University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
The City at his Crimes; the Little Manhattan and Big Abel still busy.

The city wide awake again! Nimble, serpent-eyed, fresh,
how he bears his crest this Monday morning, as though he had
got back somehow to his prime, without a thought of all his
cares and crosses and riots! Clear and wide awake! Everybody
abroad, with a new face born of Sunday! Everybody
with a sprightly good-morrow! Everybody at a higher rate of
speed! People coming in from the Islands, from Jersey, from
down the Bay, ripe for new traffic on the keenest edge! The
cartmen hurrying to the wharves in clean frocks; collars even,
snow-white, twinkling among the whiskers of omnibus-drivers!

“Up Broadway? Right-up! Right-up!” This was the
cry, passing the Bowling-Green.

Presently a gouty old gentleman, from one of the hotels, is
got in.

“Up Broadway? Right-up! Right-up!”

How the great square stage rolls about, like a heavy fellow
as he is, upon his wheels. He's in no hurry—you may be sure
of that.

A confused grumbling in his bowels, and the gouty old gentleman
seen, through the windows, to be growing red in the face.
A voice down the money-hole, and silence; followed by a motion,
on the part of the stage, of six paces; a pause; and still
the cry goes on—

“Right-up! Up Broadway! Right-up!”

Wall-street, now. Plenty pouring down, neat-dressed, trim-whiskered,
but none coming out; a fine full flow of smoothly-shaven,

well broad-clothed, sprightly gentlemen as eye can
light upon. Not frightful, and blood-seeking, and cruel-eyed
as the story goes out of doors; but nice, comfortable persons,
as ready for a good turn, when their hand is in, as though their
business lay in Rose-street, where the Quakers live!

Big Abel and Lankey came to a pause here, too, and pitched
their eye against the very head of the street. Big Abel saw
rising there a massy house, stone upon stone, high in the air,
with carvings and crosses, and doors and niches. The Little
Manhattan, not one of these; but a great mound of earth swelling
in the sun, green at the top, and prouder, in his rugged
look, than the massy house itself. Big Abel looked upon New
Trinity: the old earth that stood there, many a year before, as
high as he, that was what Lankey (wicked Lankey!) saw.

The cheerful chirrup of the drivers still kept up; the
pale, quick men, whose fingers change all to gold they touch,
still poured down the street. The flood of porters, clerks, and
masters, increased and deepened as they went on; but, a little
further on, the stream was ruffled with a sudden cry, and there
came tearing through it, as for life or death, a line of ragged
boys. With what watchful faces everybody listened: with
eager hands clutched out from underneath the arms of these,
the sheets they bore: and on they sped, more furious in their
cry as they neared Wall-street.

Extra Sun! Extra Tribune! Extra Herald!

The Great Western steamship was in, of a Sunday (always
of a Sunday!), and the news-boys laid themselves out in a big
hour's work to make it known.

Barnum's now; Barnum's Museum, with the Giant, full-length
upon his canvass, going to take the dwarf: you see the
little fellow quite well if you carry a spy-glass: by way of a
pinch of snuff. The band hard at work in the balcony; that
patriotic band, whose wind will blow nothing but “Hail Columbia”
and “The Star-Spangled Flag” for a hundred years, if

they hold out so long. The moose, the elk, the buffalo; these
were all up stairs; almost as good as life.

Barnum's was Lankey's—that was clear!

Then there rolled past the fork of the Park, in a good deal of
dust which it was at the pains to raise for itself, by help of two
great coach-horses, fed up to the last oat, a carriage all in blue,
a crown all of gold (no doubt some near kinsman of good
Queen Victoria within!) upon the panel, a couple of live boys
holding on behind, in blue too. Lankey Fogle was taken
strongly with the paint, although he had a notion that pure red;
as being more according to his honest Indian taste; would have
been a shade or two nearer the thing. Big Abel—a strange
fellow, he! burst out with a laugh so quick, so hearty and tempestuous,
one would have thought dashing against its side it
must have shattered blue-coach all to naught, but blue-coach
rolled away, and Big Abel, with Lankey, recollecting dinner,
stepped back a square or two, and were at a door where, at
this hour, a broad stream of busy-looking men poured in and
out, without a pause.

