19. CHAPTER XIX.
DOG-DAYS.
The great city roared, and steamed, and smoked. Along
the hot, glaring streets by the river a few panting people hurried,
clinging to the house wall for a thin strip of shade, too
narrow even to cover their feet. All the windows of the
stores were open, and within the offices, with a little thinking,
a little turn of the pen, and a little tracing in ink, men were
magically warding off impending disaster, or adding thousands
to the thousands accumulated already—men, too, were writing
without thinking, mechanically copying or posting, scribbling
letters of form, with heads clear or heads aching, with
hearts burning or cold; full of ambition and hope, or vaguely
remembering country hill-sides and summer rambles—a day's
fishing—a night's frolic—Sunday-school—singing-school, and
the girl with the chip hat garlanded with sweet-brier; hearts
longing and loving, regretting, hoping, and remembering, and
all the while the faces above them calm and smooth, and the
hands below them busily doing their part of the great work
of the world.
In Wall Street there was restless running about. Men in
white clothes and straw-hats darted in at doors, darted out of
doors—carrying little books, and boxes, and bundles in their
hands, nodding to each other as they passed, but all infected
with the same fever; with brows half-wrinkled or tied up in
hopeless seams of perplexity; with muttering pale lips, or lips
round and red, and clearly the lips of clerks who had no great
stakes at issue—a general rushing and hurrying as if every
body were haunted by the fear of arriving too late every
where, and losing all possible chances in every direction.
Within doors there were cool bank parlors and insurance
offices, with long rows of comely clerks writing in those Russia
red books which Thomas Tray loved—or wetting their
fingers on little sponges in little glass dishes and counting
whole fortunes in bank-notes—or perched high on office-stools
eating apples — while Presidents and Directors, with shiny
bald pates and bewigged heads, some heroically with permanent
spectacles and others coyly and weakly with eye-glasses
held in the hand, sat persuing the papers, telling the news, and
gossiping about engagements, and marriages, and family rumors,
and secrets with the air of practical men of the world,
with no nonsense, no fanaticism, no fol-de-rol of any kind about
them, but who profoundly believed the Burt theory that wives
and daughters were a more sacred kind of property than
sheep-pastures, or even than the most satisfactory bond and
mortgage.
They talked politics, these banking and insurance gentlemen,
with vigor and warmth. “What on earth does this
General Jackson mean, Sir? Is he going to lay the axe at
the very roots of our national prosperity? What the deuce
does a frontier soldier know about banking?”
They talked about Morgan who had been found in Lake
Ontario; and the younger clerks took their turn at it, and
furiously denied among themselves that Washington was a
Mason. The younger clerks held every Mason responsible for
the reported murder. Then they turned pale lest their neighbors
were Masons, and might cause them to be found drowned
off the Battery. The older men shook their heads.
Murders—did you speak of murders, Mr. Van Boozenberg?
Why, this is a dreadful business in Salem! Old Mr. White
murdered in his bed! The most awful thing on record. Terrible
stories are told, Sir, about respectable people! It's getting
to be dangerous to be rich. What are we coming to?
What can you expect, Sir, with Fanny Wright disseminating
her infidel sentiments, and the work-people buying The Friend
of Equal Human Rights? Equal human fiddle-sticks, Mr.
Van Boozenberg!
To which remarks from the mouths of many Directors that
eminent officer nodded his head, and looked so wise that it
was very remarkable so many foolish transactions took place
under his administration.
