Part 5

He who loves New York loves its streets for what they have been and are to him, not for what they may seem to those who do not use them. They who know the town best become as homesick when away from it for the straightness of the well-kept streets up-town as for the crookedness and quaintness of the noisy thoroughfares below. The straightness, they point out complacently, is very convenient for getting about, just as the numbering system makes it easy for strangers. On the walk up-town they enjoy looking down upon the expected unexpectedness of the odd little cross streets, which twist and turn or end suddenly in blank walls, or are crossed by passageways in mid-air, like the Bridge of Sighs, down Franklin Street, from the Criminal Court-house to the Tombs. But farther along in their walk they are just as fond of looking down the perspective of the straight side streets from the central spine of Fifth Avenue past block after block of New York homes, away down beyond the almost-converging rows of even lamp-posts to the Hudson and the purple Palisades of Jersey, with the glorious gleam and glow of the sunset; while the energetic "L" trains scurry past, one after another, trailing beautiful swirls of steam and carrying other New Yorkers to other homes. None of this could be enjoyed if the cross streets tied knots in themselves like those in London and some American cities. Even outsiders appreciate these characteristic New York vistas; and nearly every poet who comes to town discovers its symbolic incongruity afresh and sings it to those who have enjoyed it before he was born, just as most young writers of prose feel called upon to turn their attention the other way and unearth the great East Side of New York.

There is no such thing as a typical cross street to New Yorkers. Individually, each thoroughfare departs as widely from the type as the men who walk along them differ from the figure known in certain parts of this country as the typical New Yorker. In New York there is no typical New Yorker. These so-called similar streets, which look so much alike to a visitor driving up Fifth Avenue, end so very differently. Some of them, for instance, after beginning their decline toward the river and oblivion, are redeemed to respectability, not to say exclusiveness, again, like some of the streets in the small Twentieths running out into what was formerly the village of Chelsea; and those who know New York--even when standing where the Twentieth Streets are tainted with Sixth Avenue--are cognizant of this fact, just as they are of the peace and green campus and academic architecture of the Episcopal Theological Seminary away over there, and of the thirty-foot lawns of London Terrace, far down along West Twenty-third Street.

There are other residence streets which do not decline at all, but are solidly impressive and expensive all the way over to the river, like those from Central Park to Riverside Drive. And your old New Yorker does not feel depressed by their conventional similarity, their lack of individuality; he likes to think that these streets and houses no longer seem so unbearably new as they were only a short time ago, but in some cases are at last acquiring the atmosphere of home and getting rid of the odor of a real-estate project. Then, of course, so many cross streets would refuse to be classed as typical because they run through squares or parks, or into reservoirs or other streets, or jump over railroad tracks by means of viaducts, burrow under avenues by means of tunnels, or end abruptly at the top of a hill on a high embankment of interesting masonry, as at the eastern terminus of Forty-first Street--a spot which never feels like New York at all to me.

Some notice should be taken also of those all-important up-town cross streets where business has eaten out residence in streaks, as moths devour clothes, such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous shops, and narrow Twenty-eighth Street, with its numerous cheap _table d'hôtes_, each of which is the best in town; and 125th Street, which is a Harlem combination of both. These are the streets by which surface-car passengers are transferred all over the city. These are the streets upon which those who have grown up with New York, if they have paid attention to its growth as well as their own, delight to meditate. Even comparatively young old New Yorkers can say "I remember when" of memorable evenings in the old Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street off Union Square, and of the days when Delmonico's had got as far up-town as Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue.

