Rus in Urbe: Brief Memoranda

HE who comes to the city from country quiet and nights of sweet, unbroken slumber (O noctes cœnœque Deum!), and thinks still to enjoy his wonted rest, has not reckoned with his host. Like Sir Scudamore, he has accepted the hospitalities of Blacksmith Care, and pays dearly for the favor.

The new-comer and unseasoned citizen is at first all auditory nerve. A thorn in the pillow is slight in comparison with having a compendious pandemonium, in active operation, in that quarter. Sir Scudamore’s case further holds good ; for if by fortune any little nap upon my heavie eyelids chaunce to fall, like him I soone awake and start up, as one affrayed. To give this insomnious cruelty a touch of imagination, and thereby make the literal experience somewhat more tolerable, in these frequently recurring waking intervals, I feign to myself that what I hear of din, ring, clatter, and rumble comprises all the sounds proper and natural to a sort of unique wild beast, — a ferine monster, sole of its kind, like the Minotaur, or that fourfooted giant terror which no Eskimo has beheld, and lived afterward. My wild beast is ever on the point of escaping its heroic and titan keepers (whoever they may be). Now it growls or grinds its teeth, loud gnashing in perilous nearness to the spot where I hope to snatch a little fearful slumber. Now it roars far away, or grumbles in hoarse throttled tones, as its keepers hold it in firmer leash, and give it a strong tug, yonder. And now, at last, it purrs in a halfsleep ; somebody has thrown it a honeysop or a cake made of poppy seeds, its effects warranted to last but a minute, when again, in menacing crescendo, rises the monster’s roar.

In these idle and unwilling vigils — for the keepers surely can manage without concern of mine their ancient charge — a night-time memory of the day-time street floats through the mind ; impressing me with its pageant dumbness, — utter silence, it now seems to me, so far as human voices go. I recall a sliding vision of passing pedestrians, of the halfmechanical, half-conscious instant’s inspection exchanged between these coming and those going ; but such reciprocal vague glances only serve to emphasize the fact that none exchange speech, gliding by and on in the manner of pantomime. The remembered city street is but a vast dumb-show; and the sounds to which it was set seem to have had only an elemental causation, such as might push forward a tidal wave, waken all the ordnance of the heavens, or jar the earth to the foundations thereof.

A SHADOW OF THE NIGHT.

Remembering the dictum of an ancient authority as to the greatest civic blessing which can come with one’s birthright, I would so far modify the maxim as to say, The greatest blessing is to have been born and bred in the country ; then to come, while still in pliant youth, to live in a great city; but by all means to have been born in the country. I try to think what may be the city’s equivalent for those sunlighted, half mist-veiled memories of the child whose infancy was spent close to the heart of nature, and to whom, in his sweetly vague reminiscences, the creation of the world will seem to have been coeval with his own first breath of life, or as happening only a little time before his coming to take possession, in his small Adamic sovereignty: the wood flowers, young; the birds in the thicket, young; the lambs of the pasture, — all young, to match his own adolescence ! Only a few gray patriarchal rocks, a few giant trees grown to wisdom and crooning ways of sheltering protection, — all for his young sake, and preparatory to his advent; for such is the all-believing, guileless egotism of childlife amidst natural scenes. The rain, the wind, the frost, even the treasures of the snow, are freshly handed down wonders for his delectation; above all, for him are the shining heavens and the God there, coextensive, in his young worship, with the orb of the sky, and thought of by him as the old young world (where all who lived had child-hearts) appears to have thought of the serene Jove.

What can the child born and bred in the town be given for his juvenile sustenance, — as the mulberry leaf for his thoughts to feed upon, and therefrom make silken tissue of fancy and romance ? And yet, on the other hand, the city child early gains an apprehension of the nomenclature and significance of the arts, of polite life, and of social values generally. He learns to express himself more exactly, and oftentimes with a more sincere utterance, or at least with a naïveté that is less troubled by self-consciousness, than is observed in the country child. He may more easily learn control of himself, which is not necessarily repression, not the painful, Spartan-like keeping hack of young emotion, too often the fate of those reared far in the country, and remote from congenial interests and facile conversation.