And in all the streets of the great city, in all the lofty workshops
and yards and factories, huge hammers smote and
clashed, and men, naked to the waist, reeking in dingy interiors,
bent like gnomes at their tasks, while saws creaked,
wheels turned, planes and mallets, and chisels shoved and cut
and struck; and down in damp cellars sallow ghastly men and
women wove rag-carpets, and twisted baskets in the midst of
litters of puny, pale children, with bleared eyes, and sore heads,
and dirty faces, tumbling, playing, shouting, whimpering—
scampering after the pigs that came rooting and nosing in the
liquid filth that simmered and stank to heaven in the gutters
at the top of the stairs; and the houses above the heads of the
ghastly men and women were swarming rookeries, hot and
close and bare, with window - panes broken, and hats, and
coats, and rags stuffed in, and men with bloodshot eyes and
desperate faces sitting dogged with their hats on, staring at
nothing, or leaning on their ragged elbows on broken tables,
scowling from between their dirty hands at the world and the
future; while in higher rooms sat solitary girls in hard wooden
chairs; a pile of straw covered with a rug in the corner, and
a box to put a change of linen in, driving the needle silently
and ceaselessly through shirts or coats or trowsers, stooping
over in the foul air during the heat of the day, straining their
eyes when the day darkened to save a candle, hearing the
roar and the rush and the murmur far away, mingled in the
distance, as if they were dead and buried in their graves, and
dreaming a horrid dream until the resurrection.
Only sometimes an acute withering pain, as if something or
somebody were sewing the sewer and pierced her with a
needle sharp and burning, made the room swim and the straw
in the corner glimmer; and the girl dropped the work and
closed her eyes—the cheeks were black and hollow beneath
them—and she gasped and panted, and leaned back, while the
roar went on, and the hot sun glared, and the neighboring
church clock, striking the hour, seemed to beat on her heart
as it smote relentlessly the girl's returning consciousness.
Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose
little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in
darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked
back death and dishonor.
At neighboring corners were the reefs upon which human
health, hope, and happiness lay stranded, broken up and gone
to pieces. Bloated faces glowered through the open doors—
their humanity sunk away into mere bestiality. Human forms
—men no longer—lay on benches, hung over chairs, babbled,
maundered, shrieked or wept aloud; while women came in
and took black bottles from under tattered shawls, and said
nothing, but put down a piece of money; and the man behind
the counter said nothing, but took the money and filled
the bottles, which were hidden under the tattered shawl again,
and the speechless phantoms glided out, guarding that little
travesty of modesty even in that wild ruin.
In shops beyond, yards of tape, and papers of pins, and boots
and shoes and bread, and all the multitudinous things that are
bought and sold every minute, were being done up in papers
by complaisant, or surly, or conceited, or well-behaved clerks;
and in all the large and little houses of the city, in all the spacious
and narrow streets, there were women cooking, washing,
sweeping, scouring, rubbing, lifting, carrying, sewing, reading,
sleeping—tens and twenties and fifties and hundreds and thousands
of men, women, and children. More than two hundred
thousand of them were toiling, suffering, struggling, enjoying,
dreaming, despairing on a summer day, doing their share of
the world's work. The eye was full of the city's activity; the
ear was tired with its noise; the heart was sick with the
thought of it; the streets and houses swarmed with people,
but the world was out of town. There was nobody at home.
In the mighty stream, of which men and women are the
waves, that poured ceaselessly along its channels, friends met
surprised—touched each other's hands.
“Came in this morning—off to-night—droll it looks—nobody
in town—”
And the tumultuous throng bore them apart.
In the evening the Park Theatre is jammed to hear Mr.
Forrest, who made his first appearance in Philadelphia nine
or ten years ago, and is already a New York favorite. Contoit's
garden flutters with the cool dresses of the promenaders,
who move about between the arbors looking for friends and
awaiting ices. The click of billiard balls is heard in the glittering
café at the corner of Reade Street, and a gay company
smokes and sips at the Washington Hotel. Life bursts from
every door, from every window, but there is nobody in town.
More than two hundred thousand men, women, and children
go to their beds and wake up to the morrow, but there is nobody
in town. Nobody in town, because Mrs. Boniface Newt
& Co. have gone to Saratoga—no cathedral left, because some
plastering has tumbled off an upper stone—no forest left, because
a few leaves have whirled away. Nobody in town, because
Mrs. Boniface Newt & Co. have gone to Saratoga, and
are doing their part of the world's work there.