Furthermore, it could easily be shown that, for those who love old New York, there is plenty of local historical association along these same straight, unromantic-looking cross streets--for those who know how to find it. For that matter one might go still further and hold that there would not be so much antiquarian delight in New York if these streets were not new and straight and non-committal looking. If, for instance, the old Union Road, which was the roundabout, wet-weather route to Greenwich village, had not been cut up and mangled by a merciless city plan there wouldn't be the fun of tracing it by projecting corners and odd angles of houses along West Twelfth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It would be merely an open, ordinary street, concealing nothing, and no more exciting to follow than Pearl Street down-town--and not half so crooked or historical as Pearl Street. There would not be that odd, pocket-like courtway called Mulligan "Place," with a dimly lighted entrance leading off Sixth Avenue between Tenth and Eleventh Streets. Nor would there be that still more interesting triangular remnant of an old Jewish burying-ground over the way, behind the old Grapevine Tavern. For either the whole cemetery would have been allowed to remain on Union Road (or Street), which is not likely, or else they would have removed all the graves and covered the entire site with buildings, as was the case with a dozen other burying-grounds here and there. If the commissioners had not had their way we could not have all those inner rows of houses to explore, like the "Weaver's Row," once near the Great Kiln Road, but now buried behind a Sixth Avenue store between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, and entered, if entered at all, by way of a dark, ill-smelling alley. Nor would the negro quarter, a little farther up-town, have its inner rows which seem so appropriate for negro quarters, especially the whitewashed courts opening off Thirtieth Street, where may be found, in these secluded spots, trees and seats under them, with old, turbanned mammies smoking pipes and looking much more like Richmond darkies than those one expects to see two blocks from Daly's Theatre. Colonel Carter of Cartersville could not have found such an interesting New York residence if the commissioners had not had their way, nor could he have entered it by a tunnel-like passage under the house opposite the Tenth Street studios. Even Greenwich would not be quite so entertaining without those permanent marks of the conflict between village and city which resulted in separating West Eleventh Street so far from Tenth, and in twisting Fourth Street around farther and farther until it finally ends in despair in Thirteenth Street. If the commissioners had not had their way we should have had no "Down Love Lane" written by Mr. Janvier.

* * * * *

Looked at from the point of view of use and knowledge, every street, like every person, gains a distinct personality, some being merely more strongly distinguished than others. And just as every human being, whatever his name or his looks may be, continues to win more or less sympathy the more you know of him and his history and his ambitions, so with these streets, and their checkered careers, their sudden changes from decade to decade--or in still less time, in our American cities, their transformation from farm land to suburban road, and then to fashionable city street, and then to small business and then to great business. Such, after all, is the stuff of which abiding city charm is made, not of plans and architecture.

RURAL NEW YORK CITY

RURAL NEW YORK CITY

There is pretty good snipe shooting within the city limits of New York, and I have heard that an occasional trout still rises to the fly in one or two spots along a certain stream--which need not be made better known than it is already, though it can hardly be worth whipping much longer at any rate.

A great many ducks, however, are still shot every season in the city, by those who know where to go for them; and as for inferior sport, like rabbits--if you include them as game--on certain days of the year probably more gunners and dogs are out after rabbits within the limits of Greater New York than in any region of equal extent in the world, though to be sure the bags brought in hardly compare with those of certain parts of Australia or some of our Western States. Down toward Far Rockaway, a little this side of the salt marshes of Jamaica Bay, in the hedges and cabbage-patches of the "truck" farms, there is plenty of good cover for rabbits, as well as in the brush-piles and pastures of the rolling Borough of Richmond on Staten Island, and the forests and stone fences of the hilly Bronx, up around Pelham Bay Park for instance. But the gunners must keep out of the parks, of course, though many ubiquitous little boys with snares do not.

In such parts of the city, except when No Trespassing signs prevent, on any day of the open season scores of men and youths may be seen whose work and homes are generally in the densest parts of the city, respectable citizens from the extreme east and west sides of Manhattan, artisans and clerks, salesmen and small shopkeepers, who, quite unexpectedly in some cases, share the ancient fret and longing of the primitive man in common with those other New Yorkers who can go farther out on Long Island or farther up into New York State to satisfy it. To be sure, the former do not get as many shots as the latter, but they get the outdoors and the exercise and the return to nature, which is the main thing. And the advantage of going shooting in Greater New York is that you can tramp until too dark to see, and yet get back in time to dine at home, thus satisfying an appetite acquired in the open with a dinner cooked in the city.

Once a certain young family went off to a far corner of Greater New York to attack the perennial summer problem. By walking through a hideously suburban village with a beautifully rural name they found, just over the brow of a hill, quite as a friend had told them they would, tucked away all alone in a green glade beside an ancient forest, a charming little diamond-paned, lattice-windowed cottage, covered thick with vines outside, and yet supplied with modern plumbing within. It seemed too good to be true. There was no distinctly front yard or back yard, not even a public road in sight, and no neighbors to bother them except the landlord, who lived in the one house near by and was very agreeable. All through the close season they enjoyed the whistling of quail at their breakfast; in their afternoon walks, squirrels and rabbits and uncommon song-birds were too common to be remarked; and once, within forty yards of the house, great consternation was caused by a black snake, though it was not black snakes but mosquitoes that made them look elsewhere next year, and taught them a life-lesson in regard to English lattice-windows and American mosquito-screens.

