Vistas of New York

BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS
AUTHOR OF
“VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN”
“OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1912

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
———
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED MARCH, 1912

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

NOTE

IN one of those romances in which Hawthorne caught the color and interpreted the atmosphere of his native New England, he declared that “destiny, it may be, the most skillful of stage managers, seldom chooses to arrange its scenes and carry forward its drama without securing the presence of at least one calm observer.” It is the character of this calm observer that the writer has imagined himself to be assuming in the dozen little sketches and stories garnered here into a volume. They are snapshots or flashlights of one or another of the shifting aspects of this huge and sprawling metropolis of ours.

In purpose and in method these episodes and these incidents of the urban panorama are closely akin to the experiments in story-telling which were gathered a few years ago into the pair of volumes entitled Vignettes of Manhattan and Outlines in Local Color. The earliest of these stories in this third volume—replevined here from another collection long out of print—was written more than a quarter of a century ago; and the latest of them first saw the light only within the past few months. To each of the dozen sketches the date of composition has been appended as evidence that it was outlined in accord with the actual fact at the time it came into being, even if the metropolitan kaleidoscope has revolved so rapidly that more than one of these studies from life now records what is already ancient history. The bob-tailed car, for example, is already a thing of the past; the hansom is fast following it into desuetude; and no longer is it the fashion for family parties to bicycle through Central Park in the afternoon.

Slight as these fleeting impressions may seem, this much at least may be claimed for them—that they are the result of an honest effort to catch and to fix a vision of this mighty city in which the writer has dwelt now for more than half a century.

B. M.

February 21, 1912.

I

NEW YORK, Sept. 7, 1894.

I came here all right last night, and this morning I went down to the store with your father’s letter. It’s an immense big building Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle keep store in. Mr. Kiddle was busy when I asked for him, but he saw me at last and he said anybody recommended by your father was sure to be just the sort of clerk they wanted. So he turned me over to one of his assistants and he set me to work at once. As I’ve come from the country, he said, and know what country people want, he’s put me in the department where the storekeepers get their supplies. It isn’t easy to get the hang of the work, there’s so much noise and confusion; but when we quit at six o’clock he said he thought I’d do. When night came I was most beat out, I don’t mind telling you. It was the noise mostly, I think. I’ve never minded noise before, but here it is all around you all the time and you can’t get away from it. Nights it isn’t so bad, but it’s bad enough even then. And there isn’t a let-up all day. It seems as though it kept getting worse and worse; and at one time I thought there was a storm coming or something had happened. But it wasn’t anything but the regular roar they have here every day, and none of the New-Yorkers noticed it, so I suppose I shall get wonted to it sooner or later.

The crowd is 'most as bad as the noise. Of course, I wasn’t green enough to think that there must be a circus in town, but I came near it. Even on the side streets here there’s as many people all day long as there is in Auburnvale on Main Street when the parade starts—and more, too. And they say it is just the same every day—and even at night it don’t thin out much. At supper this evening I saw a piece in the paper saying that summer was nearly over and people would soon be coming back to town. I don’t know where the town is going to put them, if they do come, for it seems to me about as full now as it will hold. How they can spend so much time in the street, too, that puzzles me. My feet were tired out before I had been down-town an hour. Life is harder in the city than it is in the country, I see that already. I guess it uses up men pretty quick, and I’m glad I’m strong.

But then I’ve got something to keep me up to the mark; I’ve got a little girl up in Auburnvale who is waiting for me to make my way. If I needed to be hearted up, that would do it. I’ve only got to shut my eyes tight and I can see you as you stood by the door of the school-house yesterday as the cars went by. I can see you standing there, so graceful and delicate, waving your hand to me and making believe you weren’t crying. I know, you are ever so much too good for me; but I know, too, that if hard work will deserve you, I shall put in that, anyhow.

It is getting late now and I must go out and post this. I wish I could fold you in my arms again as I did night before last. But it won’t be long before I’ll come back to Auburnvale and carry you away with me.

Your own
JACK.

II

NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 1894.

DEAREST MIRIAM,—I would have written two or three days ago, but when I’ve had supper I’m too tired to think even. It isn’t the work at the store, either. I’m getting on all right there, and I see how I can make myself useful already. I haven’t been living in Auburnvale all these years with my eyes shut, and I’ve got an idea or two that I’m going to turn to account. No, it’s just the city itself that’s so tiring. It’s the tramp, tramp, tramp of the people all the time, day and night, never stopping. And they are all so busy always. They go tearing through the streets with their faces set, just as if they didn’t know anybody. And sometimes their mouths are working, as if they were thinking aloud. They don’t waste any time; they are everlastingly doing something. For instance, I’ve an hour’s nooning; and I go out and get my dinner in a little eating-house near the rear of our store—ten cents for a plate of roast beef; pretty thin the cut is, but the flavor is all right. Well, they read papers while they are having their dinner. They read papers in the cars coming down in the morning, and they read papers in the cars going up at night. They don’t seem to take any rest. Sometimes I don’t believe they sleep nights. And if they do, I don’t see how they can help walking in their sleep.

I couldn’t sleep myself first off, but I’m getting to now. It was the pressure of the place, the bigness of it, and the roar all round me. I’d wake up with a start, and, tired as I was, sometimes I wouldn’t get to sleep again for half an hour.

I’ve given up the place I boarded when I first come and I’ve got a room all to myself in a side street just off Fourth Avenue, between Union Square and the depot. It’s a little bit of a house, only fifteen feet wide, I guess. It’s two stories and a half, and I’ve got what they call the front hall-bedroom on the top floor. It’s teeny, but it’s clean and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet, too. The lady who keeps the house is a widow. Her husband was killed in the war, at Gettysburg, and she’s got a pension. She’s only one daughter and no son, so she takes three of us young fellows to board. And I think I’m going to like it.

Of course, I don’t want to spend any more than I have to, for I’ve got to have some money saved up if I ever expect to do anything for myself. And the sooner I can get started the sooner I can come back and carry away Miriam Chace—Miriam Forthright, as she will be then.

It seems a long way off, sometimes, and I don’t know that it wouldn’t be better to give up the idea of ever being very rich. Then we could be married just as soon as I get a raise, which I’m hoping for by New Year’s, if I can show them that I am worth it. But I’d like to be rich for your sake, Miriam—very rich, so that you could have everything you want, and more too!

Your loving
JACK.

III

NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 1894.

MY DEAR MIRIAM,—I’m glad you don’t want me to give up before I get to the top. I can’t see why I shouldn’t succeed just as well as anybody else. You needn’t think I’m weakening, either. I guess I was longing for you when I wrote that about being satisfied with what I’ll have if I get my raise.

