University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
The Ghost of New York.

Whoever has sailed up or down the East River in a fog, or
driven to Hallet's Cove, Long Island, on a dusty day, or walked
the Third Avenue in the moonlight, has been beset by the vision
of a great white tower, rising, ghost-like, in the air, and holding
all the neighborhood in subjection to its repose and supernatural
port. The Shot-Tower is a strange old fellow, to be sure! 'Spite
of that incessant buzzing in his head, he holds himself as high
and grandly, as though he hadn't the trouble of making shot for
the six-and-twenty United States. He never dozes or nods, even
in the summer noon; nor does he fall asleep in the most crickety
nights, but winks, with that iron top of his, at all the stars, as they
come up, one by one; and outwatches them all. There he is,
gaunt and clean, as a ghost in a new shroud, every day in the
year. Build as you may, old Gotham! Hammer and ding and
trowel on all sides of him, if you choose,—you cannot stir him an
inch, nor sully the whiteness in which he sees himself clothed, in
that pure glass of his of Kipp's Bay! If you have seen him once,
you know him always. A sturdy Shot-Tower to be sure!—and
go where you will, you carry him with you. He is the Ghost of

New York, gone into the suburbs to meditate on the wickedness
of mankind, and haunt the Big City, in many a dream of war, and
gun-shot wounds, and pattering carnage, when he falls asleep.

And can you see him from the back steps of the City Hall?
Not with the naked eye: but Lankey Fogle standing there, once
on a time, had him present to him, and shook at the very thought.
He had just come down from the witness-stand, within, and was
pausing at the porch, when he was of a sudden smitten on the
shoulder, and he heard, audibly, a voice say to him:

“Meet me by the Shot-Tower, at twelve to-night!”

A voice, but nobody; for he looked about promptly, and down
the steps, and back through the Hall. No one visible; but he
knew the voice, and had a mind—yes, he was forced to have a
mind, to obey it. Lankey Fogle had the Shot-Tower in fear; but
he must go. His hat pressed close upon his eyes—eye-brow and
brim were part each of the other; a faded blue coat, out at
elbows, the broad wrists hanging over his hand; shuffling shoes;
and Lankey, a little man, withal: he descended the steps slowly,
struck across the Park, by the angle of the Rotunda, and stood on
the brow of Chatham street, towards the square. The Jews were
as thick, with their gloomy whiskers, as blackberries; the air
smelt of old coats and hats, and the side ways were glutted with
dresses and over-coats and little, fat, greasy children. There
were countrymen moving up and down the street, horribly
harassed and perplexed, and every now and then falling into the
hands of one of these fierce-whiskered Jews, carried into a gloomy
cavern, and presently sent forth again, in a garment, coat or hat
or breeches, in which he might dance and turn his partner, to-boot.

Lankey Fogle plunged down the declivity.

“A coat, sir?”

“Wont you, now, a new under-tog?”

“That 'ere hat!”

“This way, sir, we're the No Mistake!”

And as he slipped out of their hands—

“Cotton-baggin', sir, to fill out?”

“My eyes! there's holes for a ratter!”

“He'll be a wreck, I say, 'fore he reaches the square—he'll
never live past Roosevelt—my 'ord for it!”

A soft strain of the flute floated from a back-room, as his figure
passed the door, joined by a mellow, low whistle, which are, it is
supposed, integral parts of speech in the dialect of Jewry.

Lankey glided along, wrapped up in his coat and inner meditations,
for it was nearing night; but it was of a truth as much as
he was worth to get himself clear of the young barbarians who
hung upon his skirts, as he passed along, and nearly brought them
away. It was a bad case certainly, for the sun getting toward a
level, shot through and through his apparel, passing in at an
elbow and coming out at the hand; or piercing him through, from
back to breast, as he turned; till every dusty corner of Lankey
was lighted up with a sort of dim splendor.

And when he came by the theatre (the Chatham), the case was
worse than all, for he was set upon from the area of the theatre
by a swarm of fly-away boys, with—

“Lankey! which way, now?”

“I say, Lankey Fogle, where are you larking to?”

“Come in, will you? Kirby on the top round.”

“Yes, yes, he's in the big bellows to-night. We'll treat you
to a go!”

“And peanuts besides!”

“Keep off, will you, you young serpents!” And he glanced
from under his rim.

