, came round the corner in the lee of which the poor man's wagon was standing, and, with cracking whip and clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels and vociferating driver, turned short down the Square. The racket which it made attracted the old man's attention, and aroused him to the dan- ger which threatened his vehicle, in case the strong chose to endanger the weak. The near wheel of his wagon already touched the curb- stone, and he could get no farther out of the way if he tried. There was room enough for a half- dozen carts to pass on the other side, and there- fore there could not be the slightest reason, nor the least legal or illegal excuse, for any collision. And yet the old man was alarmed, because he knew his wagon looked as if it belonged to a poor man, and he had, more than once, had sad experience, even in this land of equal rights and loud-voiced democracy, that it makes a great deal THE TYRANNY OF STRENGTH OVER WEAKNESS. 73 of difference as to the reception of our personal rights, whether we look as if ive were able to enforce them or not. Therefore, especially as he saw that (to make a straighter ciit to the next corner) the huge vehicle was turning so as, at best, to clear his wheels by but a hair's breadth, the old man ran with sudden trepidation toward his horse. As he drew near, he saw that his doom was sealed, and he shouted to the driver of the great load to stop, before he crushed him. But, in the rattle and rumble of the big wheels on the pavement, his voice was, for a time, un- heard. The great wagon thundered on, and, as it came abreast of the little one, its projecting hubs caught its slight wheels and crashed them as if they had been made of pipe-stems. Just then, the poor old man shouted so loud, in his agoniz- ing thought of the effect of the catastrophe upon his little savings for the winter that is coming, that the great, burly driver condescended to hear, and to pull up his team and lean over to ask, with an oath, what he wanted. " Why need you run into me ? Don't you see the street is wide enough the other side, and I 'm as close as I can be to the sidewalk ? " " Who" (still with an oath) '' are you ? " " It don't make any difference who I am. You have no right to run me down in this way? " ''Help yourself !^^ 74 STREET THOUGHTS. " You ought to be prosecuted ; at least, you ought to pay me what it -will cost to get my wagon mended. My bread, and that of my wife and children, depends upon it. Do help me, wonH you ? " " Your wife and children must be good-look- in' ! You prosecute — you ^d better prosecute — you ^d look pretty prosecuting, you would ! It 's good enough for you ! You 've no business to be putting your old rattletraps in people's way ! You 'd better prosecute ! 1 advise you to prose- cute, I do ! " And, with sneering face and a fresh volley of oaths, the brutal scoundrel whipped up his long team and rattled away. The poor old man sadly surveyed the wreck, and, as he remembered that it must be mended, or he could not pursue his business, and if he could not pursue his business now, during the warm months, he and his would suffer by and by, his first impulse — smarting under a sense of cruel wrong — was to get a policeman, and try to obtain legal redress ; but his next thought was of a former experience, where such an effort had only ended in his losing more in time and money, twice over, than he gained from the law. And so — countermanding his orders for the vegeta- bles, on the sale of which he had hoped, by sun- down, to make a dollar or two, to add to his little pile for the long and cold winter, when nearly all THE TYRANNY OF STRENGTH OVER WEAKNESS. 75 is spending, and there is little earning — he dragged the mutilated remains of his wagon to the shop of a wheelwright, to make the best bar- gain that he could for the repair of the damage. We pity the subjects of Austrian tyranny. But there is, sometimes, tyranny in our own streets, under the very shadow of our sanctua- ries and halls of justice, which cuts to the heart as keenly as anything that is wrought by the minions of oppression over sea! 76 XVI. SOUND ADVICE. '' I DID n't see you last night at the sewing- circle," said one young man to another, as they joined each other, and walked before us down the narrow sidewalk of Water Street. " No ; I — I was n't there ; I — I could n't go, very well." " I 'm sorry. We had a very pleasant time, and a profitable one, too, for sbme remarks were made by Rev. Dr. , which were very in- structive. AVere you sick ? " " No ; I was engaged. The fact is, — I may as well tell you first as last, — I was at the dancing- school, where I 've just commenced going." " Is it possible ? You going to the dancing- school ; why, yoii joined the Church less than two years ago ! " " I know it ; but a great many church-mem- bers, who are older than I am, go to the dancing- school, or dance, (which argues previous attend- ance,) and I don't know why I should n't have SOUND ADVICE. 77 a good time as well as tliey ! Does n't the hymn say, ' Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less' ? " " And does n't the Bible say, ' Love not the world, neither the things of the world, for if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him ' ? And does n't it speak of such people as many who frequent the dancing-school, as ' lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God ' ? " " Well, any way, Rev. Dr. 's daughters go, and he would n't let them go, if it were not right. Besides, I 'm sick and tired of long faces ; and then I feel that 1 owe it to myself to make the most I can of my person. It makes great difference in one's success, whether he 's graceful or awkward in his bodily movements." "Don't you ' owe it to yourself to make the best use you can of your mind and heart, as well as your ' person,' and does n't it make a still greater ^ difference in one's success,' whether he 's intelligent, and conscientious, and honest, and religious, or not ? " " Can't a man be all these, and dance ? " " Doubtless many men might, but I doubt if you and I shall be likely to. Some men are born in a sphere where dancing is as common as walking, and nothing more is thought of it, one way or another ; and God will judge them by whatever standard may be right for them. But 78 STREET THOUGHTS. you and I were poor boys, born where dancing was a thing unknown, — except among the rowdy portion of society. We never were brought up to it. We have never moved in circles where we have felt the want of it, and I doubt if we are likely to. We work hard, and need all our spare time, and funds, for other and better uses. And for us, it seems to me that to learn to dance — even if nobody suspected any moral evil in connection with it — would be as absurd as for us to spend an entire year's income in buying a diamond shirt-pin, which either of us would be a fool to wear, if we picked it up in the street." " I should think you would study for the min- istry ! " " Would to God I could ; but don't sneer at me that way, Joseph. You know that we have always been good friends, and that I feel the deepest interest in your welfare, here and hereafter. And I must warn you of the danger of your present course. You don't feel satisfied about it, or you would n't have hung fire so in telling me of it. Take my advice, and don't go. It will fill your mind -v^ith all manner of needless nonsense. It will tend to bring you into contact with empty heads and doubtful hearts. It Avill not add one solid blessing to you ; while, by its great danger of alienating your affections from the Church and from serious things, it will, I SOUND ADVICE. 79 fear, work your gradual ruin. Don't go any more, now, Joseph, I beg of you ! " "Amen and amen! " said we, passing by, — apologizing for our intrusion upon their converse by a word expressive of our interest in what we could not but overhear, and of our cordial con- currence in the sensible and pious advice which had been given. 80 XVII. THE POOR WOMAN. It was almost dark. The sunlight still streaked the west, but the streets were dim, save where the lamp-lighters had done their work. A feeble step went tottering by the open window where we sat ; and, as the poor woman whose slight frame it propelled, glanced around as she passed, we were almost startled by the pale and pain- stricken aspect of a face whose lineaments still retained the faded traces of uncommon sweetness and intelligence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, we passed out, and followed her, at respectful dis- tance, toward her humble home, — a mean and dilapidated old wooden building, standing at the terminus of a narrow lane which branches off from one of our principal streets at the West End. Waiting until a few moments after she had en- tered and closed the door behind her, we rapped. She peered out cautiously, as if dreading some unpleasant visitor, and, with a face even more striking than when we first caught a glimpse of THE POOR WOMAN. 81 it, (now that her not very comely bonnet was re- moved,) and with a timid and long-suffering tone, she said, " Who is there ?" " A friend," was our reply. The door opened suddenly, as she tried to scan our face by the commingling of the little light yet left in heaven and the dim flare of the poor oil-lamp, which hung on an iron bracket projecting above her windows. " I don't know you," at last said she, as she finished her scrutiny, and drew the door again toward her, as if from an instinct of self-defence, — " I don't know you, — what is it that you wish ? I am poor and alone, and I have no friends." ^' I am your friend." " I never saw you before." " You may never see me again ; but I am your friend for all that." " For what reason ? " " For the reason that our Saviour gave, when he said, ' As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.' If I were in your place, and you in mine, I should want you to be my friend." " Come in," said she, quickly thrusting the door open wide ; " you talk like a Christian, and Christian foot has never before crossed this thresh- old since this poor old house has sheltered me. 82 STREET THOUGHTS. Come in, — I am afraid of no man with the lan- guage of the Saviour on his lips." We entered, and glanced around upon a clean- swept room, bare of all furniture, except a chest of drawers, which looked as if it might once have occupied an honorable place in some grand man- sion, and was now mourning its mistress's de- cline, a rocking-chair with one fractured arm, a pine table, with two or three coarse earthen dishes, a tallow candle dimly burning, and a bed made up neatly in the corner, on the floor, with a few books on the shelf, and a few cooking uten- sils on the hearth. Pushing us the rocking-chair, and motioning us to be seated therein, she leaned against the bureau, and with simple dignity said, "I am glad to see you, for you look like an honest man, and speak like a Christian. I am very poor, as you see. I was not always so, as you may infer. But that matters not. Tell me wherefore you are come, — for I cannot believe that you intend to do me any harm." Then, without giving us time to reply, she added, — as if what she had said needed apology, — " The truth is, I have one hard creditor, who has no mercy, and I feared it might be somebody come from him, to trouble me further." " I said I was your friend. I am so much so, though I never saw you before, as to beg you to THE POOR WOMAN. 