But what do you want to know about the people in this house for? The landlady’s name is Janeway, and she’s sixty or seventy, I don’t know which. As for the daughter you’re so curious about, I don’t see her much. Her name’s Sally—at least that’s what her mother calls her. And I guess she’s forty if she’s a day. She don’t pretty much, either. Her hair is sort of sandy, and I don’t know what color eyes she has. I never knew you to take such an interest in folks before.

You ask me how I like the people here—I suppose you mean the New-Yorkers generally. Well, I guess I shall get to like them in time. They ain’t as stuck up as you’d think. That sassy way of theirs don’t mean anything half the time. They just mind their own business and they haven’t got time for anything else. They don’t worry their heads about anybody. If you can keep up with the procession, that’s all right; and they’re glad to see you. If you drop out or get run over, that’s all right, too; and they don’t think of you again.

That’s one thing I’ve found out already. A man’s let alone in a big city—ever so much more than he is in a village. There isn’t anybody watching him here; and his neighbors don’t know whether it’s baker’s bread his wife buys or what. Fact is, in a big city a man hasn’t any neighbors. He knows the boys in the store, but he don’t know the man who lives next door. That’s an extraordinary thing to say, isn’t it? I’ve been in this house here for a fortnight and I don’t even know the names of the folks living opposite. I don’t know them by sight, and they don’t know me. The man who sleeps in the next house on the other side of the wall from me—he’s got a bad cold, for I can hear him cough, but that’s all I know about him. And he don’t know me, either. We may be getting our dinners together every day down-town and we’ll never find out except by accident that we sleep side by side with only a brick or two between us. It’s thinking of things like that that comes pretty near making me feel lonely sometimes; and I won’t deny that there’s many a night when I’ve wished I had only to go down street to see the welcome light of your father’s lamp—and to find Somebody Else who was glad to see me, even if she did sometimes fire up and make it hot for me just because I’d been polite to some other girl.

If you were only here you’d have such lots of sharp things to say about the sights, for there’s always something going on here. Broadway beats the circus hollow. New York itself is the Greatest Show on Earth. You’d admire to see the men, all handsomed up, just as if they were going to meeting; and you’d find lots of remarks to pass about the women, dressed up like summer boarders all the time. And, of course, they are summer boarders really—New York is where the summer boarders come from. When they are up in Auburnvale they call us the Natives—down here they call us Jays. Every now and then on the street here I come across some face I seem to recognize, and when I trace it up I find it’s some summer boarder that’s been up in Auburnvale. Yesterday, for instance, in the car I sat opposite a girl I’d seen somewhere—a tall, handsome girl with rich golden hair. Well, I believe it was that Miss Stanwood that boarded at Taylor’s last June—you know, the one you used to call the Gilt-Edged Girl.

But the people here don’t faze me any more. I’m going in strong; and I guess I’ll come out on top one of these fine days. And then I’ll come back to Auburnvale and I’ll meet a brown-haired girl with dark-brown eyes—and I’ll meet her in church and her father will marry us! Then we’ll go away in the parlor-car to be New-Yorkers for the rest of our lives and to leave the Natives way behind us.

I don’t know but it’s thinking of that little girl with the dark-brown eyes that makes me lonelier sometimes. Here’s my love to her.

Your own
JACK.

IV

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—You mustn’t think that I’m lonely every day. I haven’t time to be lonely generally. It’s only now and then nights that I feel as if I’d like to have somebody to talk to about old times. But I don’t understand what you mean about this Miss Stanwood. I didn’t speak to her in the car that day, and I haven’t seen her since. You forget that I don’t know her except by sight. It was you who used to tell me about the Gilt-Edged Girl, and her fine clothes and her city ways, and all that.

This last week I’ve been going to the Young Men’s Christian Association, where there’s a fine library and a big reading-room with all sorts of papers and magazines—I never knew there were so many before. It’s going to be a great convenience to me, that reading-room is, and I shall try to improve myself with the advantages I can get there. But whenever I’ve read anything in a magazine that’s at all good, then I want to talk it over with you as we used to do. You know so much more about books and history than I do, and you always make me see the fine side of things. I’m afraid my appreciation of the ideal needs to be cultivated. But you are a good-enough ideal for me; I found that out ages ago, and it didn’t take me so very long, either. You weren’t meant to teach school every winter; and it won’t be so very many winters before you will be down here in New York keeping house for a junior partner in Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle—or some firm just as big.

I can write that way to you, Miriam, but I couldn’t say anything like that down at the store. It isn’t that they’d jeer at me, though they would, of course—because most of them haven’t any ambition and just spend their money on their backs, or on the races, or anyhow. No, I haven’t the confidence these New-Yorkers have. Why, I whisper to the car conductors to let me off at the corner, and I do it as quietly as I can, for I don’t want them all looking at me. But a man who was brought up in the city, he just glances up from his paper and says “Twenty-third!” And probably nobody takes any notice of him, except the conductor. I wonder if I’ll ever be so at home here as they are.

Even the children are different here. They have the same easy confidence, as though they’d seen everything there was to see long before they were born. But they look worn, too, and restless, for all they take things so easy.

You ask if I’ve joined a church yet. Well, I haven’t. I can’t seem to make up my mind. I’ve been going twice every Sunday to hear different preachers. There’s none of them with the force of your father—none of them as powerful as he is, either in prayer or in preaching. I’m going to Dr. Thurston’s next Sunday; he’s got some of the richest men in town in his congregation.

There must be rich men in all the churches I’ve been to, for they’ve got stained-glass windows, and singers from the opera, they say, at some of them. I haven’t heard anybody sing yet whose voice is as sweet as a little girl’s I know—a little bit of a girl who plays the organ and teaches in Sunday-school—and who doesn’t know how much I love her.

JACK.

V

NEW YORK, Oct. 14, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—Yes, it is a great comfort to me always to get your bright letters, so full of hope and love and strength. You are grit, clear through, and I’m not half good enough for you. Your last letter came Saturday night; and that’s when I like to get them, for Sunday is the only day I have time to be lonely.

I go to church in the forenoon and in the evening again; in the afternoon I’ve been going up to Central Park. There’s a piece of woods there they call the Ramble, and I’ve found a seat on a cobble up over the pond. The trees are not very thrifty, but they help me to make believe I am back in Auburnvale. Sometimes I go into the big Museum there is in the Park, not a museum of curiosities, but full of pictures and statuary, ever so old some of it, and very peculiar. Then I wish for you more than ever, for that’s the sort of thing you’d be interested in and know all about.

Last Sunday night I went to Dr. Thurston’s church, and I thought of you as soon as the music began. I remember you said you did wish you were an organist in a Gothic church where they had a pipe-organ. Well, the organ at Dr. Thurston’s would just suit you, it’s so big and deep and fine. And you’d like the singing, too; it’s a quartet, and the tenor is a German who came from the Berlin opera; they say he gets three thousand dollars a year just for singing on Sunday.