Mr. Alfred Dinks, Mr. Zephyr Wetherley, and Mr. Bowdoin
Beacon, were slowly sauntering down Broadway, when they
were overtaken and passed by a young woman walking rapidly
for so warm a morning.
There was an immense explosion of adjectives expressing
surprise when the three young gentlemen discovered that the
young lady who was passing them was Miss Amy Waring.
“Why, Miss Waring!” cried they, simultaneously.
She bowed and smiled. They lifted their hats.
“You in town!” said Mr. Beacon.
“In town?” echoed Mr. Dinks.
“Town?” murmured Mr. Wetherley.
“Town,” said Miss Waring, with her eyes sparkling.
“Where did you come from? I thought you were all at
Saratoga,” she continued.
“It's stupid there,” said Mr. Beacon.
“Quite stupid,” echoed Mr. Dinks.
“Stupid,” murmured Mr. Wetherley.
“Stupid?” asked the lady, this time making the interrogation
in the antistrophe of the chant.
“We wanted a little fun.”
“A little fun.”
“Fun,” replied the gentlemen.
“Well, I'm going about my business,” said she. “Good-morning.”
“About your business?”
“Your business?”
“Business?” murmured the youths, in order. Zephyr concluding.
“Business!” said Miss Amy, bursting into a little laugh, in
which the listless, perfectly good-humored youths cheerfully
joined.
“It's dreadful hot,” said Mr. Beacon.
“Oh! horrid!” said Mr. Dinks.
“Very,” said Zephyr. And the gentlemen wiped their
foreheads.
“Coming to Saratoga, Miss Waring?” they asked.
“Hardly, I think, but possibly,” said she, and moved away,
with her little basket; while the gentlemen, swearing at the
heat, the dust, and the smells, sauntered on, asserverated that
Amy Waring was an odd sort of girl; and finally went in to
the Washington Hotel, where each lolled back in an arm-chair,
with the white duck legs reposing in another—excepting
Mr. Dinks, who poised his boots upon the window-sill that
commanded Broadway; and so, comforted with a cigar in the
mouth, and a glass of iced port-wine sangaree in the hand,
the three young gentlemen labored through the hot hours until
dinner.
Amy Waring walked quite as rapidly as the heat would permit.
She crossed the Park, and, striking into Fulton Street,
continued toward the river, but turned into Water Street.
The old peach-women at the corners, sitting under huge cotton
umbrellas, and parching in the heat, saw the lovely face
going by, and marked the peculiarly earnest step, which the
sitters in the streets, and consequent sharp students of faces
and feet, easily enough recognized as the step of one who was
bound upon some especial errand. Clerks looked idly at her
from open shop doors, and from windows above; and when
she entered the marine region of Water Street, the heavy
stores and large houses, which here and there were covered
with a dull grime, as if the squalor within had exuded through
the dingy red bricks, seemed to glare at her unkindly, and sullenly
ask why youth, and beauty, and cleanly modesty should
insult with sweet contrast that sordid gloom.
The heat only made it worse. Half-naked children played
in the foul gutters with the pigs, which roamed freely at large,
and comfortably at home in the purlieus of the docks and the
quarter of poverty. Carts jostled by with hogsheads, and
boxes, and bales; the red-faced carmen, furious with their
horses, or smoking pipes whose odor did not sweeten the air,
staring, with rude, curious eyes, at the lady making her way
among the casks and bales upon the sidewalks. There was
nothing that could possibly cheer the eye or ear, or heart or
imagination, in any part of the street—not even the haggard
faces, thin with want, rusty with exposure, and dull with
drink, that listlessly looked down upon her from the windows
of lodging-houses.
The door of one of these was open, and Amy Waring went
in. She passed rapidly through the desolate entry and up the
dirty stairs with the broken railing—stairs that creaked under
her light step. At a room upon the back of the house, in the
third story, she stopped and tapped at the door. A voice
cried, “Who's there?” The girl answered, “Amy,” and the
door was immediately unlocked.
