University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
The Fifth Day of it; and the City disporting himself in a very Low Way.

When they got forth to-day, they had not gone far before they
came to where a street plunged abruptly on the left hand, and
was away with a thought.

They paused on the edge of the great thoroughfare, fine with
silk, and oily whisker, and the canes of idle walkers, and
looked down. A ragged cloud, big with a summer shower,
raked the hollow on which they fixed their eye; the soil was
dank throughout, with ooze of slimy mud; and now that they
walk down, who claims this region, wild, and dark, and dreary
to the heart and sense? The Little Manhattan? Or is it Big
Abel's? Old houses all the way; with all the doors open, all
the casements shattered, all the chimneys broken-cornered;
and how green and yellow rages through the street, with signs
and half-doors and basements and shutters, all of their complexion.
Then, miraculous stair-ways starting in the very
street, springing up stairs on end (not ladders with ropes for
rails, but genuine bold-faced casings); meagre, yellow, longnecked
bottles and red-curtains, at windows, without number;
crazy balconies overhanging the way, with idle women leaning
over, and looking up and down the street; then about the door-ways,
on the ground, heavy fellows in roundabouts and flat-rimmed
hats, loitering, with no sign of business or employment,
past, present, or to come, to be read of anywhere in all their
idle limbs or empty looks. Women, too, among them, all of a
ruddy aspect, a slow flame-color burning silently—neck, face,

and arm—as though they stood in the very glow and focus of
some fiery furnace that blared in the neighborhood, and would
in due time, perhaps, have them for creatures of his hungry
element. Yet women still (the men no longer men!); for who
ever looked upon them kindly—not in bending pride, but pure,
true love of heart—they did not make it known to him there
lived in every ruin of them all a woman still? Black, portly,
little jugs in the windows now. Two or three men sallying
forth, one of these was black, with round rings in his ears; a little
fellow in a door-way, with uncombed hair, in his bare feet,
one trouser's leg hoisted, one arm in his pocket, the other
swinging by its loops a boot. And they stood at the Points, the
very Five; and when they looked back, they saw how on the
crown they had come down from, a waggon, passing, stood out,
so high it was above this flat, in every spoke and line of harness
and button almost of the driver's coat, against the sky.

At the Five Points; for, toward the spot they stood upon,
opposite the little park, Cross-street came down his hill with a
sharp, quick trot, bringing a great church with him, some scaly
tenements of brick, and some of wood, these being shaken no
little by the way; and Anthony, with a long rolling gallop,
which gave his houses more leisure to keep their place (but
they were all tipsy, and none the better for his considerate
speed); and Orange-street creeping lazily along the mud, taking
his own time too, and miring himself dreadfully by the way.
And there you had the Points! Who claims them now?
Lankey, looking off, espied swinging at his ease, as if he felt
the torture not the least, a tawny Indian on a sign, with a store
of herbs at the window just under his nose, for him to cheer
himself with at glaring noon-time; standing out with his bow in
hand, an end touching the ground, as calmly as you please. And
then he recollects that once in this hollow was kept a famous
Indian revel, with dances wild and strange, outcries through all
the moonlight night, and many games, where the rough hand

bore the sway. Lankey's it was, no doubt; and still his title
holds, for still that revel rules the spot, although the dark faces
are all in the ground, and the white above it. Big Abel, seeking
privilege of Lankey Fogle first, looking sternly on the little
park, there at its very heart; for the souls' sake of the poor
wretches swarming round it, ordered, it is said, a chapel there,
but I guess nobody heard him, for the chapel isn't there to this
day.

The Little Manhattan, for himself, thought the Points might
yet go back to the swamp they grew from—how his dark, sleepy
eye lighted up at that!—and that fixed his claim like iron.