But I suppose it pays them to have good voices like his, for the church was crowded; and even if some of the congregation came for the music, they had to listen to Dr. Thurston’s sermon afterward. And it was a very good sermon, indeed—almost as good as one of your father’s, practical and chockful of common sense. And Dr. Thurston isn’t afraid of talking right out in meeting, either. He was speaking of wealth and he said it had to be paid for just like anything else, and that many a man buys his fortune at too high a price, especially if he sacrifices for it either health or character. And just in front of him sat old Ezra Pierce, one of the richest men in the city—and one of the most unscrupulous, so they say. He’s worth ten or twenty millions at least; I was up in the gallery and he was in the pew just under me, so I had a good look at him. I wonder how it must feel to be as rich as all that.

And who do you suppose was in the pew just across the aisle from old Pierce? Nobody but the Gilt-Edged Girl, as you call her, that Miss Stanwood. So you see it’s a small world even in a big city, and we keep meeting the same people over and over again.

I rather think I shall go to Dr. Thurston’s regularly now. I like to belong to a church and not feel like a tramp every Sunday morning. Dr. Thurston is the most attractive preacher I’ve heard yet, and the music there is beautiful.

I don’t suppose I shall ever be as rich as old Ezra Pierce, although I don’t see why not, but if ever I am really rich I’ll have a big house, with a great big Gothic music-room, with a pipe-organ built in one end of it. I guess I could get Some One to play on it for me when I come home evenings tired out with making money down-town. I wonder if she guesses how much I love her?

JACK.

VI

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—Your account of your rehearsal of the choir was very amusing. I’m glad you are having such a good time. But then you always could make a good story out of anything. You must have had a hard job managing the choir, and smoothing them down, and making them swallow their little jealousies. I wish I had half your tact. I can sell a man a bill of goods now about as well as any of the clerks in the store; but if I could rub them down gently as you handle the soprano and the contralto, I’d be taken into the firm inside of two years.

And I never wished for your tact and your skill in handling children more than I did last Sunday. I wrote you I’d made up my mind to go to Dr. Thurston’s, and last Sunday he called for teachers for the Sunday-school. So I went up and they gave me a class of street boys, Italians, some of them, and Swedes. They’re a tough lot, and I guess that some of them are going to drop by the wayside after the Christmas tree. I had hard work to keep order, but I made them understand who was the master before I got through. All the English they know they pick up from the gutter, I should say; and yet they want books to take home. So I told them if they behaved themselves all through the hour I’d go to the library with them to pick out a book for each of them. They don’t call it a book, either—they say, “Give me a good library, please.”

And what do you suppose happened when I took them all up to the library desk? Well, I found that the librarian was the tall girl you call the Gilt-Edged. It is funny how I keep meeting her, isn’t it? I was quite confused at first; but of course she didn’t know me and she couldn’t guess that you used to make fun of her. So she was just businesslike and helped me pick out the books for the boys.

Considering the hard times, we have been doing a big business down at the store. Two or three nights a week now I’ve had to stay down till ten. We get extra for this, and I don’t mind the work. By degrees I’m getting an insight into the business. But there isn’t any short cut to a fortune that I can see. There’s lots of hard work before me and lots of waiting, too—and it’s the waiting for you I mind the most.

JACK.

VII

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—I was beginning to wonder what the matter was when I didn’t have a letter for a week and more. And now your letter has come, I don’t quite make it out. You write only a page and a half; and the most of that is taken up with asking about Miss Stanwood.

Yes, I see her Sundays, of course, and she is always very pleasant. Indeed, I can’t guess what it is that you have against her or why it is you are always picking at her. I feel sure that she doesn’t dye her hair, but I will look at the roots as you suggest and see if it’s the same color there. Her name is Hester—I’ve seen her write it in the library cards. Her father is very rich, they say—at least he’s president of a railroad somewhere down South.

She strikes me as a sensible girl, and I think you would like her if you knew her. She has helped me to get the right kind of books into the hands of the little Italians and other foreigners I have to teach. Most Sunday-school books are very mushy, I think, and I don’t believe it’s a healthy moral when the good boy dies young. Miss Stanwood says that sometimes when one of my scholars takes home a book it is read by every member of the family who knows how to read, and they all talk it over. So it’s very important to give them books that will help to make good Americans of them. She got her father to buy a lot of copies of lives of Washington and Franklin and Lincoln. They are not specially religious, these books, but what of it? Miss Stanwood says she thinks we must all try first of all to make men of these rough boys, to make them manly, and then they’ll be worthy to be Christians. She is thinking not only of the boys themselves, but of the parents too, and of the rest of the family; and she says that a little leaven of patriotism suggested by one of these books may work wonders. But you are quite right in saying that I’m not as lonely as I was a month ago. Of course not, for I’m getting used to the bigness of the place and the noise no longer wears on me. Besides, I’ve found out that the New-Yorkers are perfectly willing to be friendly. They’ll meet you half-way always, not only in the church, but even down-town, too. I ain’t afraid of them any more, and I can tell a conductor to let me out at the corner now without wishing to go through the floor of the car. Fact is, I’ve found out how little importance I am. Up at Auburnvale people knew me; I was old John Forthright’s only son; I was an individual. Here in New York I am nobody at all, and everybody is perfectly willing to let me alone. I think I like it better here; and before I get through I’ll force these New-Yorkers to know me when they see me in the street—just as they touch each other now and whisper when they pass old Ezra Pierce.

Write soon and tell me there’s nothing the matter with you. I’m all right and I’d send you my love—but you got it all already.

JACK.

VIII

NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—I asked you to write me soon, and yet you’ve kept me waiting ten days again. Even now your letter has come I can’t seem to get any satisfaction out of it. I have never known you to write so stiffly. Is there anything the matter? Are you worried at home? Is your mother sick or your father?

I wish I could get away for a week at Thanksgiving to run up and see you. But we are kept pretty busy at the store. There isn’t one of the firm hasn’t got his nose down to the grindstone, and that’s where they keep ours. That’s how they’ve made their money; it’s all good training for me, of course.

All the same I’d like to be with you this Thanksgiving, even if it isn’t as beautiful a day as last Thanksgiving was. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a dinner as I did your mother’s that night, but I guess it wasn’t the turkey I liked so much or the pumpkin pie, but the welcome I got and the sight of the girl who sat opposite to me and who wouldn’t tell me what she had wished for when we pulled the wishbone. I think it was only that morning in church when I looked across and saw you at the organ that I found out I had been in love with you for a long while. You were so graceful, as you sat there and the sunlight came down on your beautiful brown hair, that I wanted to get up and go over on the spot and tell you I loved you. Then at dinner your fiery eyes seemed to burn right into me, and I wondered if you could see into my heart that was just full of love of you.

