And yet I told myself that better days were surely in store. I would return East and in some way place myself so that soon we might be reunited. It was a figment of hope. By the time I was finally capable of maintaining her economically, my earlier mood had changed. That hour which we had known, or might have known, had gone forever. I had seen more of life, more of other women, and although even then she was by no means unattractive the original yearning2 had vanished. She was now but one of many, and there were those who were younger and more sophisticated, even more attractive.
And yet, before I left her, what days! The sunshine! The lounging under the trees! The drowsy3 summer heat! The wishing for what might not be! Having decided4 that her wish was genuine and my impulse to comply with it wise, I stood by it, wishing that it might be otherwise. I consoled myself thinly with the thought that the future must bring us together, and then left, journeying first to St. Louis and later to New York. For while I was here that letter from my brother which urged me once more to come to New York was forwarded to me. Just before leaving Pittsburgh I had sent him a collection of those silly “features” I had been writing, and he also was impressed. I must come to New York. Some metropolitan5 paper was the place for me and my material. Anyhow, I would enjoy visiting there in the summer time more than later. I wired him that I would arrive at a certain time, and then set out for St. Louis and a visit among my old newspaper friends there.
I do not know how most people take return visits, but I have often noted6 that it has only been as I have grown older and emotionally less mobile that they have become less and less significant to me. In my earlier years nothing could have been more poignant7 or more melancholy8 than my thoughts on any of these occasions. Whenever I returned to any place in which I had once lived and found things changed, as they always were, I was fairly transfixed by the oppressive sense of the evanescence of everything; a mood so hurtful and dark and yet with so rich if sullen10 a luster11 that I was left wordless with pain. I was all but crucified at realizing how unimportant I was, how nothing stayed but all changed. Scenes passed, never to be recaptured. Moods came and friendships and loves, and were gone forever. Life was perpetually moving on. The beautiful pattern of which each of us, but more especially myself, was a part, was changing from day to day, so that things which were an anchor and a comfort and delight yesterday were tomorrow no more. And though perhaps innately12 I desired change, or at least appropriate and agreeable changes for myself, I did not wish this other, this exterior13 world to shift, and that under my very eyes.
The most haunting and disturbing thought always was that hourly I was growing older. Life was so brief, such a very little cup at best, and so soon, whatever its miserable14 amount or character, it would be gone. Some had strength or capacity or looks or fortune, or all, at their command, and then all the world was theirs to travel over and explore. Beauty and ease were theirs, and love perhaps, and the companionship of interesting and capable people; but I, poor waif, with no definite or arresting skill of any kind, not even that of commerce, must go fumbling15 about looking in upon life from the outside, as it were. Beautiful women, or so I argued, were drawn16 to any but me. The great opportunities of the day in trade and commerce were for any but me. I should never have a fraction of the means to do as I wished or to share in the life that I most craved17. I was an Ishmael, a wanderer.
In St. Louis I was oppressed beyond words. Of the newspaper men who had been living on the same floor with me in Broadway there was not one left. At the Globe-Democrat already reigned18 a new city editor. My two friends, Wood and McCord, while delighted to see me, told me of those who had already gone and seemed immersed in many things that had arisen since I had gone and were curious as to why I should have returned at all. I hung about for a day or two, wondering all the while why I did so, and then took the train going East.