And now the rain fell finely; pattering and splashing, spouting
from the gutters, settling in pools, and having everything
his own way with these; but then nobody went in doors, or
stopped business, or hurried in their talk. It was as comfortable
as heart could wish—the good understanding of the
shower and the Points. There was one, an unshaven man,
standing in a cellar-way, one step down, who seemed to think it
the best thing the shower could do, to pour away (this, it should
be known, was a gentleman that entertained a mean opinion of
mankind as well, oysters being out of season); and he curled
his lip and looked upon the pattering pools with quite a sullen
eye.

There was a man, too, in a glazed hat and roundabout,
who crossed the Points at the head of a vagabond black
horse; having given him the reins upon his back to carry for
himself; with a low cart, heaped in a corner with glossy wet
apples, whistling a martial air which he had imported on ship-board,
from the southern country; being a sailor once on a
time; making a pleasure of the drizzling shower and the wet
middle of the street.

Passing on, they came to the Sign, where they found standing
at the door, a sort of gentle twin to the chieftain, a meek man,
the Indian doctor himself, with less of dusk in his aspect, less of

autumn in his slumbrous eyes, than the Little Manhattan, by
far. This was a friend of Lankey's; and being bidden to the
Thursday evening's entertainment, promised to be there (having
a patient, an aged lady, of a nervous turn, in that neighborhood,
whom he was carrying, softly, through a course of
herbs, with great advantage, he thought).

From the hill-top toward the east, there rose a sound the
sweetest in all nature's many melodies, save one, of little
voices, children's voices, in farewell of their day's tasks; suppliant,
tiny, clear as thoughts that know no taint of earth, and
floating out at the windows over that dark valley of the Points,
they seemed to bear a blessing that made it less dreary to the
eye. And all the wonder is they do not, by a heavenly magic
in them, raise these sad creatures to be Blest Spirits, and leave
the darkling path they walk, for ever.

As they climbed the street now, they came upon little Neddy
Mellish (that was the little white-boy's name) again, at the
corner; his hands in his pocket, a green school-bag over his
shoulder; looking about, from minute to minute, through the
street the other way.

Little Neddy Mellish was not at ease, that was clear. What
was he lingering for in that strange way? They passed a little
farther on—Big Abel and Lankey—and when, presently, they
came to the Public School; the nest of all these happy voices;
they were overpowered by two streams of boys that poured out
of the two gates, and nearly took them off their feet. It was
Public School No. 7, and all black; all but the teeth and the
wide-awake eyes, and they flashed as so many ripples or
whirlpools in the current. They shook their ears in the rain,
and spread themselves through the streets all about, coloring
them with a dingy streak as far as the eye could follow. Wild
laughers, and boisterous as the wind that whistled in the school-house
eaves, all! till one came, slower than the rest, and about
him there fell a silence. They couldn't have much heart for

play, so near him, I am sure. Pompey, it was; but not that
Pompey that made mirth so fast, a little while ago. Not Pompey
who bore his deep green bag as though it had been a feather's
weight upon a restive colt. Nor Pompey who coaxed his
kite to carry earthly news to heaven, by swiftest mail. Slow,
mournful-eyed, poor Pompey crept forth from the school—a
great heart that day he had, to speak his lessons as he did; and
all confessed it!—and looked off to the corner where little Neddy
stood, and then he smiled from under all the trouble of his pain.
The very colors in the streaked handkerchief that bound his
brow brightened up, or seemed to, and in a minute little Neddy
had Pompey by the hand, took from him with a faint resistance
on the part of Pomp the satchel: panniered, one portly
bag on either side, and holding still his hand, Pompey and his
friend took the great thoroughfare beyond, and, seeking the awnings
from the shower, crept, hand-in-hand, towards Pompey's
door. Lankey Fogle's heart went after them, with a good will;
and if it were but liverwort of sovereign cure, then all might yet
go well with Pompey! The school-house now is still and secret
as a tomb, and Big Abel and the Little Manhattan have passed
on.