It is curious, isn’t it, that I didn’t get a chance to tell you all these things for nearly six months? I don’t know how it was, but first one thing and then another made me put off asking you. I was afraid, too. I dreaded to have you say you didn’t care for me. And you were always so independent with me. I couldn’t guess what your real feelings were. Then came that day in June when I mustered up courage at last! Since then I’ve been a different man—a better man, I hope, too.

But I don’t know why I should write you this way in answer to a letter of yours that was too short almost to be worth the postage!

JACK.

IX

NEW YORK, Dec. 2, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—You don’t know how much good it did me to get your long letter last week. You wrote just like your old self—just like the dear little girl you are! I was beginning to wonder what had come over you. I thought you had changed somehow, and I couldn’t understand it.

Of course, I wished I was in Auburnvale on Thanksgiving. I’d like to have seen you sitting in the seats and singing with your whole soul; and I’d have liked to hear your father preach one of his real inspiring sermons that lift up the heart of man.

To be all alone here in New York was desolate—and then it rained all the afternoon, too. It didn’t seem a bit like a real Thanksgiving.

I went to church, of course, but I didn’t think Dr. Thurston rose to the occasion. He didn’t tell us the reasons why we ought to be grateful as strongly as your father did last year.

Coming out of church it had just begun to rain, and so there was a crowd around the doors. As I was just at the foot of the stairs I tripped over Miss Stanwood’s dress. I tell you it made me uncomfortable when I heard it tear. But these New York girls have the pleasantest manners. She didn’t even frown. She smiled and introduced me to her father, who seemed like a nice old gentleman. He was very friendly, too, and we stood there chatting for quite a while until the crowd thinned out.

He said that if I really wanted to understand some of the Sunday-school lessons I ought to go to the Holy Land, since there are lots of things there that haven’t changed in two thousand years. He’s been there and so has his daughter. He brought back ever so many photographs, and he’s asked me to drop in some evening and look at them, as it may help me in making the boys see things clearly. It was very kind of him, wasn’t it? I think I shall go up some night next week.

I’ve been here nearly three months now, and Mr. Stanwood’s will be the first private house I shall have been to—and in Auburnvale I knew everybody and every door was open to me. I feel it will be a real privilege to see what the house of a rich man like Mr. Stanwood is like. I’ll write you all about it.

And some day I’ll buy you a house just as fine as his. That some day seems a long way off, sometimes, don’t it?

JACK.

X

NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—You have never before answered so promptly, and so I write back the very day I get your letter.

I begin by saying I don’t understand it—or at least I don’t want to understand it. You ask me not to accept Mr. Stanwood’s invitation. Now that’s perfectly ridiculous, and you know it is. Why shouldn’t I go to Mr. Stanwood’s house if he asks me? He’s a rich man, and very influential, and has lots of friends. He’s just the kind of man it’s very useful for me to know. You ought to be able to see that. I’ve got to take advantage of every chance I get. If I ever start in business for myself, it will be very helpful if I could find a man like Mr. Stanwood who might be willing to put in money as a special partner.

Fact is, I’m afraid you are jealous. That’s what I don’t like to think. But it seems to me I can see in your letter just the kind of temper you were in last Fourth of July when I happened to get in conversation with Kitty Parsons. Your eyes flashed then and there was a burning red spot on your cheeks, and I thought I’d never seen you look so pretty. But I knew you hadn’t any right to be mad clear through. And you were then, as you are now. I hadn’t done anything wrong then, and I’m not going to do anything wrong now. Jealousy is absurd, anyhow, and it’s doubly absurd in this case! You know how much I love you—or you ought to know it. And you ought to know that a rich man like Mr. Stanwood isn’t going to ask a clerk in Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle’s up to his house just on purpose to catch a husband for his daughter.

I guess I’ve got a pretty good opinion of myself. You told me once I was dreadfully stuck up—it was the same Fourth of July you said it, too. But I’m not conceited enough to think that a New York girl like Miss Stanwood would ever look at me. I don’t trot in her class. And a railroad president isn’t so hard up for a son-in-law that he has to pick one up on the church steps. So you needn’t be alarmed about me.

But if it worries you I’ll go some night this week and get it over. Then I’ll write you all about it. I guess there’s lots of things in Mr. Stanwood’s house you would like to see.

So sit down and write me a nice letter soon, and get over this jealousy as quick as you can. It isn’t worthy of the little girl I love so much.

Your only
JACK.

XI

NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—I haven’t had a line from you since I wrote you last, but according to promise I write at once to tell you about my visit to the Stanwoods.

I went there last night. They live on the top of Murray Hill, just off Madison Avenue. It’s a fine house, what they call a four-story, high-stooped, brownstone mansion. The door was opened by a man in a swallow-tail coat, and he showed me into the sitting-room, saying they hadn’t quite finished dinner yet—and it was almost eight o’clock! That shows you how different things are here in New York, don’t it? The sitting-room was very handsome, with satin furniture, and hand-painted pictures on the walls, and a blazing soft-coal fire. There were magazines and books on the center-table, some of them French.

In about ten minutes they came in, Mr. Stanwood and his daughter; and they begged my pardon for keeping me waiting. Then Mr. Stanwood said he was sorry but he had to attend a committee meeting at the club. Of course, I was for going, too, but he said to Hester—that’s Miss Stanwood’s name; pretty, isn’t it?—she’d show me the photographs. So he stayed a little while and made me feel at home and then he went.

He’s a widower, and his daughter keeps house for him; but I guess housekeeping’s pretty easy if you’ve got lots of money and don’t care how fast you spend it. I felt a little awkward, I don’t mind telling you, in that fine room, but Miss Stanwood never let on if she saw it, and I guess she did, for she’s pretty sharp, too. She sent for the photographs; and she gave me a wholly new idea of the Holy Land, and she told me lots of things about their travels abroad. When you called her the Gilt-Edged Girl I suppose you thought she was stiff and stuck up. But she isn’t—not a bit. She’s bright, too, and she was very funny the way she took off the people they’d met on the other side. She isn’t as good a mimic as you, perhaps, but she can be very amusing. She’s very well educated, I must say; she’s read everything and she’s been everywhere. In London two years ago she was presented to the Queen—it was the Princess of Wales, really, but she stood for the Queen—and she isn’t set up about it either.

So I had an enjoyable evening in spite of my being so uncomfortable; and when Mr. Stanwood came back and I got up to go, he asked me to come again.

Now I’ve told you everything, as I said I would, so that you can judge for yourself how fortunate in having made friends in a house like Mr. Stanwood’s. You can’t help seeing that, I’m sure.

JACK.

XII

NEW YORK, Dec. 18, 1894.

MY DEAR MIRIAM,—What is the matter with you? What have I done to offend you? You keep me waiting ten days for a letter, and then when it comes it’s only four lines and it’s cold and curt; and there isn’t a word of love in it.

