The Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive Pieces Part 4

The hunted-looking man gave rather too dramatic a start of surprise when called back by the suspicious but curious James.

"It's worth $500," he said, "but I'll sell it for $50. I got into a little trouble at a hotel uptown, and I gotta sell it cheap."

Professionally, elaborately, impressively, the prosperous-looking man screwed a gla.s.s into his eye and squinted at the stone. Then, taking James several yards away from the hunted-looking man, he said: "That's a genuine stone worth easy $500 if it's worth a cent. I know a place they'll give us $500 for it this afternoon on account of me being in the trade. Now, you keep him here while I go round the corner and get $25 from my bank and then we'll buy that stone together and make $225 apiece before two hours is gone. I'll be right back."

And the prosperous-looking man vanished.

Then--as might have been expected--the hunted-looking man offered James the diamond for $25. "You can put one over on that big-guy," he said.

"Slip me $25 and we beat it before he gets back. You can clean up $450 on it. I'm afraid of that big guy; I think he's gone after a cop."

Now, these two confidence men had worked hard with James. He should not have taken such delight in their discomfiture as he climbed the steps of a bus and bade them farewell.

When he met the hunted-looking man and the prosperous-looking man together on Broadway a few days later they cut him, and I do blame them.

But they gave him a real adventure, at any rate, an adventure not to be met by those who squander their noon hour sitting dully in sedate restaurants.

Then there was the adventure of the picture gallery. James went on one occasion to a futurist exhibition in a tiny room not far from Madison Square. Galleries are not crowded at noon, but from the room that James approached came sounds not to be accounted for even by the crazy canvases on its walls. Of course James went in, and found a futurist painter wrestling with the agent of a collection agency. The combatants rose, and demanded James's name and address, that he might be summoned to court as a witness to a.s.sault and battery. But he never received either summons. Perhaps it was because he gave his name as Henry Smith of Yonkers.

Episodes like these have little charm for the middle-aged or for young men prematurely aged by spending their childhood in New York. These have their compensations, no doubt; their lives are not utterly bleak. But not for them is the daily romance of the young man who has just come to the city, who enjoys the proud novelty of working for wage, to whom every noon come sweet and strange the streets' compelling voices.

SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

Those people whom an hostile fate has made both athletes and reformers have among their aversions one which they proclaim with an enthusiasm so intense as to be almost infectious. They dislike pa.s.sionately the harmless, unnecessary sign board when it has been so placed as to become a feature of the rural landscape. Wooden cows silhouetted against the sunset only irritate them by their gentle celebrations of malted milk; the friendliest invitation to enjoy a cigarette, a corset or a digestive tablet fills them with anger if it comes from the face of a sea-shadowing cliff or from among the ancient hemlocks of a lofty mountain.

There is, of course, a modic.u.m of reason in their att.i.tude. It is wrong to paint the lily at all; it is doubly wrong to paint "Wear Rainproof Socks" across its virgin petals. It is wrong to mar beauty; that is an axiom of all aesthetics and of all ethics. It would be wrong, for example (although it would be highly amusing), to throw by means of a magic lantern great colored phrases against Niagara's sheet of foam; it would be wrong to carve (as many earnest readers of our magazines believe has been done), an insurance company's advertis.e.m.e.nt on the Rock of Gibraltar.

But the aesthete-reformer, in condemning such monstrosities as these, condemns merely an hypothesis. And since the hypothesis obviously is condemnable, he starts a crusade against the innocent facts upon which the purely hypothetical evil is based. It is wrong to mar the snowy splendor of the Alps; therefore, he says, the Jersey meadows must not bear upon their damp bosom the jubilant banner of an effective safety-razor. The sylvan fastness of our continent must be saved from the vandal; therefore, he says, you may not advertise breakfast food on a h.o.a.rding in the suburbs of Paterson.

If the aesthete-reformers in question would examine the subject dispa.s.sionately they would see that there is really nothing in the sign board as it stands to-day about which they may justly complain.

Advertisers do not deliberately annoy the public; they would not be so foolish as to seek to attract people by spoiling what was beautiful. It must be remembered that a landscape may be rustic and yet not beautiful.