One notable difference between the social life of the city and that of the country — and not in the latter’s favor — is the country’s insistent dwelling upon the details of existence rather than upon its main interests. There is in the socalled “ rural districts ” a prevailing and strenuous curiosity combined with a certain unfortunate assumption of indifference; likewise, a caution which borders upon distrust, in entering upon friendly relations with the new-comer. It is as though the inhabitants had never recovered from their pristine fear of surprise and attack by the aborigines. We of the country, at first, keep the stranger aloof, somewhat as our ancestors would have done with the red autochthons, until it, was determined whether the visitors were friendly Indians or otherwise.

“ When I first came to the city to live,” said the refugee from small-town life, “ one thing greatly puzzled me. In the street, I sometimes used to fancy that the passers-by thought they recognized me as an acquaintance ; then I surmised some disorder in my attire; for nearly every one I passed looked quite directly at me. (Do not laugli at the apparent conceitedness of all this.) But by and by I learned that it was the way of the city, for people, as they passed, to look at one another. T learned to do it myself, and enjoyed it greatly. In the country village, you know, if we have not been previously introduced to the person whom we pass on the street, it is courtesy to turn our eyes away from him, or to look straight ahead, at least, in an abstracted manner, and as though we did n’t see him .at all! ”

The burden of individuality weighs heavily upon us, in the country. The word we utter reverberates oppressively in the chamber of our own soul (and besides, we sometimes fancy it is “heard round the world ”). The city knows that no individual utterance is long heard or attended to, that the monologue is not permitted, that we cannot assign constant, values to fluotuating human thought, that the light touch is preservative of social amenity, and that life is too serious to be taken seriously at all times.

But the city errs in despising the countryman’s deliberation of mind and tardigrade movements of speech. “ You country people mean well, but you are so slow in expressing your meaning,” said a frank urban commentator; forgetting that this defect is not innate in individuals, but is due rather to the nature of the place they live in, its cramped activities, and its absence of vitalizing arts and industries. Suffices Cæsar’s remark on a certain mountain-locked division of the Gauls, that “they are restrained by the nature of the place.”

“ Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?” The conditions to which we were born, our early constituents, still faithfully adhere to us wherever we go. Intimations of their close following, of an almost affectionate tenacity on the part of the life that has been ours, meet us wherever we turn. It was only a Rhœcus, a born oppidan and gownsman, who could have killed the honey bee with its divine message of love. They do not thus whom the country has held in strong arms, close to her great heart. So, to the poet appeared the eagle leisurely flying over the city in the blue summer morning. And the rare thrush, that on his autumnal migration was buffeted by the storm one black night, and that fluttered in at the window, seemed to have chosen his hostelry with reference to the fact that its inmates are such lovers of birds they have their house full of them. Again, how did it happen that when S—was lodging for a fortnight at a hotel in the very heart of the city, a little horse-chestnut tree went out of its way to lift a signal in front of his window ? It was mid-January ; but two or three days after his arrival he noticed that the buds on a certain twig near his window were much swollen. Finally, two perfect though diminutive leaves appeared, in lively springtime green. This delicate recognition on the part of the tree that S—is an arboriculturist could be but of fleeting duration, and on the following morning the twin leaves were dun as autumn, from the frost. Granted that the tree stood in a warm southern angle of the building, and that the branch bearing the leaves was next the sunshiny wall, I have yet a superstition, which is akin to faith, that the manifestation was directed towards my friend alone, — or at least that he was directed towards the manifestation ; for another might have sojourned, and departed, without once noting the wistful effort of the little tree. . . .

One of those who, having some readiness with the pen, some touch of cleverness in the arts, coin the same into means of subsistence. In a reconstructed or an adapted Virgil, the text would refer to the Muse herself as experimenting tenui avenâ. A girl from the country, or village bred, wonted to the kindly but pragmatic methods of that sort of environment, she told me that despite the "enlarged ” opportunities of city life, the greater stimulus to thought afforded by its varied activities, the advantages that proceed from emulation between fellowartists and stragglers, — despite all these things, she had yet some inclination, almost instinctive, to revert to the old condition. “ But,” she added, “ in reality I enjoy all that was most to be enjoyed in village life right here in Anonyma Village.”