But until the mosquitoes became so persistent it seemed--this country-place within a city, or _rus in urbe_, as they probably enjoyed calling it--an almost perfect solution of the problem for a small family whose head had to be within commuting distance of down-town. For though so remote, it was not inaccessible; two railroads and a trolley line were just over the dip of the hill that hid them, so that there was time for the young man of the house to linger with his family at breakfast, which was served out-of-doors, with no more objectionable witnesses than the thrushes in the hedges. And then, too, there was time to get exercise in the afternoon before dinner. "It seemed an ideal spot," to quote their account of it, "except that on our walks, just as we thought that we had found some sequestered dell where nobody had come since the Indians left, we would be pretty sure to hear a slight rustle behind us, and there--not an Indian but a Tammany policeman would break through the thicket, with startling white gloves and gleaming brass buttons, looking exactly like the policemen in the Park. Of course he would continue on his beat and disappear in a moment, but by that time we had forgotten to listen to the birds and things, and the distant hum of the trolley would break in and remind us of all things we have wanted to forget."

I

In a way, that is rather typical of most of the rurality found within the boundaries of these modern aggregations or trusts of large and small towns, and intervening country, held together (more or less) by one name, under one municipal government, and called a "city" by legislature. There is plenty that is not at all city-like within the city walls--called limits--there is plenty of nature, but in most cases those wanting to commune with it are reminded that it is no longer within the domain of nature. The city has stretched out its hand, and the mark of the beast can usually be seen.

You can find not only rural seclusion and bucolic simplicity, but the rudeness and crudeness of the wilderness and primeval forest; indeed, even forest fires have been known in Greater New York. But the trouble is that so often the bucolic simplicity has cleverly advertised lots staked out across it; the rural seclusion shows a couple of factory chimneys on the near horizon. The forest fire was put out by the fire department.

There are numerous peaceful duck-ponds in the Borough of Queens, for instance, as muddy and peaceful as ever you saw, but so many of them are lighted by gas every evening. Besides the fisheries, there is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections of this city; and in at least one place it can be seen by electric light. There are many potato-patches patrolled by the police.

Not far from the geographical centre of the city there are fields where, as all who have ever commuted to and from the north shore of Long Island must remember, German women may be seen every day in the tilling season, working away as industriously as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads, and all: while not far away, at frequent intervals, passes a whining, thumping trolley-car, marked Brooklyn Bridge.

In another quarter, on a dreary, desolate waste, neither farm land, nor city, nor village, there stands an old weather-beaten hut, long, low, patched up and tumbled down, with an old soap-box for a front doorstep--all beautifully toned by time, the kind amateurs like to sketch, when found far away from home in their travels. The thing that recalls the city in this case, rather startlingly, is a rudely lettered sign, with the S's turned the wrong way, offering lots for sale in Greater New York.

It is not necessary to go far away from the beaten paths of travel in Greater New York to witness any of these scenes of the comedy, sometimes tragedy, brought about by the contending forces of city and country. Most of what has been cited can be observed from car-windows. For that matter, somewhat similar incongruity can be found in all of our modern, legally enlarged cities, London, with the hedges and gardens of Hampstead Heath, and certain parts of the Surrey Side, or Chicago, with its broad stretches of prairie and farms--the subject of so many American newspaper jokes a few years ago.

But New York--and this is another respect in which it is different from other cities--our great Greater New York, which is better known as having the most densely populated tenement districts in the world, can show places that are more truly rural than any other city of modern times, places where the town does not succeed in obtruding itself at all. From Hampstead Heath, green and delightful as it is, every now and then the gilded cross of St. Paul's may be seen gleaming far below through the trees. And in Chicago, bucolic as certain sections of it may be, one can spy the towers of the city for miles away, across the prairie; even when down in certain wild, murderous-looking ravines there is ever on high the appalling cloud of soft-coal smoke. But out in the broad, rolling farm lands of Long Island you can walk on for hours and not find any sign of the city you are in, except the enormous tax-rate, which, by the way, has the effect of discouraging the farmers (many of whom did not want to become city people at all) from spending money for paint and improvements, and this only results in making the country look more primitive, and less like what is absurdly called a city.