The aesthete does not dislike, instead he hails with enthusiasm, a worn stone bearing the dim inscription "18 Mil. To Ye Cittye of London." Why then should he shudder when he sees a bright placard which shouts "18 Miles to the White Way Shoe Bazaar, Paterson's Pride"? To my mind there is a vivacity and a humanness about the second announcement utterly lacking in the first. The aesthete dotes upon the swinging boards which with crude paintings announce the presence of British inns. If "The Purple Cow, by Geoffrey Pump. Entertainment for Man and Beast" delights his soul, why does he turn in angry sorrow from "Stop at the New Mammoth Hotel when you are in Omaha--500 Rooms and Baths--$1.50 up--All Fireproof"? It is a cheerful invitation, and it should bring to jaded travelers through the track-pierced wastes a comfortable sense of approaching welcome and companions.h.i.+p.

There are many things which might be said in favor of urban sign boards, especially in favor of those elaborate arrangements in colored lights which make advertis.e.m.e.nts of table waters and dress fabrics as alluringly lovely as the electrical splendor of the first act of Dukas'

"Ariane et Barbe Bleu." But in the city the sign board is always something supererogatory; it may be decorative, but it is not necessary.

One does not need a six-yard announcement of a beer's merit when there are three saloons across the street; even the placards of plays line almost uselessly the thoroughfares of a district in which the theaters are conspicuous.

But in the country the sign boards are no luxuries but stern necessities. This the aesthete-reformers fail to see because they lack a sense of the unfitness of things. It is their incongruity which gives to rustic sign boards the magic of romance. The deliberately commercial announcement, firmly set in an innocent meadow or among the eternal hills, has exactly the same charm as a b.u.t.tercup in a city street or a gray wood-dove fluttering among the stern eaves of an apartment house.

What a benefaction to humanity these rural sign boards are! To the farmer they are (in addition to being a source of revenue) a piquant suggestion of the wise and wealthy city. He loves and fears the city, as mankind always loves and fears the unknown. Once he thought that it was paved with gold. He must have thought so, otherwise how could he have accounted for the existence of gold bricks? He is less credulous now, but still the big signs down where the track cuts across the old pasture pleasantly thrill his fancy.

And what would a railway journey be without these gay and civilizing reminders? They hide the shame of black and suicidal bogs with cheery hints of vaudeville beyond, they throw before the privacy of farmhouses a decent veil of cigarette advertis.e.m.e.nts. He who speeds vacation-ward from the city is glad of them, for they remind him that he is where factories and huge shops may come only in this pictured guise, thin painted ghosts of their noisy selves. He who gladly speeds back to domesticity and the ordered comforts of metropolitan life sees them as welcoming seneschals, glorious advance-posts of civilization. They are the least commercial of all commercial things, they are as human and as delightful as explorers or valentines.

THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE

Whenever I read Mr. Chester Firkins' excellent poem "On a Subway Express" I am filled with amazement. It is not strange that Mr. Firkins turned the subway into poetry, it is strange that the subway does not turn every one of its pa.s.sengers into a poet.

There are, it is true, more comfortable means of locomotion than the subway; there are conveyances less crowded, better ventilated, cooler in Summer, warmer in Winter. A little discomfort, however, is an appropriate accompaniment of adventure. And subway-riding is a splendid adventure, a radiant bit of romance set in the gray fabric of the work-a-day world.

The aeroplane has been celebrated so enthusiastically in the course of its brief life that it must by now be a most offensively conceited machine. Yet an aeroplane ride, however picturesque and dangerous, has about it far less of essential romance than a ride in the subway. He who sails through the sky directs, so nearly as is possible, his course; he handles levers, steers, goes up or down, to the left or the right. Or if he is a pa.s.senger, he has, at any rate, full knowledge of what is going on around him, he sees his course before him, he can call out to the man at the helm: "Look out for that cornet's hair! Turn to the left or the point of that star will puncture our sail!"