Of all my journeys thus far this to New York was the most impressive. It took on at once, the moment I left St. Louis, the character of a great adventure, for it was all unknown and enticing19. For years my mind had been centered on it. True to the law of gravitation, its pull was in proportion to its ever increasing size. As a boy in Indiana, and later in Chicago, I had read daily papers sent on from New York by my sister E——, who lived there. In Chicago, owing to a rivalry20 which existed on Chicago’s part (not on New York’s, I am sure), the papers were studded with invidious comments which, like all poorly based criticism, only served to emphasize the salient and impressive features of the greater city. It had an elevated road that ran through its long streets on stilts21 of steel and carried hundreds of thousands if not millions in the miniature trains drawn by small engines. It was a long, heavily populated island surrounded by great rivers, and was America’s ocean door to Europe. It had the great Brooklyn Bridge, then unparalleled anywhere, Wall Street, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, a huge company of millionaires. It had Tammany Hall, the Statue of Liberty, unveiled not so many years before (when I was a boy in Southern Indiana), Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Horse Show. It was the center and home of fashionable society, of all fixed9 and itinerant22 actors and actresses. All great theatrical23 successes began there. Of papers of largest circulation and greatest fame, it had nearly all. As an ignorant understrapper I had often contended, and that noisily, with various passing atoms of New York, as condescending24 as I was ignorant and stubborn, as to the relative merits of New York and Chicago, New York and St. Louis! There could not be so much difference! There were many great things in these minor25 places! Some day, surely, Chicago would outstrip26 New York!... Well, I lived to see many changes and things, but not that. Instead I saw the great city grow and grow, until it stood unrivaled, for size and force and wealth at least, anywhere.
And now after all these tentative adventurings I was at last to enter it. Although I was moderately well-placed in Pittsburgh and not coming as a homeless, penniless seeker, still even now I was dreadfully afraid of it—why, I cannot say. Perhaps it was because it was so immense and mentally so much more commanding. Still I consoled myself with the thought that this was only a visit and I was to have a chance to explore it without feeling that I had to make my way then and there.
I recall clearly the hot late afternoon in July when, after stopping off at Pittsburgh to refresh myself and secure a change of clothing, I took the train for New York. I noted with eager, hungry eyes a succession of dreary27 forge and mining towns, miles of blazing coke ovens paralleling the track and lighting28 these regions with a lurid29 glow after dusk, huge dark hills occasionally twinkling with a feeble light or two. I spent a half-wakeful night in the berth30, dreaming and meditating31 in a nervous chemic way. Before dawn I was awake and watching our passage through Philadelphia, then Trenton, New Brunswick, Metuchen, Menlo Park, Rahway, Elizabeth and Newark. Of all of these, save only Menlo Park, the home of Edison, who was then invariably referred to by journalists and paragraphers as “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” I knew nothing.
As we neared New York at seven the sky was overcast32, and at Newark it began to drizzle33. When I stepped down it was pouring, and there at the end of a long train-shed, the immense steel and glass affair that once stood in Jersey34 City opposite Cortlandt Street of New York, awaited my fat and smiling brother, as sweet-faced and gay and hopeful as a child. At once, he began as was his way, a patter of jests and inquiries35 as to my trip, then led me to a ferry entrance, one of a half dozen in a row, through which, as through the proscenium arch of a stage, I caught my first glimpse of the great Hudson. A heavy mist of rain was suspended over it through which might be seen dimly the walls of the great city beyond. Puffing36 and squatty tugs37, as graceful38 as fat ducks, attended by overhanging plumes39 of smoke, chugged noisily in the foreground of water. At the foot of the outline of the city beyond, only a few skyscrapers40 having as yet appeared, lay a fringe of ships and docks and ferry houses. No ferry boat being present, we needs must wait for one labeled Desbrosses, as was labeled the slip in which we stood.
But I was talking to my brother and learning of his life here and of that of my sister E——, with whom he was living. The ferry boat eventually came into the slip and discharged a large crowd, and we, along with a vast company of commuters and travelers, entered it. Its center, as I noted, was stuffed with vehicles of all sizes and descriptions, those carrying light merchandise as well as others carrying coal and stone and lumber41 and beer. I can recall to this hour the odor of ammonia and saltpeter so characteristic of the ferry boats and ferry houses, the crowd in the ferry house on the New York side waiting to cross over once we arrived there, and the miserable little horse-cars, then still trundling along West Street and between Fourteenth and Broadway and the ferries, and Gansevoort Market. These were drawn by one horse, and you deposited your fare yourself.
And this in the city of elevated roads!