83 make me — so far as yovi may deem proper — a confidant of that distress which writes itself upon your very face, as well as upon your dwelling. I ask this, not out of vulgar curiosity, but be- cause I have a sincere desire to give any proper aid that may be in my power." The poor woman turned her wan face a mo- ment to the wall, and her slight frame quivered with emotion, and the tears were streaming down her cheeks when she looked us again in the face, and passionately burst forth : " Two sad, sad years have I gone out and in over that threshold, in the burning heat of summer, and the frosty horror of winter, — six church-bells sounding in my ears every Sabbath of the time, — and never heard such a word before from any fellow-crea- ture. I did believe I should die here alone, — that my landlord would be left to sell my bones to the college, for the surgeons, to make out my arrears of rent, and that no human being would see me laid in a decent grave. Thank God, at last I hear a voice that has neither malice, nor meanness, nor avarice, nor scorn, nor tempta- tion, in its tones." As the poor woman recovered herself from this burst of feeling, we placed her in the rocking- chair, where it. was obvious that she had need enough to rest, and, standing by her side, lis- tened to her tale, — an old, old story, and yet one 84 STREET THOUGHTS. that is ever new. Youth, health, wealth, beauty, a husband, happy children, a dear, dear home, — all had been hers ; all had been swept away by one dark Providence after another, until all were gone, — and here she was, a solitary sufferer, eking out life by the toil of her feeble fingers, with no single friend to comfort her, with deed or word. " 0, Sir," said she, " sometimes I have almost sinfully wanted to curse Grod and die, when I have looked out of my window upon the dwell- ings of wealth adjacent, and seen wasted there what would have kept me in luxury (for me) for days, and almost weeks. I know it is all right, — better than I deserve, — yet it would have been pleasant to have seemed to belong to the same race with them." We sought to speak a few words of appropriate counsel, and to prepare the way for some deeds of appropriate kindness ; and we had the joy to see the pale and pain-smitten face beam with un- wonted happiness, as we went away, with a prom- ise of speedy return. If our space were not too full to write more, our heart was too full then to utter more, as we thought, " Who made us to differ ? " 85 XVIII. BEIGHTON ON SUNDAY, P. M. " I DID n't see you at church, yesterday after- noon." " No. I went to Brighton." " To church ? " " Well — not exactly. The fact was, — it being pleasant, and having been shut up all the week, and not having had a ride for a long time, — I thought I would take Mrs. and the children out, for once, and ' do as the world does.' " " Does the world ' go to Brighton on Sunday afternoon ? " " Why, yes ; pretty much everybody, that is anybody, calculates to be seen on the Brighton road occasionally, after morning church." " ' Morning church ' is an indispensable pre- liminary, then, to such an appearance ? How is it about evening- service ? Is that laid on top of the Brighton which covers the church A. M., a la Sandwich ? " 8 86 STREET THOUGHTS. " Well, you 're both inquisitive and funny, it strikes me. I suppose you design to intimate, in a gentle way, that I'd better have gone to church in the afternoon myself, as you and your worthy spouse undoubtedly did. But the fact is, I think we need amusement as well as in- struction ; and, after having heard a good solid sermon in the morning, and paid my respects to the cause of good morals and public decency, by being seen at church, I — " " Paid your respects to the cause of bad morals and public w^-decency, by 'being seen' on the Brighton road, with the jockeys, in the afternoon. Hah ? " " You 're polite, friend." " No, I ain't polite ; I'm only truthful. If I meant to be polite, I should go into the theory of amusement, after the manner of Paley on worlds and watches, and lay down the great principle that riding to Brighton on Sunday afternoons is a great social want ; that God prov- identially created horses, and endowed man to make buggies and family carryalls, and caused the city of Boston and the town of Brighton to be situated and connected as at present, to the end that that great social want might be sup- plied ; that whatever evil has followed, or, in any case, has been supposed to follow, this species of recreation, is owing to the coldness of BRIGHTON ON SUNDAY, P. M. 87 the Church toward the subject, and to the crim- inal habit into which the clergy and their coad- jutors have fallen, of frequenting church, instead of the Cattle Fair Hotel, on Sunday, P. M. ; and that, in doing your part to uphold and promote proper views on this great subject, you are a philanthropist of the deepest dye. This is what I should say, if I went in for being polite. But merely intending to speak the truth, I do beg leave to remark, in your hearing, that I think you would have been setting a better example, and doing, as well as getting, more good, if you had gone to church, and left Brighton to the rowdies who divide that unfortunate precinct with the butchers." " Well, you 've made a pretty long speech, any way." " I '11 hear you, now." " I don't know as 1 have anything very par- ticular to add, though — " The near rumble of an omnibus drowned the rest of the reply, and when it had subsided, we found ourselves out of ear-shot of the pair of talkers. But we thought this fragment was, on the whole, too good to be lost, and so we pulled out our tablets, and jotted it down, while fresh. 90 STREET THOUGHTS. ter, to keep my hands warm ; I wear them when I dig in the garden, to protect mj skin from the attrition of gravel and the annoyances of thorns and briers ; I wear them, sometimes, when fish- ing, to save my fingers from the abrasion of a deep-sea cod-line ; and, in general, I wear them whenever they are of any real use ; never at any other time, or for any other reason." " But is n't it of ' use ' to keep your hands from getting the nut-brown tinge of the mere swain, notifying all beholders that he belongs to the pig and chicken class ? " " Tastes differ. The class of pigs and chickens does n't repel me so much as the class of animals with larger legs and longer ears, whose biped representatives and friends are much exercised to conceal their hands from public gaze. / am not afraid to show mine, — brawny and brown, it may be, but good for work, and not bad for all honest uses." " I see you will never be a fashionable man. You 've imbibed absurd notions from some low source. You '11 find it will damage you with the better classes. I advise you to give it up — " " And spend a hundred dollars a year, or so, for gloves ? Nay, friend, I prefer to invest it in books. And when you get so that you can't be seen in the street alongside of my brown hands, the loss will be mine, and I will try to bear it — in the society of my library — as I may." 91 XX. OUR ]\rETHUSELAHS. "He's a fool ! he's a mere chicken! He's too young to be married yet, this five years ! What is getting into all the boys and girls ? When I was a boy, I should as soon have thought of stealing, as of getting married." " I fancy there 's many a boy, now-a-days, that thinks of stealing as soon as he has got married, and effected the grand discovery that kisses won't make the pot boil, nor pay the butcher, nor baker, nor candlestick-maker." Thus communed two gentlemen of the old school, in the vestibule of the Post-Office, as we passed them to look at our box. On our way out, we met a lad, whose smooth chin, and the general youthfulness of whose comely aspect, made us think "there's a pretty boy," when, to our dismay, somebody by our side loudly accosted him with, " Well, old fellow, how 's your wife ? " Said dismay was deepened by the answer, — 92 STREET THOUGHTS. " Pretty well, thankie ; but the baby has the measles, and our oldest the mumps, while No. Two fell down, the other day, and broke his crown, and has been very dumpish ever since ! " We learned afterward, by inquiry of a friend who knows this phenomenon, that his language was literally true, and that his " family " at the present time consists of five members, to wit : himself, aged twenty ; his wife, aged nineteen ; and three children, aged two years and ten months, one year and four months, and three months, respectively ! His salary (he is a retail dry-goods clerk) is supposed to be about five hundred dollars ! People call this a fast age. It appears to us it ^might be truthfully called a young age. Cer- tainly, youth largely enters into it. Furthermore, a small boy, now, knows quite as much as his father, and incomparably more than his grandfather ; while his great-grand- father, if he happen to survive, is a mere fool to him. If Methuselah were now alive, it would be amusing, if it were not sad, to think how he would fare. He would date back to just about A. D. 890, — the era of the founding of Oxford, — about the time when Alfred was in his glory in England, when Arpad was founding Hungary, and Arnold of Germany was taking Rome. The OUR METHUSELAHS. 93 old gentleman would doubtless remember a thing or two ; but it would be hardly safe for him to speak of it, or some youngster, in his bib and Bancroft, would correct his dates, or contradict his facts, and set him down as an " old fogy " ! Old Doctor Beecher and Doctor Jenks would have a good time with him ; and he might possibly be asked to sit on the platform, and pronounce the benediction for some society, in Anniversary Week ; but he would be lucky to get home with his eyes unblinded with street smoke, his gar- ments undefiled with street spittle, and his bones unbroken in some street scuffle. 