If it means you are getting tired of me and want to break off, say so right out, and I’ll drop everything and go up to Auburnvale on the first train and make love to you all over again and just insist on your marrying me. You needn’t think I’ve changed. Distance don’t make any difference to me. If anybody’s changed it’s you. I’m just the same. I love you as much as ever I did; more, too, I guess. Why, what would I have to look forward to in life if I didn’t have you?

Now, I simply can’t stand the way you have been treating me.

First off I thought you might be jealous, but I knew I couldn’t give you any cause for that, so I saw that wasn’t it. The only thing I can think of is that separation is a strain on you. I know it is on me, but I felt I just had to stand it. And if I could stand it when what I wanted was you, well, I guessed you could stand it when all you had to do without was me.

Now, I tell you what I’ll do, if you say so. I’ll drop everything here and give up trying. What’s the use of a fortune to me if I don’t have you to share it with me? Of course, I’d like to be rich some day, but that’s because I want you to have money and to hold your own with the best of them. Now, you just say the word and I’ll quit. I’ll throw up my job with Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle, though they are going to give me a raise at New Year’s. Mr. Smith told me yesterday. I’ll quit and I’ll go back to Auburnvale for the rest of my life. I don’t care if it is only a little country village—you live in it, and that’s enough for me. I’ll clerk in the store, if I can get the job there, or I’ll farm it, or I’ll do anything you say. Only you must tell me plainly what it is you want. What I want most in the world is you!

JACK.

XIII

NEW YORK, Jan. 1, 1895.

DEAREST MIRIAM,—That was a sweet letter you wrote me Christmas—just the kind of letter I hope you will always write.

And so you have decided that I’m to stay here and work hard and make a fortune and you will wait for me and you won’t be cold to me again. That’s the way I thought you would decide; and I guess it’s the decision that’s best for both of us.

What sets me up, too, is your saying you may be able to come down here for a little visit. Come as soon as you can. If the friend you’re going to stay with is really living up at One Hundredth Street, she’s a long way off, but that won’t prevent my getting up to see you as often as I can.

I shall like to show you the town and take you to see the interesting places. It will amuse me to watch the way you take things here. You’ll find out that Auburnvale is a pretty small place, after you’ve seen New York.

Of course, you’ll come to Dr. Thurston’s on Sunday with me. I wonder if you wouldn’t like to help in the Sunday-school library while you are in town? Mr. Stanwood’s going down to Florida to see about his railroad there, and he’s to take his daughter with him, so there’s nobody to give out books on Sunday.

But no matter about that, so long as you come soon. You know who will be waiting for you on the platform, trying to get a sight of you again after all these months.

JACK.

XIV

NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 1895.

DEAR MIRIAM,—Do be reasonable! That’s all I ask. Don’t get excited about nothing! I confess I don’t understand you at all. I’ve heard of women carrying on this way, but I thought you had more sense! You can’t think how you distress me.

After a long month in town here, when I’d seen you as often as I could and three or four times a week most always, suddenly you break out as you did yesterday after church; and then when I go to see you this evening you’ve packed up and gone home.

Now, what had I done wrong yesterday? I can’t see. After Sunday-school you were in the library and Miss Stanwood came in unexpectedly, just back from Florida. I introduced you to her, and she was very pleasant indeed. She wouldn’t have been if she’d known how you made fun of her and called her the Gilt-Edged and all that—but then she didn’t know. She was very friendly to you and said she hoped you were to be in town all winter, since Auburnvale must be so very dull. Well, it is dull, and you know it, so you needn’t have taken offense at that. Then she said the superintendent had asked her to get up a show for the Sunday-school—a sort of magic-lantern exhibition of those photographs of the Holy Land, and she wanted to know if I wouldn’t help her. Of course, I said I would, and then you said the library was very hot and wouldn’t I come out at once.

And when we got out on the street you forbid my having anything to do with the show. Now, that’s what I call unreasonable; and I’m sure you will say so, too, when you’ve had time to think it over. And why have you run away, so that I can’t talk things over with you quietly and calmly?

JACK.

XV

NEW YORK, March 3, 1895.

MY DEAR MIRIAM,—Your letter is simply absurd. You say you “don’t believe in that Miss Stanwood,” and you want me to promise never to speak to her again. Now you can’t mean that. It is too ridiculous. I confess you puzzle me more and more. I don’t pretend to understand women, but you go beyond anything I ever heard of. What you ask is unworthy of you; it’s unworthy of me. It’s more—it’s unchristian.

But I’ll do what I can to please you. Since you have taken such a violent dislike to Miss Stanwood, I’ll agree not to go to her house again—although that will be very awkward if Mr. Stanwood asks me, won’t it? However, I suppose I can trump up some excuse. I’ll agree not to go to her house, I say; but of course, I’ve got to be polite to her when I meet her in the Sunday-school—that is, unless you want me to give up the Sunday-school, too! And I’ve got to help in the show for the boys and girls. To give up now after I’ve said I would, that would make me feel as mean as pusley. Besides, that show is going to attract a great deal of attention. All the prominent people in the church are going to come to it—people you don’t know, of course, but high-steppers, all of them. It wouldn’t really be fair to back out now.

Now that’s what I’ll do. I’ll meet you half-way. Since you seem to have taken such a violent dislike to Miss Stanwood, for no reason at all that I can see—excepting jealousy, and that’s out of the question, of course—but since you don’t like her, I’ll agree not to go to her house again. But I must go on with the photographs, and I can’t help passing the time of day when I meet her on Sunday in the library.

Will that satisfy you?

JACK.

XVI

NEW YORK, March 17, 1895.

DEAR MIRIAM,—It’s two weeks now since I wrote you in answer to your letter saying you would break off our engagement unless I promised never to speak to Miss Stanwood again—and you have never sent me a line since. You seemed to think I cared for her—but I don’t. How could I care for any other girl, loving you as I do? Besides, even if I did care for her, I’d have to get over it now—since she is going to marry an officer in the navy. The wedding is set for next June, and then he takes her with him to Japan. For all you are so jealous of her, I think she is a nice girl and I hope she will be happy.

And I want to be happy, too—and I’ve been miserable ever since I got that letter of yours, so cold and so hard. I don’t see how a little bit of a girl like you can hold so much temper! But I love you in spite of it, and I don’t believe I’d really have you different if I could. So sit right down as soon as you get this and write me a good long letter, forgiving me for all I haven’t done and saying you still love me a little bit. You do, don’t you, Miriam? And if you do what’s the use of our waiting ever so long? Why shouldn’t we be married in June, too?