Turning, at a bend, they found, in the heart of the bend
itself, the very thing they looked for, a little garden or house of
refreshment. Not much of a garden; a slip of the size of a
handkerchief; green, too; and a fountain (something very small
in the way of a fountain); and bowers, ever so many of them,
at least three in number. And here, while they were getting
served by a nice mistress of the place, as busy in all her motions
as though she had opened that morning, and heard a
couple of hundred calling her all at once, with cream, and
cakes, and fruit (Lankey's part was fruit alone), there drew
near to a bower; it was the centre, and pride of the garden
that was waiting for them; two young persons, one of them
very pale, the other all a-glow.

Was ever a Poor Scholar's mistress in such spirits before!
And then the way in which she took possession of the bower;
if the green chair had been of solid gold she couldn't have
treated it more grandly. Three raps of the knuckles, and
there was a banquet—not much of a one, to be sure—but what
of that! William had something to say, that was clear; but
such spirits as Mary's—why the stoutest man living would have
quailed before them, much less a poor scholar.

“The Book's to be printed, Will? I believe you admit that
at last!”

“To be sure it is—they've accepted it.”

“A happy time of it for the printers, now! turning all your
gentle fancies out upon the page; making your mirth laugh, your
sorrow weep; your little men and women grow again in light,
and take a shape to every human eye, all the wide world over!
Oh what dreams they'll have the first night. They'll not sleep
a wink, I fear, with thinking all your magic over!”

Foolish Mary!

“And then the binder's girls, who have the folding of them
daintily! Many a clipping of wages will they lose this very
week, lingering, as they should not, naughtily about that wicked
Book!”

Mary, too fanciful by half.

“Tuesday, now! By Friday, at the latest, that little bright-eyed,
clean-apparelled gentleman (your Book, I mean, Will)
must come down stairs, and begin to see company! Oh for the
first look at his sweet and cheerful face!”

In the young Scholar's heart that was settled long ago.

“The show-bills, now! All over town, speaking up, with
fresh, clean looks! Coaxing every one to stop and read!
Every one to hurry in and buy! and then away to taste the
dainty to his core!”

Was there ever such a foolish, thoughtless mistress to a Poor
Scholar, all the world over?

She stopped, and looked at Will as though she saw a Blessed
Spirit, stepped out from the sun, and not a mortal man. But
he was very pale, and still had something to say, and now could
say it.

“You forget Germany, Mary!” That was what he had to
say.

No: she didn't. She recollected it perfectly well; it was
in all the maps, upon the globes, and hung up in the windows.
But in this connexion she didn't recollect it, she confessed.
What was Germany to this?

She hadn't heard of a famous Rendering or Translation out of
that country, that was talked about, a mighty book, with such a
power of chains, by way of binding up and riveting the
reader; such a thrilling, enchanting, wonderful and miraculous
book? Strange, she hadn't heard of that! That was the Book!

What, to come betwixt this Book of William's and the light
of day?

William was pale, I said, and Mary now, too. Had those men
who played these changeful tricks stood there, or sate within
that bower, they must have been torn piece-meal, limb by limb,
by little angry devils, leaping out of Mary's eyes, a score at
once, and many score!

When they had got forth, Big Abel and Lankey (how
Poor William and his mistress got away, heaven, whence it
came from, knows!), the shower was deepening, and they made
quickly for a house not far away. And there it was. That
little, tidy, shining palace; palace it is in all the spirit within;
of brick; sitting by itself, in cleanliness and purity, and through
all the falling rain eyeing calmly all passers-by with his little
winking knob and bell-pull.

At home? The ladies of this mansion are always at home,
and have been any time these fifty years. A snug parlor,
everything tidy, everything in a high state of polish, everything
demure and settled calmly in his place. The plaster-rabbits