94 XXI. AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTURE. " Building ? Yes, it appears to me there 's a perfect mania for building and re-bnilding. Wliy, to say nothing of new streets in the Back Bay, where the tide has hardly done flowing be- fore the pile-drivers begin thumping for a foun- dation, there are any quantity of sedate old lots, down town, which are taking off their coats, and turning up their sleeves, preparatory to a knock- down and drag-out, and a new iron front, and accordingiies to match." " Who 're going to occupy all the great new stores ? It really looks as if goods enough could be sold in them to supply five times the legiti- mate constituency of Boston ! " " It might be more pertinent to inquire who is going to pay the rent on them, and do a liv- ing business beside. In my humble judgment, some of those stupendous stores will be the ruin of more than one adventurous, and probably also well-meaning and hard-working, but short- sighted individual." AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTURE. 95 *^ Why ? They have ^ all the conveniences,' and certainly much more business can be done in them than in the old, dingy, low-in-the-walls sales-rooms which they replace." " Doubtless ; but if you double the rent, you must at least double the business, to pay, not merely that item added, but the clerk-hire, and the hundred other added items, which come in the train of the grand establishment. To do this, in the existing competition in the trade, you must take all the customers you can get, without scrutinizing too closely their moral characters ; you must sell low, and sell long, and after you have waited a big while for a little money, you must, very often, charge the amount to profit and loss, (especially loss,) through the deficit of dis- tant buyers, who, likely enough, never meant to pay, even when they were drinking your cham- pagne, and eating your turtle-soup, preparatory to running up their swindle." " And yet one would think a fine store would be apt to bring fine customers." '^ Some customers are shrewd enough to know that a good chest of tea, or an A No. 1 bale of goods, bought in an old warehouse with a dingy front, and a low rent, is quite as good as, and is apt to cost somewhat less than, the same quality of article, bought where, in addition to costs of importation, and the regular profit of trade, a 96 STREET THOUGHTS. considerable percentage must be added for extra rent, salary, and show expenses. Some old heads are mighty shy about running up much of a bill in these ' palatial' wareliouses. It just occurs to them that all that magnificence has to be paid for, and that they are as likely to be levied upon as any other persons." " You would n't advocate mean stores, would you?" " No, I don't advocate anything that is mean ; and that is the reason why I don't advocate that excessive preponderance of show over substance which is a prominent feature in a great many of the building operations at present going on around us. If there is anything meaner than for a man to take a great store and stock it with goods, and take a great house and fill it with flummery, and then fail, at the end of a few months, and cheat everybody concerned out of ninety-three per cent of their money, — all sunk in the maelstrom of extravagance in rents and general manage- ment, at the store and at the house, — I don't happen to think of it at this moment." It ''just occurred" to us, as we passed out of ear-shot of this pair of talkers, — the latter of whom was waxing somewhat warmer than the ther- mometer (although over ninety degrees) would really warrant, — that the speaker might have had some personal experience, not of the most AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTURE. 97 agreeable sort, to give a little acidity to his gen- eral views on the subject under discussion ; and yet we could n't help feeling that essential truth was at the bottom of what he said. There is here and there a store, and oftener than here and there a house, now completing, or recently completed, in Boston, which belongs to the " flummery " order of architecture, and which invites the occupancy of some fool whose money and him it will do its speedy best to part. Stores are a little out of our line, and we would not speak too confidently with regard to them ; but we assuredly know that there is a large number of houses whose tenants (by purchase or rent) will pay a yearly rate of well-nigh double the sum which they ought to pay for all the real accom- modation which their domicile affords, — the balance going toward leaky bay-windows, showy cornices, elaborate knicknackery in general, with the draperies, tapestries, e^ id omne g-enus, which supplement them, and which drain a man of money, as a hungry horseleech sucks dry the vein upon which he fastens. Sensible houses are the great need, just now, ill Boston. Houses that are not "all up and down " ; that have gas and water conveniences ; that have roomy rooms and well-ventilating chim- neys ; that are not so elaborate in gingerbread architecture as almost to compel lavish expendi- 9 98 STREET THOUGHTS. ture in internal furnishing to keep up the fitness of things ; and, above all, that can be rented for from $350 to $550 per annum. He who would build a hundred such houses would be a great public benefactor, and would by no means throw away his money. 99 XXII. SUCH WEATHER ! "0, SUCH weather! — such iveather ! How can you look so cheerful hi such weather, — in mud, and drizzle, and east wind, and fog, and gales, and rain, and snow, all mixed up to- gether ? " " Well, indeed, you have made a mournful catalogue, and I don't know as you have insert- ed anything either that Nature has n't put in, within the week. But don't look so long-faced about it ; you don't depend for your happiness upon the weather, do you ? " "Yes, I do, — very much. When the sun shines, I shine ; when it rains, I mope ; and when it does — as it has the last week — every- thing that is damp, and dumpish, and disagree- able, I am in a perpetual fret, and nothing suits me." " I incline to think, my dear madam, that you are a little too frank in your avowals, and, unlike most visitors to the confessional, you have made it rather worse than it is, with you." 100 STREET THOUGHT^. " Not a bit, —not a bit. I do assure you, I feel |)ositively ugly, every ' equinoctial ' ; and every time it rains a storm instead of a shower, I feel as if I had n't a friend on earth. If I managed matters, I would have sunshine all the time." " But how about vegetation, which would be apt to parch under such a regimen ? " " Well, I 'd have it rain always in the night." " Then how about those nights when you wish to be out ? " " I would n't have it rain on those nights." " Somebody wants to be out every night. And then, too, as the earth sometimes needs a rather more thorough soaking than ten or twelve hours would give it, how would you have that managed ? " " 0, I don't care if other people do get wet, once in a while ; and I don't know about the earth. All I know is, if I had my way, it never should rain when I didn't want it to." " Pardon me the impertinence of the sugges- tion, — but is there not just the least spice of what the divines call ' selfishness ' in your posi- tion, thus expressed ? " " Just the least spice," thought we, as we passed beyond ear-shot of the pair, who were breasting the northeaster with commendable perseverance ; and we wondered how the inhab- SUCH WEATHER ! 101 itants of the earth would stand affected , if this ladj-complainer could take the direction of the weather for just one month. Her creed of man- agement would be short and explicit ; she would " suit herself." When she wanted to drive out, it would be pleasant. If she happened to fancy a longer excursion than usual, the sun might be kept above the horizoi?. an extra hour or so, and the whole race of almanac-makers would be paralyzed with astonishment. When she wanted a breeze to blow into her open window, it would come from the most unexpected quarter for that purpose, without reference to sailors' rights. The crops would have a hard time of it, and the farmers would cut a thin supply of grass. Wouldn't there be a commotion among the general public ! Would n't there be a great convention called to remonstrate on the mon- strous injustice of having the interests of the whole world pivoted upon the fancy of a single individual, and managed for the imaginary bene- fit of one, rather than the real good of all ? And would n't the opinion become general at last, — herself included, — that the matter would be better in the old hands, — managed by Infinite Wisdom for the common benefit, — mud, mist, and drizzle included ? 9# 102 XXIII. WHAT ELSE AEE Y0U1 '^ Comment vous portez-vous, Mademoiselle? The thirty-third pleasant morning in succession I 've seen you on Washington Street ; throwing out rainy days and Sundays, when there is n't any- body round. Are n't i/ou a street-yarn-spinner ? " said a bright-faced and jauntily-dressed miss, be- fore us, to a somewhat plainer and a good deal more time-and-weather-worn-looking female, who met her on the sidewalk. " To be sure I am," w^as the reply ; " and why not ? What else are you ? " We did not linger to catch any further sylla- bles ; but that last sentence struck us as conveying a good deal more of truth, in its curt interroga- tion, than was likely to be apprehended by the party addressed, or than was, in all probability, intended by the speaker. It seemed to us that there are a good many females in Boston — very reputable and admirable as the world goes — who miglit be puzzled to make an honest reply to a WHAT ELSE ARE YOU? 103 similar question, without damaging conscience by a suppression of the truth, or self-respect by its utterance. " What else are you ? " You are an out-door person. You can't get through the day without promenading Washington Street, to see and be seen ; to catch an idea of the latest fashions, by observing what peoj)le, in general, have on; to exchange street nods with certain " perfect loves " of gentlemen, with whom you have mainly a sidewalk acquaintance ; and you are '' miserably moped," when it comes evening, if you can't go somewhere, with somebody, to see something. In short, your existence is especially — one would almost judge only — valuable to you for the points of contact which it has with the outer world. You are a spinner of street yarn. Now, luhat else are you ? Are you a student of anything ? Have you the first clear idea of the wonderful body and more wonderful mind which God has given you, — of their capabilities, dangers, destiny ? Do you know the place where the road to an insane retreat, or an early grave, forks from the path to health and long life and happiness? Are you conscious of the immeasurable wealth which other minds have stored for you in volumes heaped and fragrant with wisdom ? Are you aware that Prescott's Histories are, in reality, 104 STREET THOUGHTS. more fascinating than Ballon'* s Pictorial? and that the Bible is, as a matter of fact, more " in- teresting" than the last new novel ? Above all, have you any acquaintance with the sublime fact, that daily