Now, unseen dangers are more thrilling than those seen; the aeroplane journey has about it inevitably something prosaic. This is the great charm of the subway, that the pa.s.sengers, the guards, too, for that matter, give themselves up to adventure with a blind and beautiful recklessness. They leave the accustomed sunlight and plunge into subterranean caverns, into a region far more mysterious than the candid air, into a region which since mankind was young has been a.s.sociated with death. Before an awed and admiring crowd, the circus acrobat is shut into a hollow ball and catapulted across the rings; with not even a sense of his own bravado, the subway pa.s.senger is shut into a box and shot twenty miles through the earth.

Once there lived on West One Hundred and Eighty-second Street a man of uncompromising practicality, a stern rationalist. He was as advanced as anything! He believed in the materialistic interpretation of history, economic determinism, and radium; this, he said, with some pride, was his Creed. Often he expressed his loathing for "flesh-food," more frequently for "Middle Cla.s.s morality," most frequently for faith.

"Faith is stupidity," he would say. "Look before you leap! It makes me sick to see the way people have been humbugged in all ages. The capitalist cla.s.s has told them something was true, something n.o.body could understand, and they've--blindly accepted it, the idiots! I believe in what I see--I don't take chances. I don't trust anybody but myself."

Yet every day this man would give himself up to the subway with a sweet and child-like faith. As he sat in the speeding car, he could not see his way, he had no chance of directing it. He trusted that the train would keep to its route, that it would stop at Fourteenth Street and let him off. He could not keep it from taking him under the river and hurling him out into some strange Brooklyn desert. When he started for home in the evening, he read the words "Dyckman Street" on the car window with a medieval simplicity, and on the guarantee of these printed words, placed there by minions of the capitalist cla.s.s, he gave up the privilege of directing his course. The train, he believed, would not at Ninety-sixth Street be switched off to a Bronx track; the sign told him that he was safe, and he believed it.

So the subway caused him to exercise the virtue of faith, made him, for a time, really a human being. Perhaps it is the sharing of this faith that makes a subway crowd so democratic. Surely there is some subtly powerful influence at work, changing men and women as soon as they take their seats, or straps.

For one thing, they become alike in appearance. The glare of the electric light unifies them, modifying swarthy faces and faces delicately rouged until they are nearly of one hue. Then, the differences of att.i.tude are lost, and att.i.tudes are great instruments of subordination. The ragged bootblack does not kneel at the broker's feet; he sits close beside him, or perhaps, comfortably at rest, watches the broker clutch a strap and struggle to keep his footing.

"Tired clerks, pale girls, street-cleaners, business men, boys, priests and sailors, drunkards, students, thieves"--all gain a new sincerity.

Neither the millionaire's imperiousness nor the beggar's professional humility can make the train go faster, so both are laid aside.

Distinctions of race and caste grow insignificant, as in a company confronting one peril or one G.o.d. This is not theory, it is fact. The subway pa.s.senger purchases a nickel's worth of speed and he must take with it a nickel's worth of democracy.

Perhaps it is the youthful romanticism of America which makes our subways so much more exciting than those of Europe. The Englishman is too cautious and too conservative to trust himself away from the earth's surface more than two minutes at a time. So the trains that run through the London tube are tame, cowardly things. They timidly run underground for half a mile or so and pop their heads out into the air and sunlight or fog at every station.

But the New York subway train is ready to take a chance. It dives into the earth and "stays under," like a brave diver, for an hour at a time.

And when it does emerge, what splendor attends its coming! There is a glimmer of suns.h.i.+ne at the One Hundred and Sixteenth Street Station; the blue and white of the walls and pillars reflect a light not wholly artificial. Then there is a brief stretch of fantastically broken darkness. Pa.s.sengers in the first car can see ahead of them, at Manhattan Street, a great door of suns.h.i.+ne. At last there is a strange change in the rumble of the wheels, for the echoing roof and walls are gone, and the train leaves its tunnel not to run humbly over the ground, but to rise higher and higher until it comes to a sudden halt above the chimneys and tree tops. To say that the grub becomes a b.u.t.terfly does not fit the case, for the grub is a slow-moving beast and a b.u.t.terfly's course is capricious. Rather, it is as if, by some tremendous magic, a great snake became a soaring eagle.

