University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
How it goes the First Day: with the City Waking up.

Breakfast for the Little Manhattan and Abel Henry Hudson
(known as Big Abel everywhere)! Spread in an upper
chamber, with a cheerful look out at the window, on the river:
a snowy cloth: a roasted duck, shot on the river, not far away:
a steak of savory deer: a pile of honest buckwheat cakes.
Big Abel fell to, as became his girth; but Lankey, quietly,
and thoughtful of other viands that came into his mind and
offered themselves.

Then, brightening up after a while, how pleasant they were:
talking over plans and routes through the city; which course
now, which now.

“I shall claim all I can!” said Big Abel.

Lankey made no objection.

“He was a navigator, you know, my great-grandfather?”

Very well.

“A trader?”

Well again.

“A builder, with a touch of carpenter's craft in his day?”

Very well, too.

“And now, what are you going to claim?”

“We shall see!” said Lankey. He said nothing more, and
they set out. Big Abel paying the bill, by the way, to start.

It was a bright and cheerful morning, this, on which the
Little Manhattan and Big Abel set forth to divide the City:
Pilgrims both, of good heart, and bent to seize, each what he
could, in fairness, to himself. A clear day before them, as
ever lit the Island from its first day down; so clear, the

eye commanded what it would, far away or near. Nothing
that day was lost to view: each house came out, in the
pure atmosphere, and stood forth for itself. A man a mile
away was to the eye as much a man as though he stood at
hand: the spindle post spoke up, so to say, for every one to
look at him, as much, quite as much as the steeple in his bulk.
With spirits wakeful and alert, they set out; and going in
toward the city's heart a little, were shortly at the spot, the very
spot, where the blue omnibuses come from. They stood about,
half a dozen of them, waiting the coming forth from a low,
white office, of a bush-whiskered man of sun-burnt look, who
every two minutes or so appeared, accordingly, and saying,
“Now!” turned on his heel, and went in again. Whereupon
one of the blue stages put forth at a creeping pace, to get speed
as it went on; another closed in from behind, and the drivers,
three in their box seats, and as many, with a straggler thrown
in, on the walk, kept up a hubbub of talk for a few minutes
more. Their talk that morning, as it is very often, no doubt,
was all about a famous whip of their fraternity, who had come
to his death a week before. Not by diving to the ground, by
reason of a jolt, from the omnibus top (in despair of going any
faster); nor under a wheel, coming against his own with him
between (dropped there, in the hurry of making change, to get
on); nor ridden to death astride the pole (pulled to a saddle
there, by a combination of the horses out of a spite for too few
oats and too much tonnage, on a sweltering day). None of
these: but quietly, of a fever, as any other man might, in his
bed; with an old aunt and a grandmother, from the country, or
some such worthy bodies, at his side.

“He was a regular two-twenty-seven!” said one of the
drivers, talking, somewhat grandly, in the air, you see, over to
another, high up in his box, too.

“His muscle to hold in with was a caution,” the other answered,
picking up his reins as the lamented used to.

“He was to have driv' twenty in hand, on a wager, next
week,” spoke up one from the walk, a little man, “and he'd have
done it!”

He was a little man, this speaker; but how their eyes sharpened
and their ears grew when he spoke. He was stoop-shouldered,
too, and hardier of aspect than the others: a hard-headed
little fellow: and he held all these rugged drivers in his hand
like so many hackneys. What an Authority that little man
was! and when he said, “He'd have done it!” it was settled
for ever.

There was no doubt he would: they all allowed it, in chorus.

Then it came out, in further discourse, that the gentleman in
question had made the quickest trip, from the Village to White
Hall, anywhere on record, since the first stage was set on
the route—in too few minutes to speak of. But there was
another gentleman mentioned, he was present, the little driver
himself, in person, who had carried a heavier fare. Fourteen
inside, I think it was, two with him on the seat, a cradle a-top,
with a family market-basket, a boy; in fact, there was no end
to the load; and he might as well have moved the village
down into the city, come to that, churches and all, while he was
about it.

This omnibus-life, the Little Manhattan's or Big Abel's?
For the build (Henry Hudson having, it is said, brought the
first wheeled carriage into the Island), Big Abel's; but then for
horse-speed, that being at the pace and a good deal after the
manner, of the wild-horse Indian scampers, Lankey's. This
being the case, they hurried on, leaving them to run without
jurisdiction, as they always will, I guess.

Further on, they were passed by great swarthy charcoal
waggons, leaping along, with a tinkling twang from underneath,
as though they had been great grasshoppers with iron lungs.
Then they encountered, coming out, masons in green baize jackets,
bearing stone-hammers in their hands, and full of speed.

They were aiming for the suburb, where they had work to do;
plenty of it. The Little Manhattan looked at them gloomily as
they passed.