I’m getting on splendidly in the store and guess I’ll get another raise soon; and even now I have enough for two, if you are willing to start in with a little flat somewhere up in Harlem. We’d have to try light housekeeping at first, maybe, and perhaps table-board somewhere. But I don’t care what I eat or where I eat if only I can have you sitting at the table with me. Say you will, Miriam dear, say you will! There’s no use in our putting it off and putting it off till we’ve both got gray hair, is there?

JACK.

XVII

NEW YORK, March 19, 1895.

DEAREST MIRIAM,—You don’t know how happy your letter has made me. I felt sure you would get over your tantrums sooner or later. Now you are my own little girl again, and soon you’ll be my own little wife!

But why must we put it off till June? The store closes on Decoration Day, you know, and I guess I can get the firm to let me have a day or two. So make it May 30th, won’t you?—and perhaps we can take that trip to Niagara as you said you’d like to.

JACK.

(1895)

It was a depressing day, and yet there was no relaxation of energy in the men who were darting here and there eagerly, each intent on his errand, with eyes fixed on the goal and with lips set in stern determination. As Curtis Van Dyne thrust himself through the throng on the Broadway sidewalk, leaving the frowning Post-office behind him, and passing before the blithe effigy of Nathan Hale, he almost laughed aloud as it suddenly struck him how incongruous it was that a statue of a man who had gladly died for his country should be stuck there between two buildings filled with men who were looking to their country, to the nation or to the city, to provide them with a living. But he was in no mood for laughter, even saturnine; and if anything could have aroused his satire, it would have been not a graven image, but himself.

He was in the habit of having a good opinion of himself, and he clung to his habits, especially to this one. Yet he was then divided between self-pity and self-contempt. For a good reason, so it seemed to him—and he was pleased to be able to think that it was an unselfish reason—he was going to take a step he did not quite approve of. He went all over the terms of the situation again as he turned from Broadway toward the City Hall; and the pressure of circumstances as he saw them brought him again to the same conclusion. Then he resolved not to let himself be worried by his own decision; if it was for the best, then there was no sense in not making the best of it.

So intent was he on his own thought that he did not observe the expectant smile of an older man who was walking across the park in front of the City Hall, and who slackened his gait, supposing that the young lawyer would greet him.

When Van Dyne passed on unseeing, the other man waited for a second and then called, “Curtis!”

The young man had already begun to mount the steps. He turned sharply, as though any conversation would then be unwelcome, but when he saw who had hailed him he smiled cheerfully and held out his hand cordially.

“Why, Judge,” he began, “I didn’t know you were home again! I’m glad you are better. They told me you might have to go away for the rest of the winter.”

“That’s what they told me, too,” answered Judge Jerningham; “and I told them I wouldn’t go. I’m paid for doing my work here, and I don’t intend to shirk it. I expect to take my seat again next week.”

There was a striking contrast between the two men as they stood there on the steps of the City Hall. Judge Jerningham was nearly sixty; he had a stalwart frame, almost to be called stocky; his black hair was grizzled only, and his full beard was only streaked with white. He had large, dark eyes, deep-set under cavernous brows. His clothes fitted him loosely, and, although not exactly out of style, they were not to be called modish in either cut or material. Curtis Van Dyne was full thirty years younger; he was fair and slight, and he wore a drooping mustache. He was dressed with obvious care, and his garments suited him. He looked rather like a man of fashion than like a young fellow who had his way to make at the bar.

“By the way,” said the Judge, after a little pause, which gave Van Dyne time to wonder why it was that the elder man had called him—“by the way, how is your sister? I saw her in church on Sunday, and she looked a little pale and peaked, I thought.”

“Oh, Martha’s all right,” the young man answered, briskly. “Aunt Mary attends to that.”

“Do you know what struck me on Sunday as I looked at Martha?” asked the Judge. “It was her likeness to her mother at the same age.”

“Yes,” Van Dyne replied, “Aunt Mary says Martha’s very like mother as a girl.”

“And your mother was never very hearty,” pursued the Judge. “Don’t you think it might be well to get the girl out of town for a little while next month? March is very hard on those whose bronchial tubes are weakened.”

“I guess Martha can stand another March in New York,” the young man responded. “She’s all right enough. I don’t say it wouldn’t be good for her to go South for a few weeks, but—Well, you know I can’t telephone for my steam-yacht to be brought round to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and I don’t own any stock in Jekyll Island.”

The Judge made no immediate answer, and again there was an awkward silence.

The younger man broke it. He held out his hand once more. “It’s pleasant to see you looking so fit,” he said, cordially.

The other took his hand and held it. “Curtis,” he began, “it isn’t any of my business, I suppose, and yet I don’t know. Who is to speak if I don’t?”

“Speak about what?” asked Van Dyne, as the Judge released his hand.

The elder man did not answer this question. Apparently he found it difficult to say what he wished.

“I happened to see a paragraph in the political gossip in the Dial this morning,” he began again; “I don’t often read that sort of stuff, but your name caught my eye. It said that the organization was enlisting recruits from society as an answer to the slanderous attacks that had been made on it, and that people could see how much there was in these malignant assaults when they found the better element eager to be enrolled. And then it gave half a dozen names of men who had just joined, including yours and Jimmy Suydam’s. I suppose there is no truth in it?”

“It’s about as near to the truth as a newspaper ever gets, I fancy,” Van Dyne answered. His color had risen a little, and his speech had become a little more precise. “I haven’t joined yet, but I’m going to join this week. Pat McCann is to take us in hand, Jimmy and me; he’s our district leader.”

“Pat McCann!” and the Judge spoke the name with horrified contempt.

“Yes,” responded the young man. “Pat McCann has taken quite a shine to Jimmy and me. He gives us the glad hand and never the marble heart.”

“It’s no matter about Suydam,” said the Judge, with an impatient gesture; “he’s a foolish young fellow and he doesn’t know any better. I suppose he expects to be a colonel on the staff of the first governor they elect. But you—”

It was with a hint of bravado that Van Dyne returned: “I don’t see that I’m any better than Jimmy. He hasn’t committed any crime that I know of—except the deadly sin of inheriting a fortune. And as far as that goes, I wish old man Suydam had adopted me and divided his money between us. Then I could have that steam-yacht and take Martha down to Jekyll Island next month.”

The Judge hesitated again, and then he said: “Curtis, I suppose you think I have no right to speak to you about this, and perhaps I haven’t. But I have known you since you were born, and I went to school with your father. We were classmates in college, and I was his best man when he married your mother. You know his record in the war, and you are proud of it, of course. He left you—you will excuse my putting it plainly?—he left you an honorable name.”

“And that was about all he did leave me!” the young man returned. “I want to leave my children something more.”

“If you join the organization, if you are a hail-fellow-well-met with all the Pat McCanns of the city,” retorted the Judge, sternly—“if you sink to that level, you would certainly leave your children something very different from what your father left you. If you do, I doubt whether the organization will go out of its way to offer inducements to your son. It will expect to get him cheap.”