And well they might! There was a Saloon for you!
Where the eagle that spreads his wings above it, whets his beak
every morning (it is said) upon a carving-knife; where flags fly
at the house-top to make known to all the town about that Dinner's
ready; where, without end, along the floor small tables stand and
call for company, with salt-cellar, pepper-box, and black-bottle,
with his quill, for pepper-sauce (or some such thing); where
young gentlemen, all alike as twins, in white jackets and aprons
(white once, it is said, and since the Flood), run to and fro, in
answer to a hubbub on every side, from every one and all at
once, interpretable by them alone; where strange dishes float
along the air, sometimes a bowl, steaming high with nothing to
prompt him, inside; then a yellow ball (pudding, it is said)
upon a plate; then a cup, with a faded spoon upright therein,
waxing sadder day by day, till some day or other he will go off,

as has his element of chocolate before, in dregs; then, gasping
with great eyes, swimming through the room, a fish (this is
tradition, for who that lives can tell when he has seen the sea?).

There was a time for Lankey and Big Abel! Cheap, too!
Anything you choose to call for, and no charge worth mentioning,
and it was sure to come out of a mysterious cavern somewhere
in the earth thereabouts, in some shape or other; and
when the door which led back into the cavern opened with a
waiter, what a rush of steams and odors. Five thousand dishes
inside, all in a hurry to get out; and coming out so fast, in
such a confused way, I guess that saloon ought to keep a chemical
gentleman to call 'em by name. Anyhow, the Little Manhattan
and Big Abel (thank Heaven for that!) got forth with
their lives; and proceeded up the city again by way of Park
Row; and as they passed along, the doorways of the Row, they
saw, were held by men who were all nicely shaven as to the
face, and in a high state of embellishment, with well-cut coats,
new hats, striped pants, great chains across their breast, and
heavy rings upon the finger. These were butchers, tradesmen,
and others of that stamp, who, having fallen in with fortune one
day: the acquaintance came about through a little rattling box:
stand at leisure on these steps when off duty at the green table
up stairs, serenely ignoring their old professions; and looking
abroad from the cleanest shirt-collars, and with the reddest of
well-fed gills, upon their world of old acquaintance.

Neither Lankey nor Big Abel made any claim to these persons,
but allowed them to stand just as they did; striving to
look innocent and child-like, with all their might.

Looking beyond the Park, upon its other side, a little while,
sundry appearances came out, like, and yet unlike, to these.
These were thinner in person, than the members of the Row;
mostly pale of aspect; who seemed to have no business, calling,
occupation, craft of any name or kind; who having struck, some
hour ago, and at the sunny time of day, out of a side-street far

up town, where they had set themselves in an attitude, proceeded
now at the gentlemanliest pace in the world; tapping the
ground daintily with the point of a light stick; ranging their
eyes about in a smooth semi-circle; or greeting, occasionally,
the blue sky overhead, with a look of complacent regard.

A better gentleman, in his way, by far, than these; with
twenty tricks, to one of all Park Row; who is it now that shows
himself? A bubbling smack, as when a genial cork is drawn;
then out of water with his smooth bald head, the Fountain!
Coming slowly out—not tired, not he, with eight-and-thirty miles
of travel on this hot summer's day; but modest, and proud, too,
for he knows his worth. Now another spring, and head and
shoulders out. Now—how swift he grows—tall as any alderman:
now as Barnum's Giant, there: and now a grenadier,
his feather flying high, beyond all mortal measurement! He's
not on the treadmill, I am sure, for any sins of his; but how
he seems to climb the air. And what a frizzled pate he shakes
to every passer-by, beyond the rail! He has their confidence,
each man's; and whispers something to him, going up or down
the street. Be of good heart! Be of good heart! He always
says that; this cheerful, unfeed city Counsellor.

“A good thing for health,” Big Abel says, “to have such
fountains at the city's core.”

But Lankey thinks of dark old trees; of shadowy deer between;
and cataracts falling, falling, not ascending like this
idle youngster here, down the air. The Park is his, though
railed with twenty tons of iron; a hunting-ground of old; and
Lankey's eyes are wild and far away, pursuing game about its
walks.

Big Abel seizes on all the squares of houses round about, as
before, preferring them by great odds to trees.