obedience to daily duty is the recipe for daily comfort, — that the sweetest flowers of earthly joy grow on the prickly and uncouth and bitter cactus-branches of disagreeable, yet di- vinely appointed drudgeries ? You know that Mr. So-and-so " keeps " on such a corner. You know where Madame W 's millinery chambers are. You know where that "elegant" clerk, with the fine eyes and the fat fingers and the miraculous moustache, retails his glances with his gloves, his simpers with his silks. You know French enough to begin a conversa- tion, and break down into English before it is half through, be it never so short. You know music enough to play to " a paying audience " a few opera selections, with soprano slides and screeches to match ; and not enough to play, or sing, or enjoy anything, either simple or deep, which might unassumingly make a part of the rich melody of home. You know how to " ap- pear well" on the sidewalk, and in the parlor (when there are callers) ; but you don't feel able to appear at all at the breakfast-table, or in the kitchen, or anywhere or anyhow, for the simple purpose of heing^ rather than seeming^ — of en- WHAT ELSE ARE YOU? 105 joying and imparting enjoyment, rather than of " exhibiting." You are a very nice person to meet on the street. Passing and repassing are your forte. But — ivhat else are you ? It is a question concerning which Revelation is silent, whether eternity is provided with side- walks ; and the sham and outside life which you are now living may, possibly, be a poor prepara- tion for that position of great and stern realities, where we shall all be sorte.d according, not to what we seem to be, nor what we would like to be, or like to have people think us to be, but what we are ; — where an inch more or less in the length of a streamer, the width of a skirt, or the littleness of a bonnet, will be found to be of in- considerable account to the genuine welfare of the individual, compared with our amount of truth to our own internal capabilities of improve- ment, usefulness, happiness, and holiness, and of our external obedience to the will of God, as revealed in Nature, Providence, and Revelation. 106 XXIV. PAT MALONEY. A VOLLEY of awful profaiieness in the tones of a child's voice arrested our attention, and chilled our blood, as we were passing down a side street at the South End, a few weeks ago ; and, on turning toward the sound, we discovered a little Irish boy, smeared with street filth, and look- ing like a locomotive bundle of rags, who was pouring out his wrath against another boy, who had displeased him in some way that did not make itself immediately obvious. Despite his dirty and neglected condition, there was some- thing about his eye that revealed the presence of unusual intellect ; and there was a kind of gro- tesqueness and originality even in his fearful cursing, which confirmed the promise of his eye, and declared him capable of a nobler life. Dubious of any success in our attempt, and yet feeling strongly desirous, if possible, of doing something to call forth his confidence, and put him in a way to better things, we approached him for a parley. As soon as he saw our inten- PAT MALONEY. 107 tion, he seemed to anticipate reproof, and looked as if he were summoning all his stock of natural and acquired sauciness to his help, for resistance ; so we changed our method of attack, in hope to put him off his guard. "Do you know if a gentleman by the name of O'Doherty lives in this neighborhood, my lad ? " " Never heerd of no sich man." " He is a fine, large man, and usually smokes a pipe, and, I think, has a little boy named Pat." " Heaps on 'em here has that name. That 's my name." " Your name is n't Saint Patrick, is it ? " "Never a bit of a saint I am, sure." " And what is a saint, do you think ? " " And sure, and a saint, I expect, is a mighty fine kind of a jintleman, and, may be, better than ajt?ra5^e." " You mean, he don't swear, I suppose." "Well — you see, Johnny stole my kite, and he made me swear ; but I don't do it in no ways common." " What did you say your name was, besides Pat?" " I did n't say ; but it 's Maloney." " Your father is dead, is n't he ? " " Yes, I 'spect so." " And where 's your mother ? " 108 STREET THOUGHTS. " She 's to South Boston." (Meamng, in the House of Correction.) " For how long ? '' " For sis months." " And who takes care of you ? " " I takes care of myself." " How old are you ? " " I don't know, — I guess 't ain't none o' youi business." " I want to give you a new jacket." " I should like one, first rate, but you don't mean that, old fellow." "Yes, I do ; and I think you 'd look better with a pair of new trousers." " Are you a Police ? " " Why — yes. I 'm a sort of moral police- man ; but I never carry boys to the lock-up." " Where do you carry 'em ? " " I go home with them." " You won't go home with me. Mister." " Why ? " " 'Cause I ha' n't got no home." " Where do you sleep ? " " All about." 1' Where do you eat ? " " Same place." ".My little friend, tell me now, honestly, are you all alone in the world ? and have you no home, no food, no clothes, but these rags ? " His lip trembled for a moment, and his eyes PAT MALONEY. 109 filled, when he bowed his head upon his breast, and wept. We led him to the City Missionary having charge of his district, and intrusted to the hands of that discreet and benevolent functionary the small sum sufficient to provide for the immediate wants of our new friend. Suitable provision was made for his daily life, so that, from being a beggar and a thief, he was soon transformed into a useful member of soci- ety. The next Sabbath saw him — well washed, well combed, well dressed, well pleased, and measurably well behaved — in one of the classes of one of those Mission Schools which are doing so much for the moral welfare of the poor and neglected among our citizens. And now, thanks to God's blessing on patient kindness, and steady and self-denying effort, tliere is not a brighter eye that there bends over the sacred page, nor a more reverent voice that reads its inspired and inspiring lessons, than those of this same little Pat Maloney. How strangely strange it is that, with so many Christian people within sound of the church- bells of Boston, so few of them should seek to enter upon any practical, business-like obedience to that great command, whose blessed result is that " the poor have the Gospel preached unto them'' I 10 no XXV. THE OLD APPLE-MAN. "Poor old man, — will nobody help him?" said a sweet voice, just under the open win- dow of the Canton Street omnibus in which we were seated, — while it paused, blockaded a mo- ment, by the corner where School Street empties its travel into Washington. Glancing hastily out, we saw a beautiful young girl, whose remarkably fine face we instantly recognized as belonging to one of the best families of the South End, busily setting a good example to a crowd of street loafers who had knotted together on the opposite sidewalk, and who, with their hands in their pockets, were laughing at the panic-struck perplexity and feeble dismay of a venerable apple-man, who had been pushed over, in his attempt to cross the street, by the " near " horse of the omnibus, and whose stock in trade was scudding away from him in all directions, like mice at the sudden advent of a kitten. He had picked himself up and regained his dilap- THE OLD APPLE-MAN. Ill idated basket, but, in his alarm at the throng of horses that, by this time, was beginning to sur- round him on all sides, and his (second) childish grief at his probable loss, he had not sufficient presence of mind to make even an effort to secure any portion of his property. There he stood, be- wildered, and there the able-bodied loafers looked on, and — laughed, and, with malicious mean- ness, hallooed to inquire what he would take for the lot, as it ran. The noble girl — after waiting long enough to satisfy herself that nobody else proposed to inter- fere — dashed in among the horses, and, with the most sympathizing words to the poor old sufferer, was beginning to pick up the apples, and, with a courage which is not, to say the least, usually manifested in the street, by her sex, threw her- self directly before the great beast of an impatient expressman, who was about to hurry on, and, in so doing, inevitably crush at least half of the old man's fruit, which lay under, and among, his wheels and horse's hoofs. " Please to wait a minute. Sir," said she, — as she encouraged the old man, now quite reani- mated by her active sympathy, — " and we will soon get them all out of your way." A carriage which had crowded its pole against our rear, had made the omnibus door unopenable for the time being, and as the window was rather 112 STREET THOUGHTS. too small for our comfortable emission, we had nothing for it but to remain a sympathizing, but silent spectator. The expressman swore, and we are afraid some of the omnibus-drivers did the same. The loaf- ers gradually came to a sense of their meanness, and — as if suddenly recollecting urgent engage- ments — sneaked off. The sweet-faced girl led the old man — a large three quarters of his stock replaced — in triumph to the sidewalk, and, while he was mumbling incoherent thanks, slip- ped a shining yellow coin hito his tremulous fingers, and hurried off round the corner, her cheeks all aglow with generous excitement, and happy as a queen — might be, by similar conduct, but seldom is. We have no need to add the moral. 