I asked, “ Where is Anonyma Village ? ”

“ Oh, anywhere from West — th Street until you come to the Square. You know I lodge, and partly eater for myself. Contrary to usual feminine habit, I cannot content myself with a cup of tea. I believe I have a little touch of the epicure, and this sends me, having reduced the matter by practical experimentation, to one place for delicious rolls, to another for butter and eggs, to still another for fruit. I know, pleasantly, all the shop people and their humbler customers, and they know me. If I have not called lately, I am flattered by the fears expressed that I may have been out of health. Where I go for the incest chops, great Romeo, the mournfulest, unwieldiest mastiff puppy in the world, approaches, and takes me cordially by the hand. All this I enjoy wholesomely, and am free from all annoyance that comes from the close neighborly relations of small-town life. The Anonyma Villagers do not know my name, I do not know theirs, and yet the human amenities existing between us are just as complete. I have Pilgrim’s Progress designations for the people I meet, which suit them better, in my opinion, than their own patronymics.”

“ I said I was something of an epicure, but I am ashamed to confess that I do not always live up to my pretensions on that score. The other day I had too much work on hand for humane considerations, and so treated myself little better than a beast of burden. I took my hasty luncheon, as I have seen the big draught, horses take theirs, from what you might call a nose-bag; for, to save time and the trouble of brushing up the crumbs, I let them fall back into the little paper sack in which the baker puts my favorite cakes the moment he sees my face at the shop door. . . .

“ I double all the pleasures that come in my way by a method similar to that which a young sewing-girl of my acquaintance has adopted. If anybody gives her a winter rose, she sets the flower in front of her looking-glass, where its clear, still reflection gives her a second rose, in every respect as satisfying to the eye as the first and tangible rose. One is fortunate to have the sort of temperament in which is fitted a magic mirror. I take the best of care, however, to keep disagreeable objects as far removed as possible from its reflecting surface.”

“Yes. Sometimes this room in which I live, like a lone spider in her web, gets to fitting too closely, like a skullcap, about the head, and how I ache then to pull it off and cast it away utterly ! And the room seems equally oppressed with its inmate’s individuality. Even repeated little mechanical acts, such as opening my writing-desk or a drawer with toilet articles in it, the brushing of my hair, or the washing of my hands, have a kind of oppressive and bruising frequency and familiarity. I learn what Shelley means when he speaks of one who

I make an involuntary movement towards my wrap and hat; but no, I must write my allotted number of ‘words ’ before I can throw off the skullcap and go free. ... I sometimes think the only difference between this mode of life and that of one cast on a desert island is that mine can temporarily be suspended. I can run out and see a friend when my work is done, or take a turn, at least, through Anonyma Village, while the islander has no respite; but the absolute equality of loneliness and isolation, in either case, is much the same.”

In jotting down these fragments of our conversation, my thoughts are busy with the idea that, notwithstanding all the changes which have come over the feminine lot in the way of extended employment, of greater freedom to know, to think, and to act, the last improver of the latest opportunities vouchsafed her has not lost any essential touch of kinship with ideal womanhood in ages gone. The “ rype and sad corage ” of Griselde, of whom her poet says,

is equally the attribute of her whose industry it is, amidst the jar and agitations of a great city, to tie herself to the desk and write her thousand “words” per diem. . . .

Since yesterday my modern counterpart of Griselde, by some stroke of fancy dwelling on the situation, has been transformed into The Modern Britomart, and I shall here set down a brief legend of her maiden-knight-errantry (with due apologies to Spenser) : —

Of the cries of street venders, and of old-clothes-and-bottles men. These seem to proceed from automatic bodies constructed for the sole purpose of producing the phrases pertaining to the owners’ callings; human oddities, parrot-men, with throats shaped somewhat to accommodate and illustrate vox humana, but of imperfect utterance save in the one lesson. Who thinks of these annunciators as ever speaking out of their rote jargon, in the ordinary variable tones of their fellow-beings ? A periodical street cry of this neighborhood translates itself to the half-attentive ear as “ Anna Maria! Anna Maria ! ” and another seems drawlingly to intone, “Tired, — oh, so tired ! ” Still another has chosen to launch its petition upon the city air in musical trisyllabic form that has something of pleasant rurality, and even of field-going suggestion. Unlike the bawling and obstreperous notes of most of its congeners, it chimes in delicately-humorously with the harsher and coarser vocalities of the peripatetic folk.