The young lawyer flushed again, and then he laughed uneasily.

“You are hard on me, Judge,” he said at last.

“I want you to be hard on yourself now,” the older man returned. “I know you, Curtis; I know the stock you come of, and I am sure you will be hard enough on yourself—when it is too late.”

“I’m not going to rob a bank, am I?” urged the younger man.

“You are going to rob yourself,” was the swift answer. “You are going to rob your children, if you ever have any, of what your father left you—the priceless heritage of an honored name.”

“Come, now, Judge,” said Van Dyne, “is that quite fair? You speak as if I were going to enroll in the Forty Thieves.”

“If I thought you capable of doing that I should not be speaking to you at all,” was the reply.

“Pat McCann isn’t a bad fellow really,” the young man declared. “He means well enough. And the rest of them are not rascals, either; they are not the crew of pirates the papers call them. They are giving the city as good a government now as our mixed population will stand. They have their ambition to do right; and I sincerely believe that they mean to do the best they know how.”

“That’s it precisely,” the Judge asserted. “They mean to do the best they know how. But how much do they know?”

“Well, they are not exactly fools, are they?” was the evasive answer.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” the elder man continued. “I am perfectly aware that the organization is not so black as it is painted. The men at the head of it are not a crew of pirates, as you say—of course not; if they were they would have been made to walk the plank long ago. Probably they mean well, as you say again. I should be sorry to believe that they do not.”

“Well, then—” returned Van Dyne.

But the Judge went on, regardless of what the young lawyer was going to say:

“They may mean well, but what of it if the result is what we see? The fact is that the men at the head of the organization are of an arrested type of civilization. They are two or three hundred years behind the age. They have retained the methods—perhaps not of Claude Duval, as their enemies allege, but of Sir Robert Walpole, as their friends could not deny. Here in America to-day they are anachronisms. They stand athwart our advance. I have no wish to call them names or to think them worse than they are; but I know that association with them is not good for you or for me. It is our duty—your duty and mine, and the duty of all who have a little enlightenment—to arouse the public against these survivals of a lower stage, and to fight them incessantly, and now and then to beat them, so that they may be made to respect our views. You say they are giving the city as good a government as our mixed population will stand. Well, that may be true; I don’t think it is quite true; but even if it is, what of it? Are we to be satisfied with that? The best way to educate our mixed population to stand a better government is to fight these fellows steadily. Nothing educates them more than an election, followed by an object lesson.”

“That’s all very well,” responded Van Dyne, when the Judge had made an end of his long speech. “But I don’t believe the organization leaders are really so far behind other people, or so much worse. They’re not hypocrites, that’s all. They know what they want, and they take it the easiest way they can.”

“If that is the best defense you can make for them, they are worse than I thought,” retorted the Judge. “Sometimes the easiest way to take what you want is to steal it.”

“I don’t claim that they are perfect, all of them,” the younger man declared. “I suppose they are all sorts—good, bad, and indifferent. But we are all miserable sinners, you know—at least we say so every Sunday. And I have known bad men in the church.”

“Come, come, Curtis,” the Judge replied, “that’s unworthy of you, isn’t it? You would not be apologizing to me for joining the church, would you?”

Van Dyne was about to answer hastily, but he checked the words on his lips. He looked away and across the frozen park to the pushing crowd on Broadway; but he did not really see the huge wagons rumbling in and out of Mail Street, nor did he hear the insistent clang of the cable-car.

His tone was deprecatory when he spoke at last.

“I suppose you are right,” he began, “and I don’t quite see myself in that company. I’ll be frank, Judge, for you are an old friend, and I know you wish me well, and I’d be glad to stand well in your eyes. I don’t really want to join the organization; I don’t like the men in it any more than you do; and I don’t know that I approve of their ways much more than you do. But I’ve got to do it.”

“Got to?” echoed the Judge, in surprise. “Why have you got to? They can’t force you to join if you don’t wish it.”

“I’ve got to do it because I’ve got to have money,” was the young man’s explanation.

“Do you mean that you are to be paid for associating with these people?” the Judge asked.

“That’s about it,” was the answer. “I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t going to make something out of it, would I? Not that there is any bargain, of course; but Pat McCann has dropped hints, and I know how easy it will be for them to throw things my way.”

“I didn’t know you needed money so badly,” said the Judge. “I thought you were doing well at the bar.”

“I’m doing well enough, I suppose,” Van Dyne explained; “but I could do better. In fact, I must do better. I must have money. There’s—well, there’s Martha. She came out last fall, and I gave her a coming-out tea, of course. Well, I want her to have a good time. Mother had a good time when she was a girl, and why shouldn’t Martha? She won’t be nineteen again.”

“Yes,” said the Judge, “your mother had a good time when she was a girl. Your father and I saw to that.”

“Martha’s just got her first invitation to the Assembly,” Van Dyne went on. “You should have seen how delighted she was, too; it did me good to see it. Mrs. Jimmy Suydam sent it to her. But all that will cost money; of course, she’s got to have a new gown and gloves and flowers and a carriage and so on. I don’t begrudge it to her. I’m only too glad to give it to her. But I’m in debt now for that coming-out tea and for other things. I ran behind last year, and this year I shall spend more. That’s why I’ve got to join the organization and pick up a reference now and then, and maybe a receivership by and by; and perhaps they’ll elect me to an office, sooner or later. I know I’m too young yet, but I’d like to be a judge, too.”

“So it is for your sister you are selling yourself, is it?” asked the elder man. “Do you think she would be willing if she knew?”

“I’m not selling myself!” declared the young man, laughing a little nervously. “I haven’t signed any compact with my own blood amid a blaze of red fire.”

“Do you think your sister would approve if she knew?” persisted the Judge.

“Oh, but she won’t know!” was the answer. “I’ll admit she wouldn’t like it overmuch. She takes after father, and she has very strict ideas. You ought to hear her talk about the corruption of our politics!”

“Curtis,” said the Judge, earnestly, “if you take after your father, you ought to be able to look things in the face. That’s what I want you to do now. Have you any right to sacrifice yourself for your sister’s sake in a way she would not like?”

“I’m not sacrificing myself at all,” the young man declared. “I want some of the good things of life for myself. Besides, what do girls know about politics? They are always dreamy and impracticable. If they had their noses down to the grindstone of life for a little while it would sharpen their eyes, and they would see things differently.”

“It will be a sad world when women like your sister and your mother see things differently, as you put it,” the elder man retorted.

“If I want more money, I don’t admit that it is any of Martha’s business how I make it,” Van Dyne asserted. “I’ll let her have the spending of some of it—that will be her duty. I want her to have a summer in Europe, too. She knows that mother was abroad a whole year when she was eighteen.”