“Stretching—stretching:” this was what Lankey said to himself.
“Always stretching. Will he never be still, and stop
growing?” He meant the City.

Big Abel gave them a good-morning; and seemed, by the
cheerful look he wore, to send his heart along with them as they
hurried on.

There was a pause between Lankey and Big Abel; when
Big Abel spoke up; his mind, somehow or other, went back to it.

“You met a man on the Avenue, yesterday?”

Was it a man with a nose like a pink?

“That was the man: and he told you I was waiting?”

He had: accosting Lankey by Big Abel's appointment, it
seemed, to jog him on his way to the Tower.

“There was another; down the Square,” Lankey said, “in
front of the little Franklin Theatre, who knocked his hat on his
head, after a strange way!”

Another! Big Abel knew nothing of this one.

By this time they had come to where a master with his clerk
was bringing out in state, in front of his shop, a Giant Boot (a
miserable creature, though, to the Nabob on the other side of
the town); and Lankey Fogle began to talk of an old village
that used to be thereabout in the Indian times, to recall what
he had heard many gossips tell, of dusky wigwams, and council-fires,
lit there, just where they stood, and trophies hung
upon the trees.

He would have claimed this region for his own, for this;
and Big Abel allows, if he will but show a single cinder of
the fires yet burning, a single trophy, a single pole still up,
that it is his. Lankey Fogle looked about: near, far away,
into the air, upon the ground. Nothing, Lankey! Nothing.
But after this, turning a corner not far off, his eye grew bright.

There stood before them on a little pedestal, a panther's skin
about his loins, a feather in his raven hair, in one hand a bow,
tawny too in every limb, a figure that seemed to have possession
of the spot by right. A tobacconist's; this a dumb Indian;
proffering to all comers, with the other hand, cigars. Yet, simple
as it is, and cheap, Big Abel staggers at recollection that
the town is held in every part by such as these.

The iron box he bore began to grow heavy enough: the
thought even came into his mind of dashing it in pieces on the
ground: how could his title hold against these swarming figures
everywhere? But Lankey claimed; this was a great comfort to
Big Abel; the shops alone—and did not say these Indians held
the city, as he might, in trust for him.

Presently Big Abel took possession of a great range of merchants'
shops (the seeds of which were sown, no doubt, by trader
Captain Hudson, long ago); and they went on more cheerfully
than ever. Cheerfully? Aye—proudly, and more than that.
Looking at the majestic style in which he walked that street,
only, you'd have certainly thought Big Abel owned the city,
without any reference whatever to his iron box!

Big Abel began to see his way clearly; for wherever they
went he saw, shops, shops; the trade that first set foot upon the
soil with Henry Hudson, carrying all before it in a flood.
Wigwams! He scorned (in his soul, that is to say) the thought!
What were bare tents, with little dusky old women and papooses,
diving in and out, to these gay rows with ladies, fair to
see as day, gliding in and forth again, the many-colored show
about the doors, the smiling clerks within; this was fairy-land
to him, the other heathendom and worse.

There went tumbling before them just then, before swarthy
Lankey, fair-complexioned Abel, in the sunshine a little negro-boy.
His garments, coarse and clean, were blotched with patches:—no
doubt of that. A rainbow would have faded before
him, and made a leap into the sky for another set of colors at

the very sight. He was black: very black. His hair was
woolly as the old ram's fleece. His foot, flat as the ground it
stood on. And yet was there ever such a great black earthen
jar-full, with its two wide ears, of genuine jollity, the very extract
and oil of gladness, such a bounding, rolling, laughing
piece of broad mirth? A great green bag, plethoric with
morning lessons, slung over his shoulder: sometimes on the sidewalk,
then over the gutter into the very middle of the street,
at the tail of an omnibus, on his own account: then back again
with a cry for the shoulder's sake of some other: then zigzaging
his way along the stoops, making the most, with his great
broad eyes, of the shop windows ('specially of that everlasting
white lady in the pinched-up waist, seated by the side of the
gentleman in superhuman blue pantaloons): the day was brighter,
and bluer, and happier altogether, for that cheerful negro-boy,
depend upon it!

As he rushed between the two, carolling and capering like a
colt, Big Abel dropped, unseen, a piece of silver in his gaping
bag; and Lankey Fogle dropped not money, for money he had
none, but a look so kind and magical after it, it must have
changed the coin to yellow gold before it slided to the bottom.

Another dumb Indian! Under the same circumstances as
before, only this one wore a short blue frock, and carried a box
in his hand as though he was setting out on a journey in a
great hurry, but not forgetting to take his cigars with him.