A troop of sign-bearing men, breasts and backs placarded with some emblazoned commercial legend, have just passed. Their natural history, for the moment, became distinctly differentiated from that of genus homo. The description given of certain coleoptera seemed better to apply to that silent and uncommunicative procession as of lumbering and sharded beetles. But I remembered that the beetle may have an industry all its own, which has food for its chief object, and that the commodity which these human beetles received in return for their shuffling activity was well earned in their benumbed progress, namely, a hot dinner on a cold day. I also remembered having heard a designation which they enjoy at the hands of their own social constituency, and which, so far as delicate verbal discrimination can, lifts them out of the status of tramp-hood into an element somewhat akin to romance. And so I shall not always speak of them as “ Walking Advertisements,” but sometimes as

“THE MEN WITH BANNERS.”

To how many persons does a great city give employment, in all possible professions and quasi-professions ! To how many, also, it gives employment who are not observed to be employed: say, the gods of the theatre; the connoisseur of kleptomania, who walks the floor of the vast emporium, the dry goods store of modern days ; the quiet citizen, who carries in his pocket a scowling souvenir from the Rogues’ Gallery, or in his mind’s shrewd eye a replica of that souvenir. How much and what variety of busy secret service, matter-of-fact to those engaged in it, but of what curious or thrilling interest to an outsider inducted into its methods ! The outsider, however, is seldom so favored, except as the alert and semi-inventive newspaper reporter serves up the details of these odd, unclassified occupations. I should like to meet (and hear his history from his own lips) the Man Who Looks Down, — who is said to have made a comfortable fortune from the findings of the pavement, through years of brow-bent industry. And if she still travels up and down in the street cars, I should like to discover the Old Woman with the Pincushion. Of her there lingers the tradition that she was the best “spotter” in the employ of the street railway, and the haunting dread of dishonest conductors. It did not matter that she was halt and decrepit, deaf as an adder, or that she could not read and write. Under the shawl that comforted her shivering bones she held her recording pincushion, into which, for every new passenger entering the car, she slipped a shining tally, and so kept the score ; every evening carrying the cushion full of pins to her employers. I have heard she drew some sagacious deductions regarding traveling humanity, the while she pursued her detective calling. Many rich people were observed to be addicted to cheating as to car fares : partly because of the satisfaction the “ coming it over ” the company afforded them, and partly because, being usually persons of meagre financial beginnings, the long hoarding of small gains was still dear to their souls ; although the early necessity had long since passed away, the force of acquisitive habit remained unabated. Thus, in effect, deposed the Old Woman with the Pincushion.

Grace Church, mediæval and saintly amid the whirl and modernness of things, is the best preacher, the best sermon. One half forgets that the edifice is for worship ; such a worshiper it lifts itself to the sky, particularly at evening, its gray spire softly illuminated from the street lamps. It looks then more like some upshoot of natural cliff than the structure of human hands. Now might the poet reaffirm,

It seems needless to enter, while so much of worship is suggested and directed by the mere exterior of the house of God.

The evening vista of the city street, looking westward, is of passing and almost indescribable beauty. The lingering roseate smile of the day that has just departed ; the gathering purple mistiness at the street’s far end, with perhaps the suggested line of the river ; the jagged cliff-like silhouette of roofs on either side; then, the street lamp, the gas jet, or the electric light’s moon-like orb, — aluminous bubble that might detach itself and float away without warning, — all make up a glimpse into fairyland, which one forgets as among the mere scenic treasures of the eye, to be remembered as preciously as a lovely prospect in nature is guarded by the memory.

The slipperiness of the pavement, when there was neither frost nor ice to account for such a condition was explained to me as due to a sort of mucilage formed by the pressure of shoe leather on the wet pavement, perhaps some detritus of the stone itself added to the mixture. It was also said that in the city of London the mud of the street produces on all it touches an indelible red stain, resulting from the deposited rust of the nails in the horses’ shoes and other iron contacts.

More trying than the mud itself is a condition of the city street that frets with its intolerable paradox. It is

THE WINTER DUST.