There were two looking at the fountain beside Big Abel and
Lankey; looking at it keenly; reading it to the very heart;
following it with their eyes up and down again; up, always

with a hope; and down with something, why was this? something
of a sinking spirit.

The Poor Scholar and his mistress! There by accident, or
by choice? By accident, no doubt; and when their eyes glanced
once past the leaping stream, they smile, by chance again;
and then when they meet, why does Mary chirrup so?

“I'm sure of you, now!” she said, at once. Sure of what?

“There it is!”

Mary listened; it was a little while before she could make
anything out of a news-boy uproar which raged about the fork
of the Park, and spread itself on either hand through the two
great thoroughfares.

“That's not it!”

“Why—yes it is—step, a little way, from the fountain, and
you won't fail to make it out!”

“I do make it out; but it's not your book!”

“Bless you! Had you that in your head. How could you
have that in your head? No, to be sure—that's a great book
just come in from—”

“Not from England, again!”

“No, no. This is from France; by a very great writer.
What hearts must beat in men, in those elder lands, where great
books grow like precious weeds!”

“And perish, too!” How scornful Mary was in saying that.

“Don't say that! I feel that I am but—”

It wouldn't be easy to state nicely what the Poor Scholar's
feeling was, for at that moment there was a horrible outcry
with the news-boys, a fresh detachment having broken out by
way of Ann-street; and what with this, and the altogether
gratuitous dinner-summons at the hotel over the way, there was
nothing left for the Poor Scholar and his mistress but to hang
their heads and take their way,
whithersoever they would, in
silence.

Full to the door the stages all went by, now; rolling off on

either hand, as fast as they could; clambering the far declivities,
toward a world of dust which they pierced, like so many
toiling bugs, and disappeared. And yet the old City Hall stood
there, elbowing Broadway on one hand, and on the other nudging
the Records' Office, to bring him books and papers (for
a claim of title that's always going on within), with all his
might and main. Sleep or banquet as all others will, he's wide
awake, at least, and will not go to dinner till somewhere toward
midnight. Lawyers—a great many of them knew Big
Abel and Lankey, and smiled sideways on them as they
passed—climbing in, with clients at their heels; officers; witnesses,
jaded and worn down, coming out; a pale clerk toiling
up with two arms-full of law-calf-bound books, making such a
face over them, as no doubt the suitors will when, one day, they
come to eye the costs; and, by and by, crossing the Park, towards
a small court beyond, a little old man, withered with breathing
many a year the close air of the ward courts. He was grizzled,
and wrinkle-eyed, and bent—not with carrying too many cases,
I will warrant!—and wore his coat buttoned by way of waistcoat.
This gentleman would have undertaken Lankey Fogle's
suit, but he hadn't the seven-and-sixpence wherewith to pay the
opening fees. A few words passed with him and Lankey, and
he was asked to come to the entertainment.

Spreading his hand upon his breast in act of executing a sort
of gentlemen-of-the-jury cough he had, he said he would; by
all means; and went away very feebly to the small court.

They were now setting toward the Tombs, and passed on their
way a rusty, full-chopped fellow, in charge of an officer, whose
story it was, over and over again—as he was borne along—that
a man, unknown to him, had met him in a certain street, and
placed the little bits of hardware, in question as of a larceny,
in his hands. The officer, when he had told this a dozen times or
so, turned his eye upon him; and the great fellow turned his,
but not quite so boldly, too. All in the eye. That was all that

passed, and they went on after that with a better understanding.
The shadow of a cloud was flying up the city, leaping streets,
houses, steeples, every barrier that man builds to make secure
community; but not swifter than the spirit of a man they led
in irons toward the Tombs, hurried on to where no shadow of
his should ever fall upon the sunny street again.

Another officer came in from a bye-way. That was a wicked
devil he had in charge—make up your mind to that. A murderer?
Why, no. A wronger of orphans in their pale and
tender youth? Not that either. A cutter to the quick of
honest fame? I can't say that. Suspected—that's all. A
wicked devil, you see. His coat shows that, by its thin, shivering
way of sitting about the shoulders. His spindle limbs that
just keep him up; his face, colored with no memory of a sufficient
meal, even a long way off. Suspected? Who better or
more than he? Of all the men that run or walk or ride within
the city bounds, he is the guiltiest-suspected wretch. Thrust
him in a cell: the ground must be damp: on bread and water;
where rats, if any are to be had thereabout, may have free
resort to him; and in a few days—a very few days—Suspicion,
at a touch almost, will become fearful certainty. He will be
dead! Lawgivers and magistrates—you know—he will be
dead!