Farther down there stands a Half-Way House; the Hurrah
House, the neighbors call it; where the omnibus-drivers halt in
hot summer days, and resort of nights; with heavy streaked and
dabbled columns; a mighty lamp of many colors above its
porch (a mere child though, like the boot, to a lantern on the
East side), great enough to entertain a small drinking party in.
But as there was no ladder, just then, to get in by, Big Abel
and Lankey passed into the house himself. Now this house is a
noisy house, and a dirty-waitered house, and badly-watered,

and meagre and thin in his drinks. But then he's proud of his
steaks; and that brings him up again. With good reason, too,
for Lankey and Big Abel lingered so in their meal, and were
so assuaged and subdued and put down, in spirit, by these same
dainty steaks of his, that it was a long while before they got
forth again.

They idled the afternoon away; that was their humor;
without accomplishing much, and at dusk came to Potter's
Field (the Parade Ground, now, you know), where they took
possession of a bench. The hour fell on them like a spell;
and they were silent for a long while. There were a few rambling
there, for the fresh air; maid-servants with children; but
these, as night closed in, went out at the various gates, one
after the other, leaving Big Abel and the Little Manhattan
alone in the summer darkness. Now and then a weary
man, coming from his work, crossed the long path, to shorten
his way home; but these came only at intervals, and so drearily
and un-life-like, that all was as subdued as though they were
mere shadows.

In the still evening air, far, far on high, a night hawk, wheeling
up and down, or crossing to and fro, kept up his lonesome
cry, and seemed like a troubled spirit that had broken away
from the city, and yet was somehow tangled and perplexed
within its view.

“This is mine, I think!” Lankey said; but so sorrowfully
that he seemed to claim a property that would be a burthen to
his spirit to own.

Big Abel pondered the claim. He recollected how from time
to time, the plough, when they were shaping this field, had used
to come upon a mouldering bone; that even now old flinty
arrowheads were found about; it was but a waste ground, a
few idle trees: he could not deny the claim that Lankey made.
He consoled himself however by seizing a great church and
place of learning, standing before them (Christian Faith and

Useful Knowledge came over passengers, you know, with
Captain Hudson), and on great squares of stately houses all
around.

The Little Manhattan saw none of these, nor cared to see
them; for out of the dark there sprung to him, dusky men who
bore to grassy hillocks there, a warrior with his bow, a maiden
in her long black tress, a prophet in his cunning robe, and laid
them down; and though they turned their back on these now
for a time, and went away, they came again, and still again,
and never, through all time and change of place, forgot to come,
and think in peace and kindliness that here their wise man,
warrior, maiden lay. Willingly and cheerfully, so to speak of
it, the Little Manhattan took this sacred field, and yielded up the
church without a stint!

Long lingering, at length they rose; wondering at each
other not a little, and trying in the dark to guess each other's
thoughts.

They passed an open window, and out of it came a voice
whose sadness and sweet tarrying on the tones it poured out
checked them, as though they had some part in its gentle sorrow.

They had listened for a minute, when the Little Manhattan
turned on his friend, and said—

“This is part of the song sung in the open fields by that Poor
Scholar!”

“It is,” he answered; “and this is William's mistress. You
see her, crossing the light now!”

Lankey did: a fair gentle shape that might have lived in the
sun-beam or moon-beam for ever, and fallen by no act or seeking
of its own, to earth, among the shadows and gross cares of
common clay.

But she was clearly not at ease. She moved about, singing
sometimes as before, then silent, glad, pensive, hopeful, despairing,
as a scholar's mistress, in this land of ours, well may be.

Then she came to the window and looked abroad; counting
no doubt, from afar, each step that echoed through the street;
and then falling back into the shadow of the room, was lost in
gloom.

Big Abel and the Little Manhattan passed on.

There is a yellow house, not far from the Parade Ground,
famous for the cider that he draws; Newark cider, fresh and
latest, a full supply; and you may go there and drink when
you choose, and that little public-house is always at home, with
a glass for you. Thither Lankey and Big Abel repaired; and
there they supped, with many a draught, now that they were in
for work, of that same golden drink; and then they chambered
themselves up stairs. But not asleep quite so soon as you might
think, for this was a cart-street in which they lodged; in other
words, an avenue patronized by those lay-bishops, the carting
gentry, in their morning and evening trips up and down town;
and, returning now from the day's work, they kept up a buzz of
wheels for hours. Sometimes a slow cart, they could tell each
one by his sound, sauntering along with a tired horse; then a
fast cart, heard in his approach far off, thundering by the door,
and rattling away, for whole squares. Then three or four carts
in company, with a talk of cartmen; these were moderate
movers; to each other as they jogged along. Then a couple
of racers; full speed after each other; tearing up the street,
and shaking the windows, nay, the very houses to the foundation.
Then long, long after these, a cart going home late (there
was a ship in down town somewhere, that night, I know), having
the whole street to himself, and keeping up his melancholy song
till the ear ached, and would not believe he could ever go out of
hearing. And by that time (whenever it came), the Little
Manhattan and Big Abel were asleep.