“Why, what on earth's the matter, now? Lankey in a huff!”

“Three cheers for Lankey in a huff!”

The air was cracked with a small storm of cheers, which, blowing
over, they renewed their game; but Lankey stood firm;
and when they had all run up to him with a question and a close
look in his face, and twisted him round on his heels by the arm,

he passed on, and reached the square, thinking of the old white
Shot-Tower, and the figure it would make by the time he go
there, toward the round hour of night.

He was in the elbow, turning to cross the long walk, when he
was called by name. He looked up; it was the little Franklin
Theatre, abutting the burying-ground, you know, with all its
golden letters blotted out, its balcony for the pretty actresses to
stand in razed away, its little snug box-office crushed, and the
heart and soul of it, in the shape of foot-lights and curtains, taken
out; it was a second-hand shop, when Lankey looked up at it,
and a mysterious little man standing in an upper window winked
at Lankey, and uttered in a low voice:

“All right!”

Lankey looked at him with astonishment written out on his
countenance in magnificent large text.

“I say, it's all right!”

The devil it is, thought Lankey; and looked again.

“I say, it's all right,” a third time; this time with a knock
on the crown of his hat.

Lankey smiled scornfully on the mysterious man and moved
on; he had a new motive for speed.

There was Doyer street, yet; a war-path to the west, once,
it is said, in Indian times; and if he could get past that once,
all would be well. But Doyer street is a queer street, we all
know; so crooked and gad-about and whimsical. Ten chances
to one if a man enter it at one end with his head on his shoulders
it be not turned about by the time he is fairly out at the other.
Doyer street was not born, like other streets, in the commissioner's
office, but was laid, so to speak, at the door of the square,
exposed to the tender mercies, dependant on the charities of
chance-comers (for every man is father to this disinterested little
by-way), to give it a stone or a touch of a kerb! The eye of
the druggist's red bottle was bloodshot, at the corner, for one
thing; and there was a melancholy old woman carrying in a

bunch of eels with their heads down for another! But Lankey
Fogle had a hope, and as sure as there's white light from the
moon, he cleared it at a moderate run.

When Lankey stood fairly at the mouth of the Bowery, he
looked far away up its broad path as if he could see, looming
up on its line, that ugly old Shot-Tower; that everlasting ghost
of a tower that, go where he would, was in Lankey Fogle's eye,
without an eye-stone to take it out. But he saw instead, this
time, how, moved by a patriotism out of bounds, the whole air
about this other theatre was indescribably hung with flags; a
general hanging out, there seemed to be, of all the bunting of
the country. The rope was strong; the flags were thick; and
they waved away, shutting out the sky and making a better
heaven for the East Bowery gazers to look up at and live under.

And black Vulture, that marvellous steed, how he came down
the great, black, gaping precipice, upon the bills, striking the
printer's ink from his heels, like fire! And the patriotic Putnam,
how he held on and clinched his teeth and set his hat fiercely
a-cock! The bills were huge and yellow, and the type fearfully
large; and how the ragamuffins plunged down the steps,
and the muffin-eaters rushed up! Lankey Fogle's resolution
shook within him; his feet quivered in his shoes with doubt;
and he was on the eve of throwing himself in the wake of a
chimney-sweeper down the pit-entrance, when, looking straight
before him, at the bill, his eye, in spite of itself, fell upon a portentous
“Beware!”

It was enough: he hurried on as though the devil were at his
back. And although now and then accosted by a Bowery Boy
with a rough hand, and run against in token of affectionate recognition
by a big vagabond, Lankey, all things considered, made
good speed; and, before he well knew it, was out upon the
Avenue; and then he began to quake.

He had not gone many steps in this direction when an arm
was quietly thrust into his own; and he found himself marching

abreast of a stranger. He looked around. The stranger
was a short man in a dusty coat, with a red, blossomy nose.
What was the stranger's business with Lankey Fogle?