But the car which we boarded had two horses. We traveled up West Street from Desbrosses to Christopher and thence along that shabby old thoroughfare to Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, where we changed. At first, aside from the sea and the boats and the sense of hugeness which goes with immense populations everywhere, I was disappointed by the seeming meanness of the streets. Many of them were still paved with cobblestones, like the oldest parts of St. Louis and Pittsburgh. The buildings, houses and stores alike, were for the most part of a shabby red in color and varying in height from one to six stories, most of them of an aged42 and contemptible43 appearance. This was, as I soon learned from my serene44 and confident brother, an old and shabby portion of the city. These horse-cars, in fact, were one of the jokes of the city, but they added to its variety. “Don’t think that they haven’t anything else. This is just the New York way. It has the new and the old mixed. Wait’ll you’re here a little while. You’ll be like everybody else—there’ll be just one place: New York.”
And so it proved after a time.
The truth was that the city then, for the first time in a half century if not longer, was but beginning to emerge from a frightful45 period of misrule at the hands of as evil a band of mercenaries as ever garroted a body politic46. It was still being looted and preyed47 upon in a most shameful48 manner. Graft49 and vice50 stalked hand-in-hand. Although Tammany Hall, the head and center of all the graft and robbery and vice and crime protection, had been delivered a stunning51 blow by a reform wave which had temporarily ousted52 it and placed reform officials over the city, still the grip of that organization had not relaxed. The police and all minor officials, as well as the workmen of all departments were still, under the very noses of the newly elected officials, perhaps with their aid, collecting graft and tribute. The Reverend Doctor Parkhurst was preaching, like Savonarola, the destruction of these corruptions53 of the city.
When I arrived, the streets were not cleaned or well-lighted, their ways not adequately protected or regulated as to traffic. Uncollected garbage lay in piles, the while the city was paying enormous sums for its collection; small and feeble gas-jets fluttered, when in other cities the arc-light had for fifteen years been a commonplace. As we dragged on, on this slow-moving car, the bells on the necks of the horses tinkling54 rhythmically55, I stared and commented.
“Well, you can’t say that this is very much.”
“My boy,” cautioned my good and cheerful brother, “you haven’t seen anything yet. This is just an old part of New York. Wait’ll you see Broadway and Fifth Avenue. We’re just coming this way because it’s the quickest way home.”
When we reached Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue I was very differently impressed. We had traveled for a little way under an elevated road over which trains thundered, and as we stepped down I beheld56 an impressively wide thoroughfare, surging even at this hour in the morning with people. Here was Macy’s, and northward57 stretched an area which I was told was the shopping center of the vast metropolis58: Altman’s, Ehrich’s, O’Neill’s, Adams’, Simpson-Crawford’s, all huge stores and all in a row lining59 the west side of the street. We made our way across Fifteenth Street to the entrance of a narrow brownstone apartment house and ascended60 two flights, waiting in a rather poorly-lighted hall for an answer to our ring. The door was eventually opened by my sister, whom I had not seen since my mother’s death four years before. She had become stout61. The trim beauty for which a very few years before she had been notable had entirely62 disappeared. I was disappointed at first, but was soon reassured63 and comforted by an inherently kindly64 and genial65 disposition66, which expressed itself in much talking and laughing.
“Why, Theodore, I’m so glad to see you! Take off your things. Did you have a pleasant trip? George, here’s Theodore. This is my husband, Theodore. Come on back, you and Paul,” so she rattled67 on.
I studied her husband, whom I had not seen before, a dark and shrewd and hawklike68 person who seemed to be always following me with his eyes. He was an American of middle-Western extraction but with a Latin complexion69 and Latin eyes.
E——’s two children were brought forward, a boy and a girl four and two years of age respectively. A breakfast table was waiting, at which Paul had already seated himself.
“Now, my boy,” he began, “this is where you eat real food once more. No jerkwater hotels about this! No Pittsburgh newspaper restaurants about this! Ah, look at the biscuit! Look at the biscuit!” as a maid brought in a creamy plateful. “And here’s steak—steak and brown gravy70 and biscuit! Steak and brown gravy and biscuit!” He rubbed his hands in joy. “I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything like this since you left home. Ah, good old steak and gravy!” His interest in food was always intense.
“It’s been many a day since I’ve had such biscuit and gravy, E——,” I observed.
“‘It’s been many a day since I’ve had such biscuit and gravy, E——,’” mocked my brother.