113 XXVI. A MALE IRISHMAN. It is a singular propensity which the male Irish have, on holidays, to dress tip in a black suit complete, — stove-pipe hat included. To see the street-full that hang about the Cathedral on the Sabbath, as bees cluster round the egress of their hives in swarming- time, one would almost think that the stock of some Israelite dealer in second- hand articles, who confined his attention to cast- off clericals, had become suddenly animate, and started en masse for mass. Old coats, which are redolent of vinegar restorations, and whose swal- low tails tell a tale (which it is sometimes hard to swallow) of former generations, are borne along with genuine Hibernian want of grace, while vests which have returned all of their original investment to their first owner once more appear in public, and mingle in general society. We suppose it must be more inherently dignified and aristocratic in Celtic eyes to appear in the cast-off habiliments of the elite ^ than to 10* 114 STREET THOUGHTS. originate apparel of their own, ■which, for the same money, would be something coarser in tex- ture, and something lighter in hue, though im- mensely more enduring in use. They see "their betters" in black, and prob- ably from their youth up they have associated that sacerdotal color with their ideas of all that is beatific in gentility and luxurious in life. Com- ing over, — " some in rags, and some in tags," — after having wielded the spade and pickaxe suffi- ciently to rise into easier circumstances, and indulge their hitherto impossible tastes, they make at once for Brattle Street and kindred localities, and, bearing good, hard-earned shillings in considerable numbers, they depart rejoicing in great bargains in this species of sable suit. Their inexpressibles are, to be sure, inexpressibly ten- der, and have a tendency toward a lighter hue than is needed on the knees and other exposed parts, while their jerkins will bear very little jerking without rents that are not reliable for the support of a family ; but still there is the odor of gentility about the dress, and the Irishman rejoices, and feels that at last he has reached his coveted level in society. Yonder goes one who illustrates our remark. He is on Monday leave, and so retains his Sunday spruceness. His coat was originally made for six feet two, and he is but five feet one ; so that tliere is even more waste about his waist than A MALE IRISHMAN. llo distinguished the late anti-Shanghai style ; and his pantaloons were once the property of four feet nine ; so that his boots (made for the general public, and for nobody in particular, and fitting accordingly) are obliged to do some service to supply nether deficiencies, while his hat is an old black, bell-crown beaver, which has, likely enough, hung twenty years or more on the same peg in the old-clo' man's den, and was therefore bought at a bargain ; but he looks self-apprecia- tive, and not merely independent, but jubilant. He evidently feels well. He would like to meet some of his old Cork companions, that he might show himself to their admiring eyes. He inserts both hands under the tails of his coat, and they fall over this obstruction something as the river washes over the cliff by Goat Island. As he walks thus, he will meet nobody who feels any better than he does. To be sure, his transitory finery will soon be- come " eradicated," as the Western orator re- marked, but then he can get more where that came from ; and until he learns that it is better to spend a ten-dollar bill for a new and strong and neat and sensible coat of serviceable gray, than for one that is merely black and old and shabby-genteel, perhaps it is the best thing he can do under the circumstances. But he will learn, by and by, with the leave of the " Know-Noth- ings." 116 XXVII. STRANGE CONTRASTS. The doors of Trinity open at secular lionrs ! Surely the Bishop has not turned High-Church- man, and established the daily office ! And if so, it would not account for the crowd that rush hastily in ! It must be that some unusual event is magnetizing the multitu.de ! The organ peals out, as we enter, and there is that in its resonance which betokens joy, rather than grief, as the key-note of the occasion. It is, clearly, a wedding service ! The Priest is even now ready in his robes, prayer-book in hand, and looks with expectant face toward the entrance. The organ pauses. A slight pair — in the dew of their youth — glide noiselessly to the altar, and the appointed words begin : — " Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of tliis company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony." No voice follows the call for the showing of STRANGE CONTRASTS. 117 "just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together." The mutual promise is made ; the mutual troth is i^ledged; the ring finds its place upon the fourth finger of the fair left hand ; the prayer is said, the blessing given, and the twain go forth, for evermore, one flesh 1 We saw the pair — • in all their flush of happi- ness — enter their carriage, and drive away, and, as we walked on in the same direction, — from the crowded state of the streets, with them for a long time in sight, — we could not help moraliz- ing upon the strange mixture of human thought, and emotion, and purpose, that was, for the time being, imprisoned within the circle, of a radius of a few hundred feet, around us. A crowd of giddy boys, heedless of all save the excitement of the moment, thronged, with merry shouts, about the dashy equipage which bore the central figures of the scene. As that turned the near corner, out of Summer into Washington Street, the driver had to pull his horses suddenly to their haunches, to avoid crushing under their feet the wretched wreck of a poor old female paralytic, whose skinny hands, and yellow visage, and bleared eyes, and tremulous and loathsome aspect, furnished at once the sharpest and the saddest contrast to the vision of young loveliness that smiled so near ! Yet who shall say that that 118 STREET THOUGHTS. mthered hag was not once the superior of the two, in excellent beauty ? who dare declare that she who is now young, if she live to old age, shall not repel the sense even more than this fee- ble wanderer ? Strange contrast ! the flood of travel next floats this wedding cortege to the side of a funeral train, and, for a moment, locks the wheels of the car- riage of the bride into those of the hearse of the dead. Turning her fond gaze away from the face which she loves, instinctively, to notice the cause of the delay, the bride — through the glass window of her coach, and that of the hearse, now opposite each to each — looked, with a shudder, on the coffin, and, shocked by a sight so unex- pected and so uncongenial to that hour, shrank instinctively away, and covered her eyes, w^hile her heaving breast showed how painful was the enforced suggestion that an hour of parting must of necessity by and by succeed this hour of espousal. Disentangled, the coach falls into a line that is moving slow^ly on in its desired direction, and keeps even pace, for a little while, with them. We glance, curiously, to see into what new neighborhood they are now unconsciously come. Before them is a family carriage, in which, propped by pillows, and swathed with shawls, and muffled in furs, reclines a gaunt form, the STRANGE CONTRASTS. 119 hectic of whose cheek, and the hollow tone of whose occasional cough, indicate that he must soon take his place in another procession. Behind them, in a hackney-coach, smothered in luggage of foreign aspect, hurries, just from the English steamer, to the New York cars, a heavily moustached and bearded couple, whose grum gutturals growl discontent at their slow pace, and whose anxious and angry glances out of the windows are singularly unlike the calm content that saturates the aspect of the hymeneal pair before them. A charcoal cart brings up the rear ! Its saffron sides bear, in stupendous scrawl, the signature of " Chaffee & Co." Its driver — perched iipon his lofty seat, with a fox-tail in his cap, and his livid eyes in fine frenzy rolling, in a masklike counte- nance, tinted by his occupation to the hue which a negro might be supposed to have after lying long in pickle — shouts the cry peculiar to his craft, and jolts along, as if part and parcel of all that goes before him, and is to come after him ; his merry-Andrew aspect bringing to mind the proverb, that " no company is complete without a fool," 120 XXVIII. THE LOST CHILD. A LITTLE cliild stood, crying bitterly, on the sidewalk. Its bare flaxen curls streamed over its fair shoulders in soft and graceful ringlets, that testified to the gentle culture of fond mater- nal fingers. It was alone, and, we supposed, had wandered out of some near house, and gone out of the sunshine of its play into the sudden shadow of some great childish grief. But there was a kind of helplessness about its tones that especially attracted our attention, and made us curious to know the secret of its wailing. So we drew near to speak to it. " Well, what is the matter with you, my little man ? If the Queen should hear you crying, from over the water, ivoidd nH she wonder what was the matter with somebody ? " " I can't find mamma ! " " Why don't you ring the door-bell, and ask her where she is ? Or can't you reach up to it ? " " I can't find the door-bell." THE LOST CHILD. 121 " Is n't it just where you left it, by the side of the door ? " "I can't find the door." " Is n't it in the front of the house ? " '• I can't find the house." " Ah, my poor little boy, you don't mean to say that you 're lost ! " This melancholy suggestion was quite too much for the dear little fellow, whose tears, which had sensibly subsided during the previous colloquy, burst forth afresh, with louder vocal accompani- ment than ever. To our question, repeated in the kindest tones which we could summon to our help, he at last responded, with sobbing speech : "I — can't — find — the — way — home ! dear ! — dear ! " " Don't cry so," replied we ; " if you cry so, you won't be able to tell me where you live, so that I can carry you home to your mamma. Come, now, tell me what is your name, and in what street you live, and we '11 soon find it." ''' I live at mamma's house." " And what is mamma's name ? " " Mamma." *' How came you here ? " " I ran after the music-monkey." " And what is pour name ? " " Josey." " Josey what ? " 11 122 STREET THOUGHTS. " Mamma says I 'm ' Josey mischief,' some- times, and sometimes I 'm ' Josey good.' " " Well, never mind. Where do you live, Josey ? " " At mamma's house." " In what street is mamma's house ? " " It 's mamma's street." " What 's its name ? " " 'T is n't alive, — it 's a street. I guess it hasn't got any name." " How far off is it ? " "0, it 's about as far as from here to — to Jerusalem, I guess." " Is it a street that the cars go through ? " " No." "Is it a street that the omnibuses go through ? " " No." " Is it a street that has stores in it ? " " It 's got a store where the man sells candy." " Is that all the store there is in it ? " " He sells pea-nuts, too." " What 's his name ? " "His name is — I guess his name is Jerusa- lem." " What 's your papa's name ? " " Papa." "What does he call mamma ? " " Julia." "What does mamma call papa ? '* THE LOST CHILD. 