on the mantel, not zoologically perfect, inasmuch as the necks
are movable, and have no visible appurtenance to the bodies;
and yet, to the mind, all that could be reasonably expected
of rabbits under such circumstances. A little door is slided
open, and out of a back room a nice, comfortable, smiling body—
Seventy! Yes; this was the youngest of the two maiden sisters,
Big Abel's friends, living here. Pretty good, for Seventy!
Cheerful, quick of speech and gait, and cordial, too, as the days
of hearty June are long. Another appearance out of the back
room—Eighty! Not so tall, nor quite so stout, but more
cheerful, quicker of motion, decidedly more cordial. There
was a great shaking of hands, I tell you, there! No difference
made between fair-looking Abel and the swarthy Lankey—not
the least! Talk! Plenty of it; and after that there came, out
of the back room, too, a little square table, which was suddenly
clothed (by Eighty) with a snowy cloth, and put in possession
(by Seventy) of a little family of cups and saucers, then of a
dainty pile of toast, then of a cold ham, then of a steaming
pot, and the little table was set up in the world, and ready to do
business.

The two sisters and Big Abel had the table to themselves, the
Little Manhattan declining tea, being furnished out of a closet
with a small bag of delicate Indian corn, his hat thrown off,
and shoes, sate with his bare feet on the red brick hearth, and
by aid of a brazier, with a furnace, parched it to his heart's
content.

Then when the tea was fairly flowing, the toast a-wing, what
stories they had to tell of this shrewd city's early day, how
small he was. (How out of his dusky corner, like an ember,
glowed Lankey Fogle's eye at this!)

Seventy had to tell of that old Negro Plot, when all the
blackness of the city roused, and like an angry tempest rising from
the earth—not now, from heaven!—threatened every life. Then,
that other, of the Doctor's Riot. It was clear that in the Little

Manhattan's heart there grew a thought or wish that riot even
yet—the city not grown too great for him—might strangle
him one day, and make it all his lair. Then of huge fires that
came upon him in his youth, and singed him to the ground like
straw.

The longest tales were Seventy's, by far. Eighty's were the
best, for memory in her was a quick furnace-light in which all
these past old things lived, like sacred children, moving there in
brighter glow, and losing not a hair of all their precious heads.
And now to-bed; up-stairs, with candles, one to lead and one
to follow, they wait on Lankey and Big Abel. Tidy chambers,
and in half a minute Big Abel sound asleep. But still the rain
kept pattering down, and stirred poor Lankey's Indian heart
with strange effect. In this humor, as he lay awake, he heard
in a far-off street the doleful cry from some late-tarrying man,
“Oysters!”—on a wet drizzly summer's night the melancholiest
sound,—delivered to his ear as though it was sung in a far-off
world.

Then, as Lankey thought of turbulent rivers, swelled by this
heavy fall of rain, and the roar of the angry Bay stretching
far out to sea, there sprung upon the air, from down the dreary
hollow they had rambled through that day, a quick, sharp cry
for life; a woman's voice; a fearful cry for dead midnight!
Lankey was troubled. He could not sleep; and going to the
window, he bent himself upon his hands, and looked abroad.
While yet his eyes glowed strangely upon the dark, there came
gliding along a woman's shape, with hair streaming back with
the little light that was abroad from lamps about, and eyes glistening-wet
with sadness or joy too great to keep its fountain in
the heart. Ah, what a cry shot up just then against the sky!
She spread her hands. There was no one near to see her, save
Lankey, none besides, nor far away; all the wide city's eyes
were shut; and she possessed the night alone, with sorrow, for
another night, within her breast. For ever so! The keenest

hurts, the deadliest wrongs life lays on human souls, have
none, save God and the poor heart, to know of them!

Following this dim figure through the perilous night along
the winding way, the Little Manhattan called to mind how
once an ancient path that led into the hills ran there before
it, and how in sadness deep as this the dusky maiden took her
way, so long ago, up towards the calm, blue heaven, and sought
to soothe her spirit with the silence of the woods, the sight of
stars, and whispering of the winds of night!

When he sought sleep again, he had a troubled dream in
which, by some strange magic in his thoughts, the city passed
back out of all his squares and streets and stony flats into his
fresh, fair, lovely island-youth; of hill, stream, valley, wood.
Ah, how he pined to have them by the hand, his kinsmen, as he
saw them now, silent in the lodge, or swift at chase, or shining
from the ruddy fight! But morning came, and took them all
away.