“Get out, you!” chimed in my sister. “Just listen to him, the old snooks! I can’t get him out of the kitchen, can I, George? He’s always eating. ‘It’s been many a day——’ Ho! Ho!”
“I thought you were dieting?” I inquired.
“So I am, but you don’t expect me not to eat this morning, do you? I’m doing this to welcome you.”
Our chatter72 became more serious as the first glow of welcome wore off. During it all I was never free of a sense of the hugeness and strangeness of the city and the fact that at last I was here. And in this immense and far-flung thing my sister had this minute nook. From where I sat I could hear strange moanings and blowings which sounded like foghorns73.
I listened to the variety of sounds, some far, some near, some mellow76, some hoarse77. “How far away are they?”
“Anywhere from one to ten miles.”
I stopped and listened again. Suddenly the full majesty78 of the sea sweeping79 about this island at this point caught me. The entire city was surrounded by water. Its great buildings and streets were all washed about by that same sea-green salty flood which I had seen coming over from Jersey City, and beyond were the miles and miles of dank salt meadows, traversed by railroads. Huge liners from abroad were even now making their way here. At its shores were ranged in rows great vessels from Europe and all other parts of the world, all floating quietly upon the bosom80 of this great river. There were tugs and small boats and sailing vessels, and beyond all these, eastward81, the silence, the majesty, the deadly earnestness of the sea.
“Do you ever think how wonderful it is to have the sea so close?” I asked.
“No, I can’t say that I do,” replied my brother-in-law.
“Nor I,” said my sister. “You get used to all those things here, you know.”
“It’s wonderful, my boy,” said my brother, as usual helpfully interested. He invariably seemed to approve of all my moods and approaches to sentiment, and, like a mother who admires and spoils a child, was anxious to encourage and indulge me. “Great subject, the sea.”
I could not help smiling, he was so naïf and simple and intellectually innocent and sweet.
“It’s a great city,” I said suddenly, the full import of it all sweeping over me. “I think I’d like to live here.”
“Didn’t I tell you! Didn’t I tell you!” exclaimed my brother gayly. “They all fall for it! Now it’s the ocean vessels that get him. You take my advice, my boy, and move down here. The quicker the better for you.”
I replied that I might, and then tried to forget the vessels and their sirens, but could not. The sea! The sea! And this great city! Never before was I so anxious to explore a city, and never before so much in awe82 of one either. It seemed so huge and powerful and terrible. There was something about it which made me seem useless and trivial. Whatever one might have been elsewhere, what could one be here?
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1
postponement
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| n.推迟 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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luster
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| n.光辉；光泽，光亮；荣誉 | |
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innately
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| adv.天赋地；内在地，固有地 | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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itinerant
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| adj.巡回的；流动的 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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outstrip
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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overcast
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| adj.阴天的，阴暗的，愁闷的；v.遮盖，（使）变暗，包边缝；n.覆盖，阴天 | |
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drizzle
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| v.下毛毛雨；n.毛毛雨，蒙蒙细雨 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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puffing
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| v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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tugs
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| n.猛拉( tug的名词复数 )；猛拖；拖船v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的第三人称单数 ) | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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skyscrapers
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| n.摩天大楼 | |
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lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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politic
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| adj.有智虑的；精明的；v.从政 | |
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47
preyed
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| v.掠食( prey的过去式和过去分词 )；掠食；折磨；（人）靠欺诈为生 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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50
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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51
stunning
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| adj.极好的；使人晕倒的 | |
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52
ousted
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| 驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺 | |
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corruptions
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| n.堕落( corruption的名词复数 )；腐化；腐败；贿赂 | |
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tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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rhythmically
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| adv.有节奏地 | |
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56
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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57
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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67
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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68
hawklike
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69
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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70
gravy
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| n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快 | |
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71
scoffed
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| 嘲笑，嘲弄( scoff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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73
foghorns
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| n.（大雾时发出响亮而低沉的声音以警告其他船只的）雾角，雾喇叭( foghorn的名词复数 ) | |
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74
eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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76
mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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77
hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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78
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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79
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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80
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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81
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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82
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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