“I know that, too,” said the Judge. “It was in Venice that your father and I first met her; she was feeding the pigeons in front of St. Mark’s, and—”

The Judge paused a moment, and then he laid his hand on Van Dyne’s shoulder.

“Curtis,” he continued, “if a thousand dollars now will help you out, or two thousand, or even five, if you need it, I shall be glad to let you have the money.”

“Thank you, Judge,” was the prompt reply. “I can’t take your money, because I don’t know how or when I could pay you back.”

“What matter about that?” returned the other. “I have nobody to leave it to.”

“You were my father’s friend and my mother’s,” said Van Dyne. “I would take money from you if I could take it from anybody. But I can’t do that. You wouldn’t in my place, would you?”

The Judge did not answer this directly. “It is not easy to say what we should do if one were to stand in the other’s place,” he declared. “And if you change your mind, the money is ready for you whenever you want it.”

“You are very good to me, Judge,” said the young man, “and I appreciate your kindness—”

“Then don’t say anything more about it,” the elder man interrupted. “And you must forgive me for my plain speaking about that other matter.”

“About my joining the organization?” said Van Dyne. “Well, I’ll think over what you have said. I don’t want you to believe that I don’t understand the kindness that prompted you to say what you did. I haven’t really decided absolutely what I had best do.”

“It is a decision you must make for yourself, after all,” the Judge declared. “I will not urge you further.”

He held out his hand once more, and the young man grasped it heartily.

“Perhaps you and Martha and ‘Aunt Mary’ could come and dine with me some night next week,” the Judge suggested. “I should like to hear about your sister’s first experience in society.”

“Of course we will all come, with pleasure,” said Van Dyne.

As the elder man walked away, the younger followed him with his eyes. Then he turned and went up the steps of the City Hall.

Almost at the top of the flight stood two men, who parted company as Van Dyne drew near. One of them waited for him to come up. The other started down, smiling at the young lawyer as they met, and saying: “Good morning, Mr. Van Dyne. It’s rain we’re going to have, I’m thinking.”

“Good morning, Mr. O’Donnell,” returned Van Dyne, roused from his reverie.

“There’s Mr. McCann waiting to have a word with you,” cried O’Donnell over his shoulder, as he passed.

The young lawyer looked up and saw the other man at the top of the steps. He wanted time to think over his conversation with Judge Jerningham, and he had no desire for a talk just then with the district leader. Perhaps he unconsciously revealed this feeling in the coolness with which he returned the other’s greeting, courteous as he always was, especially toward those whom he did not consider his equal.

“It’s glad I am to see you, Mr. Van Dyne,” said the politician, patting the young man on the shoulder as they shook hands.

Van Dyne drew back instinctively. Never before had Pat McCann’s high hat seemed so very shiny to him, or Pat McCann’s fur overcoat so very furry. The big diamond in Pat McCann’s shirt-front was concealed by the tightly buttoned coat; but Van Dyne knew that it was there all the same, and he detested it more than ever before.

“It’s a dark morning it is,” said McCann. “Will we take a little drop of something warm?”

“Thank you,” returned the young lawyer, somewhat stiffly; “I never drink in the morning.”

“No more do I,” declared the other; “but it’s a chill day this is. Well, and when are you coming round to see the boys? Terry O’Donnell and me, we was just talking about you and Mr. Suydam.”

Van Dyne did not see why it should annoy him to know that he had been the subject of conversation between Pat McCann and Terry O’Donnell, but he was instantly aware of the annoyance. If he intended to throw in his lot with these people, he must look forward to many intimacies not quite to his liking.

“Oh, you were talking about me, were you?” he said.

“We was that,” continued the district leader. “We want you to meet the boys and let them know you, don’t you see? We want you to give them the glad hand.”

When Van Dyne had used this slang phrase to the Judge, it had seemed to him amusing; now it struck him as vulgar.

“We want you to jolly them up a bit,” McCann went on. “The boys will be glad to know you better.”

“Yes,” was the monosyllabic response to this invitation.

The district leader looked at the young lawyer, and his manner changed.

“We’d like to get acquainted with you, Mr. Van Dyne,” he said, “if you’re going to be one of us.”

“If I’m going to be one of you,” Van Dyne repeated. “That’s just the question. Am I going to be one of you?”

“I thought we had settled all that last week,” cried McCann.

“I don’t think I told you that I would join you,” Van Dyne declared, wondering just how far he had committed himself at that last interview.

“You told me you thought you would,” McCann declared.

“Oh, maybe I thought so then,” Van Dyne answered.

The district leader was generally wary and tactful. Among people of his own class he was a good judge of men; and he owed his position largely to his persuasive powers. But on this occasion he made a mistake, due perhaps in some measure to his perception of the other’s assumption of superiority.

“And now you don’t think so?” he retorted, swiftly. “Is that what it is? Well, it’s for you to say, not me. I’m not begging any man to come into the organization if they don’t want. But I can’t waste my time any more on them that don’t want. It’s for you to say the word, and it’s now or never.”

“Since you put it that way, Mr. McCann,” said Van Dyne, “it’s never.”

“Then you don’t want to join the organization?” asked the district leader, a little taken aback by the other’s sudden change of determination.

“No,” Van Dyne replied, “I don’t.”

And when he was left alone on the top of the City Hall steps, the young lawyer was puzzled to know whether it was Judge Jerningham or Pat McCann that had most influenced his decision.

(1898)

The two ladies closed their umbrellas, which the west wind had made it hard for them to hold.

“I believe we are going to have a pleasant afternoon, after all,” said Mrs. Henryson. “Perhaps we had better lunch down here and get all our shopping done to-day.”

“Just as you say, mamma,” the daughter answered, a little listlessly, accustomed to accept all her mother’s sudden changes of plans.

They turned the corner and went a little way down the avenue, as the brakes of an up-town train scraped and squeaked when it stopped at the station high above their heads.

Mrs. Henryson paused to look into one of the broad windows of a gigantic store.

“Minnie,” she said, solemnly, “I don’t believe hats are going to be any smaller this summer, in spite of all they say in the papers.”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” responded her daughter, perfunctorily. She had already bought her own hat for the spring, and just then her mind was wandering far afield. She was dutifully accompanying her mother for a morning’s shopping, although she would rather have had the time to herself, so that she could think out the question that was puzzling her.

Her mother continued to peer into the window, comparing the hats with one another, and Minnie’s attention was arrested by a little girl of eight who stopped almost at her side and stamped three times on the iron cover of an opening in the sidewalk, nearly in front of the window where the two ladies were standing. After giving this signal the child drew back; and in less than a minute the covers opened wide, and then an elevator began to rise, bringing up a middle-aged man begrimed with oil and coal-dust.

“Hello, dad,” cried the child.

“Hello, kid!” he answered. “How’s mother?”

“She’s better,” the girl answered. “Not so much pain.”