And how keenly all the pa.s.sengers enjoy their few seconds in the open air! When they hurried down the steps to the train, they were scornful of the atmosphere they were leaving, they had no thought of tasting wind and watching sunlight. Now they are become, for the moment, connoisseurs of these delectable things; they wish the train would linger at Manhattan Street, not inevitably plunge at once into its roaring cavern.

But the train is wise, it knows brevity is essential to all exquisite things, so it gives its pa.s.sengers only an evanescent glimpse of the glories they have just now learned to appreciate.

This is a part of the great conspiracy of the subway. It is regarded only as a swift and convenient and uncomfortable carrier, and it has no wish to be otherwise interpreted. But those who have studied it know the hidden purposes it constantly and effectively serves. It is showing our generation the value of mankind's commonest and most precious gifts, by taking them away.

Now, it is good for man or beast to stand on solid ground in the sunlight, breathing clean air. Also fellows.h.i.+p is good, and the talk of friends. We forgot the value of these, we shut ourselves up in dark rooms and we spared no time to social exercise. Then--to punish and cure our folly--came the subway, making our journeys things close and dark in which conversation is a matter of desperate effort. And now how kind and talkative are people who go home together from the subway station after their daily disciplinary ride! They are grateful, too--although it may be subconsciously--for the familiar sights and sounds of the earth, for houses and streets and light that does not come from a wire in a bottle.

They take gladly the great common things; they are simple, natural, democratic.

So they spend much of their leisure out of doors, these men and women who are underground two hours every weekday. In the evenings and on Sunday afternoons, they walk the pleasant streets with eager delight.

They are curious about the loveliness far beneath which they daily speed. They have learned something of the art of life.

Of course, the subway has its incidental charms--its gay fresco of advertis.e.m.e.nts, for instance, and its faint mysterious thunder when it runs near the surface of the street on which we stand. But its chief service to man--perhaps its reason for existence--is that it gives him adventure. In this adventure he meets the spirit of faith and the spirit of democracy, which is an aspect of charity. And by their influence he becomes, surely though but for a time, as a little child.

THE URBAN CHANTICLEER

If the rooster selected tree-tops for his roosting, crowed mournfully at the moon, and were a wild, unfriendly bird, every man's hand would be against him. But we forgive him his ugliness and conceit, not only because he is a dutiful citizen of the barnyard, but also because now, as in the days of the n.o.ble Horatio, he obligingly acts as "trumpet to the morn." On account of this romantic and sometimes useful custom, he wears a sentimental halo. M. Rostand has made him the hero of a drama.

When will some wise playwright celebrate his urban prototype, the alarm clock?

The spirit in which this question is asked is not wholly one of mockery.

For the alarm clock is close to humanity; in the city household, few bits of furniture are more personal and necessary. It is a faithful servant, this loud-voiced creature of steel and gla.s.s, obedient, punctual, patient. And its a.s.sociation with its owner, I had almost written its master, is so peculiarly intimate as to give it a personality and an att.i.tude toward life.

In the first place, it is irresistibly egotistic. There are some usual possessions which become subconscious things, their ident.i.ties merging with the shadows of the vague land of habit. One may, for instance, possess a watch and yet not be aware of the watch as he is aware of his alarm clock. He lifts it from and returns it to his pocket; he winds it, with a gesture almost involuntary; he takes his information from his dial as thoughtlessly as he takes his breath from the atmosphere. Though it be made of fine gold, cunningly chased and blazoned with precious stones, it is to him, after the first delight of its acquisition, the unregarded means to an important end. So long as it serves him unprotestingly, he thinks of it no more than of his soul. People do not specifically ask him to consult his watch, they ask, "What time is it?"

and even "Have you the time?"

Not thus does an alarm clock sink into oblivion. At least twice in twenty-four hours its owner must be vividly aware of its existence. It imperiously demands of him conscious action. In the morning clangorously, at night dumbly, it insists on attention. He must with thought adjust its mechanism, he must give it intelligent orders. And whether he rises at its summons or instead shuts out with a pillow its voice and that of conscience, he cannot ignore it. By no effort of will could Frankenstein forget his monster.