123 " Hubby." " Is his name Mr. Hiibbj ? " '' I don't know. I wish you 'd take me home, — I 'm so hungry." Just as we were making up our reluctant mind to relinquish the hope of getting our little pro- tege home without the City Crier, and consider- ing the propriety of invoking the aid of that bell- igerent functionary, there came along a boy, of somewhat larger growth, who instantly recognized the child as a resident of a street a full quarter of a mile away ; and, under his guidance, we con- ducted the precious little waif back, along the track of his unconscious wandering, to his moth- er's arms, who had just thoroughly searched the premises and neighborhood, and satisfied herself that he was gone somewhere, — where, her trou- bled heart had hardly time to inquire, before the returning patter of his tiny feet fell like music on her ear. She was, naturally, glad, and so were we ; for we, too, have children who may get lost. But we should not have taken the trouble to set down thus minutely this little incident, if the child's artless ignorance had not so strongly im- pressed us at the time, as we talked with him, with the thought that he, in that unknown street, was a type of so many whom we daily meet, who know as little of the world as he of the city, — 124 STREET THOUGHTS. who are as ignorant for eternity as he for time, and who, though mature in a worldly point of view among their fellows, are, spiritually, as truly lost children, in the overlooking eye of God, as he in the eye of man. 125 XXIX. NOT CONVENIENT, TO-DAY. " Did you say it would be convenient, now ? " " No, — the fact is, I can't pay you to-day." " It 's now six months since you borrowed it, and you solemnly promised to pay me ' the next Monday,' and I have really suffered for it since." "^ I am sure, I am very sorry ; but the fact is, I have a great many expenses, and it is hard times, and I find it very difficult to get along, — without paying borrowed money. I '11 try next week, though." " I ivish you would. Ten dollars may seem a small sum for you, but /need it more than I can tell you. In fact, I don't see how I can, honestly, get along this week without it." " 0, I guess you'll get along, — I always do, somehow. Borrow it of somebody else, and pay them when I pay you." We heard no more of this dialogue, but from the timid and unsophisticated look of the ques- tioner, and from the world-worn air and aspect of the respondent, we estimated the probabilities 11* 126 STREET THOUGHTS. of the ultimate settlement of this account as very slight indeed. "When we were a raw college youth, we lent a bookseller, once, a fifty-dollar bill, — which paternal kindness had sent us by mail, for neces- sary expenses, and which we, in the innocence of our heart, carried into his store to get " changed." He ' had n't the change just then,' but if we would leave the bill, — in fact, lend it to him for a few days, — he would pay us in small bills. We did n't want to, but our consti- tutional timidity was such that we did n't really dare not to, as long as he had broached the sub- ject. Besides, the bill was in his hands, — to see if it were genuine, — and possession is nine points in the law. So we went home without our bill, and — we stayed there some weeks without it. We eventually " took it in books," and did n't get a very large library, either. Seriously, this thoughtless lending of money to systematic and never-intending-to-pay borrowers is a great and grievous nuisance. It falls usually on those least able to bear it. It argues immense meanness in the borrower, and immense green- ness in the lender. If, like the measles, men only had it once, it would be well ; but some hearts arc too soft ever to prompt the lips to say no. If parents do but teach their children to utter that monosyllable, — not merely when asked to lend money, either, — they do not live in vain. 127 XXX. WAYS OF WALKING. " Have yoii seen the new Doctor ? " " Just seen him — on the street." " Have n't been introduced to him ? " " No, — nor don't think I cai-e to be." " Why ? Have you heard anything why we should n't hke him as much as we expected to be able to, from all accounts ? " " No, I have n't heard anything against him, but I don't fancy the way he walks." " Then you would condemn a man's ' walk,' without reference to his ' conversation ' ? " " Not exactly that ; but I think you can tell something about a man by his habitual method of locomotion, and his habitual method is apt to manifest itself in the street." " What 's the matter with his walk ? " " Did you ever hear of a couplet or two, to the following effect : — ' Hast thou ne'er noticed in the field The plant that reared its stalk upright, 128 STREET THOUGHTS. And how it was its scanty yield That made its head so straight and light 1 Eroni this a moral lesson gain : That he whose head is up — is vain.' " '' You mean to intimate , I presume, that there is an apjoearance of self-conceit in the new physi- cian's street manifestations ? " '' I don't mean anything else. And when a man struts upon the sidewalk, as if he supposed the gaze of the city in particular, and of the uni- verse in general, were turned toward and fixed upon himself, I think that he — is n't, exactly, 7717/ candidate for a sick-room friend." " Well, I should agree with you there." We did n't know the parties who spoke on this wise in the door-way of the Post-Office, where we were waiting for a friend, and we have no idea what community or what "Doctor" they meant ; but we felt that, possibly, there was some good sense in the conclusions to which they came. Men certainly do manifest themselves — to eyes accustomed to read human nature — in their method of passing over sidewalk distances. We have seen persons — and clergymen among the number — who promenaded as if they had just received reliable intelligence that the king- doms of this world, and the glory of them, had been made over to their individual use and WAYS OF WALKING. 129 behoof, by a warranty deed which not even Mr. Bowditch could pick a flaw in ; and they were proceeding to take possession. We had the curi- osity to notice, on our way up "Washington Street, the styles of walking that happened to be out, which were of a nature to reveal character. We overtook a meek man. He crept along with a look of begging the general pardon for presuming to intrude upon the public space ; turned out into the m-uddy gutter, to allow everybody to pass him on the right ; made him- self as small as possible, and finally dodged round a corner, into a back lane, as if he could n't think of troubling people any longer. We fell in with a j^hilosopher. He looked as if the visors of his eyes were down, and the soul had stepped out on a brief excursion to some dis- tant planet. He was continually running into somebody, and attempting to beg their pardon by a half-absent bow, dissuasive of censure. He had gone by his place in the absorption of his mental processes, and finally — coming to him- self — he turned to us (it was at the corner of West Street) and asked if we would show him the corner of Northampton Street, — only a mile and a half, or so, out of the way ! • We met a careless man. His clothes were heterogeneous in selection, and shabby in aspect, and appeared to have been worn several days 130 STREET THOUGHTS. without removal from his person. A roll of written foolscap protruded from one side-pocket so far as to balance itself, more than once, as if to fall ; while his handkerchief — that had been white — dangled from his coat-tail, as if trying to take hold of the pavement with one hand. He had a bottle under one arm, which proved — by the sable fluid which overflowed the sidewalk, and splashed in every direction, as he forgot where it was, and let it drop — to have been pur- chased with an eye to more foolscap annotations. AVe overtook a hurried man. He steered wild, like a sloop under flying jib, with everything else down, in a squall ; and it was only by adroit leaps, and sudden contortions and dodges, he got on without overturning somebody, at every cor- ner. Hollis Street clock struck as he passed near, and the sound seemed to add wings to his impatience. He " broke up " at once^ and the last we saw of him was chasing a street car without signalling the conductor, who seemed to look upon the arrangement merely as a volunteer trial of speed. We met a haughty man. He looked portly and pompous, and stalked along as if nobody was good enough to meet or pass him. As we happened to know him, and to know that he had recently failed for a large amount, in a way which did not redound to his credit or comfort. WAYS OF WALKING. 131 we felt as if it would have been more consonant with facts if his manner had been modified into something a little less like that which Nicholas of Russia, or William of Stratford-on-Avon, might j^erhaps have indulged in, with some degree of naturalness ; but which sits as uncon- genially upon most people, who are not Emper- ors of Russia, or Williams of Stratford, as the airs of an eagle befit a barn-door fowl. 132 XXXI. GONE TO SEED! " Poor old man ! How sad and helpless and forlorn he looks, as he shuffles along in his rags, turning his bleared eyes hither and thither, as if he saw visions in the air as he walks." " I shouldn't wonder,-— he 's been a hard case in his day. I remember him when there was n't a prouder step down State Street than his, — not a finer nor manlier glance than that which flashed forth from those now seared and almost sightless eyeballs." "Who is he?" " You would n't believe me if I were to tell you. You would feel that the distance between what he was, and what he is, is too incredible to be included in the experience of a single per- sonality." " Well, I don't know, — one gets familiar with strange transitions, as one gets on in life." " If his history could be written down, word for word, as it actually has transpired, with all GONE TO SEED ! 133 liis successes and failures, all his fortunes and misfortunes, all his doings and undoings, men would turn from it as from the wild outpouring of some crazed author's brain, too improbable for the real belief of any sober man." " It might preach a sermon, however, as I judge from your hints." " It might, ^ — one that would make young men turn pale when they see the wine-cup and the theatre, with their congenial concomitants." " Tell me all about him," " His name is — " We had reached our turn- ing-off place just as the revelation was about to commence, and heard no more ; but we could anticipate, in large part, what was to be said. We closed our inward eyes, and seemed to see the panorama of his life float by, — from bright and gentle boyhood down to his tattered and tottering age. He had three gods, — an earthly three, — fame, lust, and gold. These, by turns, he worshipped, — but never Jehovah. To them he gave his days, his nights, his body, and his soul. Undeniably, they smiled upon him, each in turn, and gave him all they had to give (not much), and lured him on, from step to step, farther and deeper into their unhallowed service, until, like the deceitful demons that they are, they turned upon him, and cast him out, — a bloated and bleared and blasted thing, — round 13 134 STREET THOUGHTS. which not a tendril of human affection clings, toward which there comes from no grateful soul one loving look, or sympathizing syllable, — a mass of moral and physical corruption, rotting slowly into the horrible embraces of eternal death. Two texts describe him : " They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." " For the love of money is the root of all