Big Abel would have passed the Tombs, in something of a
hurry, I believe; but the Little Manhattan, from a whim he
had, halted and went in.

The Sessions were packed close that afternoon. It was a case
of life and death, or near that, that was up; or meant to be.
But it had very little chance just then, for the two lawyers were
setting to at each other over a reporter's table; the three judges
were on their feet, on the bench, bending down to appease the
fray; the clerk had put his hat on in the confusion; and all
the officers of the court, busy as they could be, thrusting their
staves at the combatants. This was at its height when Lankey

and Big Abel entered, for the gallery was just going off, along
the whole line, in an explosive accompaniment, in regular succession.
There was a chirping laugh (this was by a little man
of a weazen look), then a shrill one (from a smooth-faced boy),
a rough one (from a coarse fellow), and so on, till it ended in
an overwhelming burst by a huge black with a trombone in his
chest. This was too much for the court, and an order went out
immediately to have the gallery cleared; and cleared it was,
by the tumbling down the corkscrew stairs upon the street, of
the whole orchestra of laughers.

Big Abel and Lankey went out, too.

Big Abel would not have claimed the Tombs, but it was clear
in Lankey Fogle's mind that they had come over in the same
ship as his great-grandfather Hudson; and, with a twitch of
the face, Big Abel acknowledged them.

They found supper that evening at a tavern near by: the old
Seventy-Six, I think, it was: and proceeded toward the great
thoroughfare of Broadway, for a little mirth in the way of a theatre,
and they had a part of it before they reached the house. For,
going by the Horse-Sales-Room, they discovered the chamber-maid,
with the Spanish prince, and first walking gentleman, waiting
in the stable-way till the crowd about the house got in, having
a fear that the piece would go off tamely if such high characters
in it should be seen plunging (as they must) down the
cellar-way, to come up in the green-room. The house was in
a capital humor! There was a white-wigged old gentleman in
a striped waistcoat and small-clothes, with knee-buckles, very
particular about a young lady, his ward, in a book-muslin dress
and long blue waist-ribbon, who was sought by a young gentleman
in an entire suit, new, of black, with a hat which he kept
brushing up all through the courtship; and a rival young gentleman
in a frock-coat and riding-whip (the nag being an invisible
runner, out of sight always!); and at the top of the whole
a little, crop-haired valet, with the cunningest eyes in the world,

and who shook the house every time he winked. His bob-tailed
coat, when he turned about, was too much for several gentlemen
in the first tier, and they went out and came back regularly
as long as he kept doing it.

To close the day, they resorted to a refectory, hard by: a
spruce, elegant, fashionable, that's-your-sorts, refectory: where
they were allowed, at tip-top prices, to embower themselves in
a genteel stall, and to be shut in by gorgeous blue curtains, in
company with a castor all of silver; when there came to them,
at tip-top prices, a gentlemanly man of a mulatto aspect, who
was good enough (still on the same terms) to request their pleasure;
which, being known, he returned presently at tip-top
speed, to answer to the prices, with a dish of birds (quails, he
called them; that was the dialect of the place), very much
crisped up, very much be-saged and be-seasoned and be-condimented;
and the quails flew away presently—for there was a
good appetite between them—tip-top, from the first moment to
the last. Then wine of the same family. Then the genteel
stall fell in and lost compass, and was altogether too narrow for
Big Abel and Lankey, who, putting their heads forth from time
to time, made discovery of numbers of elegant young gentlemen
coming in, bringing with them little black smutches upon
the lip, and cocked hats, and small canes, which all together
proceeded to a white marble bar, and were impertinent. But,
still, at tip-top prices, everything being allowed, on these terms,
at that shop.

Neither Lankey Fogle nor Big Abel went out, as you may
guess, to find lodgings that night, but made the best of the
refectory, picking out a downy spot, and dreaming, one of them,
all night long of a hideous man (the civilest man in the world!)
with a bill, bearing a strong family likeness to the silent man in
the bar.