There was a mighty din upon the Avenue, and it was not easy
to tell. The hard riders were coming in from Harlem, and the
road roared with the spinning of wheels, and the air was thick with
flying dust. There were men, solitary, in little gossamer-built
sulkies, who seemed borne along on the air itself: and men in
couples in light waggons; and hard-drinking parties of four in
barouches; and gentlemen far gone in close coaches; all in
tremendous speed as if some great event were coming off immediately,
a mile or two ahead, and they bound to be there at the
peril of their lives. Then they were mightily bothered by men
on horseback, who, taking each the footpath at the side of the
road, laid themselves out on their horses and swept everything
clean before them. Then by great lumbering butcher-boys,
who, on shambling cart-horses, came down the Avenue in
troops, allowing themselves to be tossed about the road like so
many hulks fallen into an eddy they could not manage; scrambling
hay-carts, with the hay off, returning, and running their
scraggy poles and shelving into the ribs of travellers, without
the slightest reference to utility or ornament.

So, with all they had a hard time of it, Lankey and the
stranger. But they had got by this time at the cross-road that
strikes off to Cato's; and there began to be prospect of conversation;
and happy that there was, for Lankey Fogle was smarting
for it.

“Sir!” said the stranger, turning full upon Lankey at a point
where they began to have a glimpse of the Tower, “this is the
most important event of your life!”

Lankey did not deny it.

“It involves the destiny,” continued the stranger, “the destiny,
I say, of you and your posterity to the latest generation.”

The proposition was laid down and no one opposed it.

“Whether the hopes of mankind are to be blighted by the
course you shall adopt to-night, remains to be seen!”

It did.

“Remains to be seen,” he resumed; “And how far you are
worthy of the trust reposed in you—”

Their noses were close together; and they watched each
other like dogs.

“By the confiding and generous Henry.”

Lankey Fogle seized his hand.

“I understand you,” said Lankey—“enough said!”

The stranger buttoned his coat and went into a small pot-house
by the road-side. Lankey Fogle took the road again, as
far as Cato's, and was forced to go in: it was not the Cato's of
infancy, the Cato's governed by that venerable and worthy and
dusky man, in his little cropped pate and clean apron: when
stages from far countries (Rye, and Sawpitts, and Danbury, and
Cross River) came jingling, with their merry chains, to the
door; the driver dismounted, and the inside gentlemen dismounted,
and there was a mighty bringing out of lemonade and
crackers and sugar-biscuit to be tendered in the most gallant
style to the green-veiled beauties within. No, no, that Cato's
was gone away; a great grave had been digged for that, a clean
white cloth had been spread over it, and it was buried beyond
resurrection. That Cato's had been launched on the stream of
time, and had gone backward, like an ark of peace and comfort,
and true jollity, sailing to whence it could not return. But there
stood the great white Tower over the way; reproaching it
silently for parting company: for tavern and tower they had
known each other from the corner-stone: and Lankey Fogle
hurried in, for he thought the old Tower some how or other
stooped his back to the very door of the new Cato's, to see what
kind of nonsense could be going on there now that the old soul
was gone.

Lankey called for a Monongahela, hot-and-hot.

The landlord brought it himself.

“A queer night this,” said the landlord.

Lankey Fogle took a long pull.

“A skimmery shimmery night, sir,” pursued the landlord.

Another pull toward the bottom.

“The Shot-Tower has been busy as a bee all day to-day;
and such a singing as he's kept up!”

Lankey Fogle admitted it by his manner of setting down the
glass.

He went out very quietly, winking at the landlord in a sleepy
way; at which the landlord, in turn, shook his head. As he
got into the road again, a great hay-cart was passing, so high
piled up, that the moon now abroad, seemed to be sleeping in its top
among the fresh-mown blades. His heart sunk within him. He
entered the wide gate at the Mount Vernon school, where the trotting-course
used to be. He passed through the orchard. There
was a shout behind him; it was the city leaving off its work,
with a cheer. There was a mighty blaze in the sky; the city
lighted up for the night. How green the grass was!—how it
sparkled and winked and laughed in the clear moonshine! But
there was a shadow on it now—a huge shadow, made neither
by man, nor house, nor tree; it was the dark side of the old
Shot-Tower; and when Lankey looked up, how wickedly and
wilfully, cool and self-possessed, that old white ghost of a Tower
held himself! Not inquisitive, nor overbearing, but scandalously
calm and indifferent. Lankey Fogle was alarmed, much more
than if he had pitched himself head-foremost into Lankey's waistcoat,
and offered downright fight; and when he saw in its shadow
a figure leaning down and delving the earth—he leaped the
fence! Was it to keep his appointment, or fly from it?