evil, which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 135 XXXII. IS SHE VERY SICK? " Is she very sick ? " " I am afraid so." '^ I will get there as quickly as I can." Brief as this dialogue was, which we overheard as we were passing by the door of an eminent physician, it furnished material for considerable thought. We had no clew to the locality, — none to the parties immediately and painfully inter- ested. It was left to imagination to decide in what street, in what mansion, on what bed, with what anxious and agonizing group, the sufferer might be. It was clear, from the look and tone of the messenger, that the sick and perhaps dy- ing woman had at least one friend, whose deep- est affection and solicitude were stirred within him in dread of the result. How many other hearts were beginning to bleed, we could not tell. We thought of our own absent ones, and breathed a petition for their safety. We remembered how, under the cover of the usual aspect of the city, 136 STREET THOUGHTS. lay, here and there, many such sufferers, un- thought of and uncared for by the multitude. And we besought the Great Physician to remem- ber and supply their need. And it came home to us with new force, how little real sympathy and intercommunication and inter-carefulness there is among the multitudes who throng the globe, each making much of his own private grief, but remembering seldom and coldly the griefs of his neighbors. We have a bosom friend — a friend from our youth — who is a physician; and through his eyes we have learned to look upon the sick side of the world with perhaps more of appreciation and of sympathy than is always natural to one whose personal experiences are mainly those of robust health. As we have knelt with him at his fireside, and heard the pathetic earnestness of those special petitions for those of his patients whose cases most appealed to his own anxiety, which have interwoven themselves with his sup- plications for the family, we have gained new respect for the physician's function, and have felt that the man of tender conscientiousness, and thorough skill, and sympathizing temperament, and religious principle, who goes from house to house to " heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease, among the people," approaches, perhaps as nearly as any one can hope to do, to IS SHE VERY SICK? 137 that commanded "walking as he also walked," which brings us nearest to Him who " went about doing good." Steele, or somebody, says, in the Tatler, that "there is not a more useful man in a common- wealth than a good physician." And society, despite all it has suffered from the dolts and the quacks, indorses the declaration. No doubt the best err, and the most skilful sometimes fail ; but the amount of human suffering that is daily saved by the patient thought and wise prescrip- tion of " the profession " would more than fur- nish the agony of a great battle. Simple old Thomas Tusser, father of didactic English poetry, says, sensibly, in his " Good Points of Husbandrie " : " Ask Medicus' counsel, ere medicine ye take, And honor that man for necessity's sake. Though thousands hate physic because of the cost, Yet thousands it helpeth, that else should be lost." We wish there were always a better practical understanding between those whose duty it is to prescribe for the body, and those whose duty it is to prescribe for the soul. Doubtless the clergy are sometimes in fault, in that they enter the sick-room as if they were going to a funeral, and so cause the doctor to dread, and then for- bid, their insalubrious and depressing presence. Where all parties have common sense, this need 12* 138 STREET THOUGHTS. not be. And when the two professions have con- fidence in each other, they can help each other cure the patient. And where, as sometimes happens, the disciple of Hippocrates discerns that it is true of the sick, as of Lady Macbeth, — " More needs she the divine than the physician," — he ought to summon his brother of the surplice to a consi the other. to a consultation. Neither can afford to ignore 139 XXXIII. QUACK EELIGIOK. It was a sudden summer shower, and the gut- ters roared like young rivulets. We were um- brella-less, and took shelter in the doorway of Joy's Building. Two gentlemen descended the stairs in animated conversation, and, as they reached the doorway, finding the street flooded, paused just before us, and continued in the same earnest tones their discussion, where we could not choose but hear. " I don't want any other proof; that 's enough for me." " But you ought not to be satisfied, without good and sufficient evidence, in a matter of that importance." " I call that ' good and sufficient.' Here I go into a billiard-room, and find A and B, mem- bers of the church ' in good and regular stand- ing,' playing billiards and carousing with the rest. I go into a drinking-saloon, and I find C and D, members of the church ' in good and 140 STREET THOUGHTS. regular standing,' drinking there, as much at home as if they never pretended to belong any- where else. I go into a ball-room, and I find E and F, members of the church ' in good and regular standing,' dancing there, — not merely common dances, but waltzes and polkas, — with as much zest and passion as the giddiest mere ' worldling.' I hear G and H, members of the church ' in good and regular standing,' in a tearing passion with each other, and showing quite as much ungentlemanliness, and as little magnanimity, as are common in such cases, to those who make no pretence of being better than their neighbors. I buy goods of I and J, mem- bers of the church " in good and regular stand- ing,' and find that I am cheated, if anything, a little worse than I was in my last j^iii'chases of the same articles from a man whom I knoiu to be a scoundrel. '^ Thus I go through the alphabet, and I find that there is not really any difference — at least for the better — between the actual lives of these men who belong to the church, and of those who make no such professions. I therefore conclude that the whole body of church-members is un- sound, and that religion itself is either a cheat or a delusion, and that the less I have to do with it, the better for me." " Does that seem to you sound reasoning ?" QUACK RELIGION. 141 " Why is it not ? " "Do you not reason from exceptions to the rule ? " " I claim that these instances form the rule." " Can you prove it ? " " Perhaps not." "Do you really believe it ? " " Why should I not ? " " You are a physician ? " " Yes." " Regular bred ? " " I hope so. Three years in Paris and ten in the hospitals, upon the top of the regular course, ought to entitle me to use that language." " Suppose I say you are a quack ? " " I should deny it, and be mad with you if you insisted." " But I go through Boston, and I find an Indian doctor in one street, who cures everything by one herb ; and a cancer doctor in another, who will conjure your cancer into a quart bottle, for a consideration ; and a mesmeric doctor in an- other, who will turn you inside out, and tell you how to repair all damages, for one dollar ; and in another, a spiritualist doctor ; and so on, with a crowd whose name is legion, who are obviously mere quacks, and nothing else. Shall I thence decide that all physicians are quacks, and that, since you are a physician, you are a quack also ? " 142 STREET THOUGHTS. " Hardly good logic, I should say." " As good as )^ours, in my judgment." We thought so too. Doubtless there are many professed Christians, whose lives bear melancholy witness that their professions are insincere ; but the very discrepance which there obviously is between their lives and our ideal of Christian life, should teach us that there is genuine gold, though base metal sometimes seeks to palm it- self off in its place. 143 XXXIV. TWO INCHES! We were talking with a friend on the side- walk at the narrowest part of Washington Street, where there is barely room for the passage of three vehicles abreast. Against the opposite sidewalk stood a huge and heavy-laden express- wagon, whose driver was temporarily busy in- side the adjacent premises ; thus narrowing the scant thoroughfare so much, as to make it good steersmanship to get two full-rigged craft through the channel without collision. It so happened that, simultaneously, two ponderous wains, deep- freighted with bales and boxes, for, or from, the rural districts, approached from opposite direc- tions, and adventured the passage together. It would have been " rub and go," at the best. But both drivers — the one in his anxiety to dodge the lamp-post that slenderly guarded the curb-stone on our side, and the other in his care to avoid the expressman's hubs — forgot that they had intermediate and interjacent hubs of 144 STREET THOUGHTS. their own, — protruding and ponderous affairs, by the way, — and the consequence was, that they came together in a collision that sounded like the thumping of two rocks, and that made the long rows of stout horses, to whose muscle it was due, fairly reel and stagger under it. The two drivers rose upon their foot-boards, and, — (now, thought we, for some develop- ments of human nature,) — after leaning over on both sides, to survey the aspect of affairs, turned toward each other with looks of stern defiance ; but, as if standing on dignity, neither spoke for a long half-minute. Then the redder- faced of the two burst forth ; " Well ! " "Yes!" (Dignified.) <' Get onto' that!" (Tart.) " Get out yourself ! " (Warming up.) " You did it ! " (Face redder.) " I did nH ! " (Pretty warm.) " Back out o' there ! " (Rising on tiptoe, flourishing his long whip, and putting Stentor into his tones.) "I won't!" (Mad.) " You won't, — won't you ? " (Red-face lays his whip with cracking force on his horses, and starts them, with a tremendous jerk, ap- parently in the hope of taking off his adver- sary's hubs by a sudden coup d'etat. The only result is nearly to pitch both himself and the TWO INCHES ! 145 other driver to the pavement, by the inefFectual twitch.) Here began the tug of war. Both — the one now pale, the other scarlet with rage — poured forth an awful stream of curses, flourished their lashes round each other's heads, amid the de- risive cheers of the streetful of people whom the conflict had gathered, and made a complete nuisance of themselves ; until two policemen, appearing upon the scene, jumped upon the box of the team nearest us, one of whom turned his attention to the biped beast, and the other, snatching the reins from his hands, backed the horses a few feet, and, steering them two inches nearer the curbstone, cleared the difficulty, and started the stream of travel once more. How great a matter a little fire kindleth ! If those two inches of space had been included in the original programme, how much wrath and how many curses would have been spared, and how many people hurrying to the cars, and blocked inadvertently into the melee ^ up and down, as far as the eye could see, on either side, would have been able to carry out their plans, now subverted ! Two inches ! How often that space, or less, has modified human life in its eternal, as well as temporal auspices ! A ploughshare once turned up a pot of gold, and made the ploughman a 13 146 STREET THOUGHTS. small millionnaire. In doing so, it made him, gradually, a fop, a reprobate, and a sot. Two inches aside in the course of that share might have saved him his purity, his virtue, and his heaven. 