It might not be uninteresting to find out how Wan Lee and Ton Sing view the instruction they receive from the young lady who, every first day of the week, on good works intent, undertakes to impart Scriptural and moral precepts to a Sunday-school class composed of polite but reserved Mongolians. The more I see of these strangers from the Celestial Empire, the more am I impressed by their apparent non-attention to the details of a life and civic condition which are, for them, but passing. Reticent, imperturbable, impassive, yet I should not say meek ; for even in the cases where these Orientals come off badly and suffer chastisement at Western hands, the matter would seem of too irrelevant and transient a nature to excite great sorrow or wrath animis celestibus. It may be that the sensibilities of the race have been left, for convenience, at home. Yesterday, however, in a train on the elevated road, I saw what I had never before seen, — a Chinaman with vivacious manner and movements almost amounting to fidgets. He looked out of the car window with keen and mobile interest in all he saw ; tapped the floor lightly with the foot of one leg crossed over the other ; chatted, laughed heartily, evidently indulging in pungent remarks addressed to his vis-à-vis and fellowcountryman, a Chinaman of the typical inexpressive sort. The tones of their voices, in their muffled or muted quality, sent me very far back for a comparison : the very same guttural resonance as in the blunt little echo which country children hear when indulging in vocal practice, with heads hanging well over the rim of an empty rain-barrel!

Perhaps we more easily arrive at the views entertained with regard to the Occident by the Chinaman’s near neighbors, our visitors from the ancient isle of Cipango. On this subject I take to witness the subtle frankness of a young Japanese traveler whom I lately met, and who is at present engaged in investigating the theory and practice of art as exemplified in the greatest city of the Western continent. In the course of a conversation on this topic, he remarked on our very general application of the word art, as art schools, art criticism, art treasures. The lady who was our hostess then showed him some paintings, commendable for the attention bestowed upon detail and finish rather than for motive or for vigor of treatment. Having examined them most deferentially, he observed, with an Oriental docility and amenableness in his tones, “ And these, — you call them art paintings, do you not ? ”

In the days of old New York, before the introduction of Croton water, I am told, the water supply generally was of a poor order. A well in Chatham Street was exceptionally good, and greatly esteemed. From this unfailing source the venders used to sell the precious fluid to an extensive neighborhood. Especially was it valued for tea-drawing purposes. Therefore, towards evening, many a neat maid, with kettle in hand, might have been seen at the front door, awaiting the water-seller, who dealt out his stores for a few pennies per quart. One of the lost idyls of the city.

THE NYMPH OF THE WISTARIA.

How is it that the curiously constructed adjective opinionated is never apphed except with some flavor of reprehension ? If the word meant merely “ to be furnished, with an opinion ” (as it legitimately might mean), then how inconsistent is the odium which attaches to its use! Such, apparently, is the necessity — artistic, social, ethical — of having an opinion, in these days, and of stating it, too, that to be defined as “ opinionless ” would seem more nearly to indicate a hopeless condition of reprobation. But is there such a necessity, except as the uneasy and all-gathering mood of the times dictates ? Why must one have an opinion as to the enigmatic kernel contained in Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ? Why must one have an opinion as to the operas of Wagner (especially when one is better fitted to express appreciation, or stricture, with reference to a simple ballad) ? Why must one damn with loud praises, or praise with exact but harmless damnations (in the running parlance of art criticism), the last foreign painter’s exhibition of pictures ? Why must one have read Robert Elsmere, and have views thereon ? Why must one be decisive whether the latest claimant for the wreath of fiction be come to stay, to win and wear it, as the forlorn hope of a new and more virile school of novelists, or whether, with prodigious and overtopping self-confidence, he has but temporarily mesmerized us, as it were, into an attitude of sublime expectance with regard to his errand ? To those who would take care to have their opinions thoroughly revised and “ up to date,” the trouble of entertaining an opinion might well give pause to rash hospitality. A wearer of the purple once said, “ It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be troubled in our soul.” But such imperial reservation and ease seem out of the question in our day. Since there is no law compelling opinion and verdict, as there is compelling the citizen to serve as a juror, I wonder that we feel such obligation, daily and hourly, to take upon ourselves the trying of cases and the judicial sentence.

WORLDLY-WISE.

I.

II.

A MONARCH OF GRIMACE.