But the best of these rural parts of town cannot be spied from car-windows, or the beaten paths of travel.

II

Make a journey out through the open country to the southeast of Flushing, past the Oakland Golf Club, and over toward the Creedmoor Rifle Range, after a while turn north and follow a twisting road that leads down into the ravine at the head of Little Neck Bay, where a few of the many Little Neck clams come from. All of these places are well within the eastern boundary of the city, and this little journey will furnish a very good example of a certain kind of rural New York, but only one kind, for it is only one small corner of a very big place.

As soon as you have ridden, or walked--it is better to walk if there is plenty of time--beyond the fine elms of the ancient Flushing streets, you will be in as peaceful looking farming country as can be found anywhere. But the interesting thing about it is that here are seen not merely a few incongruous green patches that happen to be left between rapidly devouring suburban towns--like the fields near Woodside where the German women work--out here one rides through acre after acre of it, farm after farm, mile after mile, up hill, down hill, corn-fields, wheat-fields, stone fences, rail fences, no fences, and never a town in sight, much less anything to suggest the city, except the procession of market-wagons at certain hours, to or from College Point Ferry, and they aren't so conspicuously urban after all.

Even the huge advertising sign-boards which usually shout to passers-by along the approaches to cities are rather scarce in this country, for it is about midway between two branches of the only railroad on Long Island, and there is no need for a trolley. There is nothing but country roads, with more or less comfortable farm-houses and large, squatty barns; not only old farm-houses, but what is much more striking, farm-houses that are new. Now, it does seem odd to build a new farm-house in a city.

Out in the fields the men are ploughing. A rooster crows in the barn-yard. A woman comes out to take in the clothes. Children climb the fence to gaze when people pass by. And one can ride for a matter of miles and see no other kind of life, except the birds in the hedge and an occasional country dog, not suburban dogs, but distinctly farm dogs, the kind that have deep, ominous barks, as heard at night from a distance. By and by, down the dusty, sunny, lane-like road plods a fat old family Dobbin, pulling an old-fashioned phaëton in which are seated a couple of prim old maiden ladies, dressed in black, who try to make him move faster in the presence of strangers, and so push and jerk animatedly on the reins, which he enjoys catching with his tail, and holds serenely until beyond the bend in the road.

Of course, this is part of the city. The road map proves it. But there are very few places along this route where you can find it out in any other way. The road leads up over a sort of plateau; a wide expanse of country can be viewed in all directions, but there are only more fields to see, more farm-houses and squatty barns, perhaps a village church steeple in the distance, a village that has its oldest inhabitant and a church with a church-yard. Away off to the north, across a gleaming strip of water, which the map shows to be Long Island Sound, lie the blue hills of the Bronx. They, too, are well within Greater New York. So is all that country to the southwest, far beyond the range of the eye, Jamaica, and Jamaica Bay and Coney Island. And over there, more to the west, is dreary East New York and endless Brooklyn, and dirty Long Island City, and, still farther, crowded Manhattan Island itself. Then one realizes something of the extent of this strange manner of city. It is very ridiculous.

When at last the head of Little Neck Bay is reached, here is another variety of primitive country scene. The upland road skirting the hill, beyond which the rifles of Creedmoor are crashing, takes a sudden turn down a steep grade, a guileless-looking grade, but very dangerous for bicyclists, especially in the fall when the ruts and rocks are covered thick with leaves for days at a time. Then, after passing a nearer view (through a vista of big trees) of the blue Sound, with the darker blue of the hills beyond, the road drops down into a peaceful old valley, tucked away as serene and unmolested as it was early in the nineteenth century, when the country cross-roads store down there was first built, along-side of the water-power mill, which is somewhat older. In front is an old dam and mill-pond, called "The Alley," recently improved, but still containing black bass; in the rear Little Neck Bay opens out to the Sound beyond, one of the sniping and ducking places of Greater New York. The old store, presumably the polling-place of that election district of the city, is where prominent personages of the neighborhood congregate and tell fishing and shooting stories, and gossip, and talk politics, seated on boxes and barrels around the white-bodied stove, for the sake of which they chew tobacco.