147 XXXV. "I DON'T LIKE MY MINISTER." "Well, I know one thing, — I don't like my minister, and I never shall like him. He 's so proud, he never sees me on the sidewalk. I met him twice, yesterday, and he walked by, with head np, so grand, and took no more notice of me than if I were the town-pump, standing there. I don't like him, and I don't mean to I ^^ " I guess you 've told the truth, now, — where women are reputed always to write the most im- portant part of their letters, — in the postscript." " Well, should i/ou like a man who is so proud that he does n't know you, except when you are dressed in your best, and seated at church ? " " Probably he does n't see you at any other time. He is either near-sighted, and so fails to recognize you as you pass rapidly by, not very near him ; or he is absent-minded, and is think- ing about something else so intently, that, though liis glance may seem to meet yours, he is actually as unconscious of seeing you as if he were asleep or dead, with his eyes open." " I know he is n't near-sighted, because he 148 STREET THOUGHTS. does n't wear spectacles ; and if he 's thinking of something else, I don't know as that is any ex- cuse, for I think he ought to think of what he is about, and whom he is going to meet, at the time." " Not a very remunerative subject of medita- tion in these streets, where, if one in every hun- dred who pass him has any claim upon his recog- nition, it is a larger proportion than belongs to most men." "When J walk the streets, I go to see and be seen, and, accordingly, have my eyes about me. It was only this morning that, if I had n't had a sharp look far ahead, I should have met, and been obliged to recognize, that odious Mr. T , the clown. I happily foresaw his advent, and crossed over just in time to save the necessity of a street talk with a fool, or cutting him dead, which lat- ter I prefer not to do, when I can help it, as I don't exactly desire to make him an enemy." " Indeed ! You surprise me ! You sometimes meet people, then, without speaking to them, and without the excuse of absence of mind, either ; nay, with even the boast of presence of mind, as displayed in the event ! Art thou consistent, my jewel ? " " My jewel " replied, but we lost the drift of her answer in the clatter of a fire-engine, rattling by, and the juvenile rush which attended it, and swept the street. "I don't like my minister." 149 We chanced to recognize the " minister " al- luded to, however, and happen to know that, though he does not wear spectacles in public, he is yet so near-sighted as once to mistake, in the dimness of a partially lighted room, a colored servant, who was moving toward him, for his own sister ; and that he is often so absent-minded as, when specially absorbed in meditation upon some great theme of study, to forget the regular recurrence of his meals, and sometimes to need friendly admonition as to his attendance upon his own Sunday service at the appointed hour. As to pride, — though these peculiarities may some- times stiffen his manner into something which might be mistaken for hauteur^ — he is well known to his intimates as one of the gentlest and sweetest and purest and meekest of all the servants of the Most High. So little do people sometimes know, when they think they know so much ! and so sadly and in- juriously do they often mistake, when making up hasty judgments from insufficient data ! Would some power " the giftie gi'e us," not only to " see oursels as ithers see us," but to look upon others and judge them as we would wish them to look on us and judge us, not merely many "airs in dress and gait" would leave us, but many unkind surmises would be put at rest for ever in our breasts ! 13* 150 XXXVI. TOO LATE! It is curious how one, who is in the streets every day, gets to associate certain faces and forms with the thoroughfares. He never reasons it out to the conclusion that they really live and move and have their being wholly in the streets, but as he always meets them there, and never meets them anywhere else, he slides into the silent association of them with the pave. They suggest it, as their habitat, just as the lineaments of a friend, at whose hospitable board one has often sat, suggest the interior of his pleasant home. One would be almost surprised to go into a house, and recognize there one of these street faces. Among the many whom we have grown thus to identify with this kind of out-door life, is one who has often excited our curiosity. Tall, gaunt, thin-faced, and steel-spectacled, he strides along with an utter contempt of all the proprie- ties of locomotion. His hair flies rebellious from TOO LATE FOR THE CARS.! TOO LATE ! ! 151 under liis hat that leans awry, his coat-collar is often turned in behind, as if he had forgotten to adjust himself after his attempt to put on his Raglan; his pantaloons seem self-repelled from his boots; his boots sometimes look as if they were the remnant of two pairs, differing in age and form, and his whole appearance is that of a man who dressed himself at high pressure, under great anxiety of mind, and without the friendly aid of a mirror. Moreover, he is always at fever-heat about something. He hurries along as if he had only five minutes in which to go a mile, and life and death depended upon his getting there. We have sometimes seen him — and we have seen apple-women, small boys, and heedless window- starers, who have felt him — in a full run. We understood him better than ever before, when, the other day, business led us to one of the railway stations, and, as we were standing at the window of the ticket-office making some inquiries of the clerk, in rushed this man, in a state of unusual frenzy of appearance, and, thrusting a bank-bill in the clerk's face, demanded a ticket to B ." " Last train gone, Sir," politely responded the clerk, pushing back the note. " 'T is n't possible ! B , B , Sir, — give me a ticket to B , on important business. I shall lose the best chance I ever had in my life, if I am not there in an hour." 152 STREET THOUGHTS. " I said, Sir, that the last train to B has gone for to-day." " Can't be possible." " Been gone exactly eight minutes," said the clerk, looking toward the large clock which regu- lates the api^lication of the time-table of the road. " I tell you that it can't be possible that the train I want to go in is gone. Why, Sir, 't will ruin me if I ain't there in one hour ! " " Yery sorry. Sir, but you should have been here sooner. The train started exactly on time." " But it is advertised to start at four o'clock, and I am sure I started in season, and I run all the way, — and I must go, ■ — I tell you I must go. 'T will be the ruination of me if I don't go " ; — and, pushing forward the dollar, he held out his hand for the ticket, as if its possession would create a special train for his immediate accom- modation. '' Don't be a fool. Sir," said the clerk, losing, a little, his patience ; " I can't sell you a ticket to B to-night. If it was so necessary for you to go, you should have started earlier." " Do you mean to say. Sir, that you refuse to sell me a ticket to B ? By what authority, permit me to inquire, do you refuse to accom- modate the public ? Sir, I will see the Presi- dent of this road, and represent your conduct in its proper light." " All I ask, Sir, — and while you are about it, TOO LATE ! It53 you had better ' represent ' your own," — gruffly answered the clerk, closing the window and shut- ting himself into his den. The man turned away in great excitement ; whether for the President's office or not, we can't say. How many men there are who, in a less ob- vious and obstreperous manner, are always get- ting too late for something ! through miscalcula- tion, procrastination, or general laziness. They read too late at night, and get up too late in the morning, and hurry their breakfast so as to invite a fit of dyspepsia, and race off for the cars, and either miss them altogether, or gain them in a reeking sweat, which, with the plentiful air- drafts of these conveyances, brings on work for the doctor, and not unfrequently for the under- taker also. They rush through life, panting after lost time, and are never in season for any- thing but the last agony. Alas that this should be true, also, of great multitudes in regard to their eternal interests ! They put off and put off that preparation which themselves intend for immortal life, until death comes unawares upon them, — and they are " too late." Reader, how is it with you ? It was the great Master — with his heart full of infinite love — who said, ''Now is the accepted time, and the day of salvation." 154 XXXVII. SOCIAL HIGHNESS AND LOWNESS. " I TELL you, lie is n't anything ! " " Why not ? He certainly is comely, and civil, and successful in business, and in every respect appears like a gentleman." " That may be ; but his father was n't any- body, and his mother was of a low family." " What constituted the peculiar lowness of her family ? " " Why, her father was a shoemaker, — a ' cordwainer,' it used to read on his sign ; and he used to mend rips in boots, and put taps upon shoes, for a living." " Was n't he honest ? " " I dare say." " Was n't he industrious ? " " He must have been, to have left his children the sum which he is reputed to have done." " Was n't he an amiable and agreeable man ? " '' That he was. I well remember with how much pleasure I used to wait in his little box of SOCIAL HIGHNESS AND LO^VNESS. 155 a shop, while he stitched the gaps in my leathers, to listen to his amusing and instructive stories. But why do you take such an interest in the old man ?" " I am trying to find out his ' lowness.' It seems he was ' honest ' and ' industrious ' and ' amiable and agreeable,' — qualities which usu- ally give a man so7ne rank among his fellows ; and yet you say he was a low person. Was he vulgar ? " " No, he was n't vulgar ; he was quite re- fined, for a man of his opportunities ; but he was a shoemaker. Don't you understand how his ignoble calling should fix his position in society, in spite of his good, and even remarkable quali- ties ? Of course, a blacksmith, and a shoemaker, and such men, cannot be gentlemen, as mer- chants and lawyers, . '.\