“ Give me but the superfluities of life,” was illustrated for me en genre this evening. Passing the baker’s shop which figures in my friend’s commissariat, I observed a sallow, hollow-eyed newsboy, of the brownie type, gazing intently in at the window with its display of comestibles. Inherited Saxon charity could predicate nothing but the sore need of bread. “ What do you see in the window that you want ? ” I asked. The elfish eyes turned upon me with an intensity of fascinated reminiscence and dawning expectation, which to me meant little less than the delirium of absolute starvation. One hoarse syllable formed itself in the brownie’s throat, and was delivered eagerly at his wide mouth, — “ Cake ! ”

This was such an anticlimax to what my conventionally built views of hungry indigence had anticipated that for a moment I could say nothing. Then a sense of humor came to relieve the embarrassment, with an odd perversion of a sacred text, thus changed to fit the occasion, “ He asked for cake, and ye gave him bread.” To prevent this cruelty being realized, the bankrupt vender of the news and I proceeded to lay out some pennies on the desired delicacy. And I was well repaid by the opportunity of revising and enlarging my ideas of charity and the special unforeseen exigencies which might call it forth. And why not so ? Doubtless, at that very moment, in New York city, to say nothing of all suburban United States, there were more persons who craved (and perhaps needed) “cake” than there were who lacked bread.

When we have little at our disposal to give, I notice that, instinctively, we choose some least measure in which to present the offering. A small cup overbrimmed tricks the imagination, —both that of the giver and of the receiver; whereas the same quantity in a larger vessel would miss of such an effect. And moreover, if a few drops, however precious, be lost hy the overbrimming of the vessel, why, the loss seems well incurred, as a sacred libation to the goddess Benevolentia.

This subject of generosity in giving, whether simple alms-dropping charity or substantial kindness shown towards one’s friends, has many sides, many fine shadings of difference. For one, L— furnishes an interesting illustration. She is always wishing for the proverbial “ million,” that she may bestow upon some fresh object of her quickly stirred sympathies the moiety of that sum. She never understands the flick of goodnatured amusement which springs upon her the inquiry, “ But why not as well wish that ‘ M. or N., as the case may be,’ had a half million dollars by his own spontaneous good fortune, unencumbered by the debt of gratitude, which many find too burdensome ?” I do not say that, in addition to her really humane desire to benefit a deserving and suffering person, this generous lady evidences, in her impulsive and bounteous desires, that she would like the solidity and security of finance enabling her, offhand, to disburse so magnificent a sum. And yet! the consciousness that one possesses more than one needs for his individual uses is as a great fire built of fat wood, and ready for warming his hearth when need shall be, or as abundance of old wine in the cellar. Even the feigning of such a margin to one’s means seems to give comfort. If so, the oft - remarked wastefulness of the very poor readily finds its rationale. In lavishing carelessly their scant substance, they may persuade themselves, one brief moment, that they possess superfluity, the undoubted evidence of wealth ! Making all allowance for absolute human compassion, perhaps this same unconscious logic runs through and leavens the charities of the poor to the still poorer (and I observe that it is those whose outward appearance gives token of a scarcely tolerable poverty who are readiest to bestow their doles). If an individual of this class were gifted with the faculty of introspective analysis,—which Heaven forbid ! — the inner voice might be forced to yield up some such confession as this : “I thought I was poor, but I comfort myself that I am less so, having seen that there is some one who is much poorer, and to whom I in my poverty could give ! ”

I think I never pitied any beggar so much as I pity those who ordinarily fee the beggar. The little argument of selfpity is so mixed up, unconsciously, with the volitional altruism of their act. The rich man has no occasion to encourage his own confidence in the size and stability of his worldly possessions ; it is not necessary he should give to a beggar ; he has but to remember his bank account!

To only one class of the human pilgrim, I infer, is it left to discover the poetry residing in the practice of reasonable economy. The pleasures of an artistic thrift are about equally shut away from those whose impedimenta are all too light for the journey’s necessities and those who are encumbered far beyond their need. Extremes meet: Lazarus will not, if he can help it, exercise economy, for the so doing would only be a reminder of his poverty-stricken condition ; and Dives is deterred therefrom for the very obvious and valid reason that there is no flavor in pretended rigor, no delight in sham battle. It is, then, left to those said to be "in moderate circumstances ” to find out what enjoyments may reside in the scheme of “plain living and high thinking,” — theirs to make acceptable offering to “ Holy St. Poverty.”

Edith M. Thomas.