Part 15 (2/2)

If a young man come in mentally worn out, it gives him dumb-bells, parallel bars and a bowling-alley with no rum at either end of it. If physically worsted, it rests him amid pictures and books and newspapers. If a young man come in wanting something for the soul, there are the Bible-cla.s.ses, prayer-meetings and preaching of the gospel.

Religion wears no monk's cowl in that place, no hair s.h.i.+rt, no spiked sandals, but the floor and the ceiling and the lounges and the tables and the cheerful attendants seem to say: ”Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

I never saw a more beautiful scene in any public building than on one of these bright sofas, fit for any parlor in New York, where lay a weary, plain, exhausted man resting--sound asleep.

Another triumph of Christianity that building is--a Christianity that is erecting lighthouses on all the coasts, and planting its batteries on every hill-top, and spreading its banquets all the world over.

Well, with these reflections I started for Brooklyn. It was just after six o'clock, and tired New York was going home. Street cars and ferries all crowded. Going home! Some to bright places; to be lovingly greeted and warmed and fed and rested. Others to places dark and uncomely; but as I sat down in my own home I could not help thinking of the three spectacles. I had seen during the day Sin, in its shame; Art, in its beauty; Religion, in its work of love. G.o.d give repentance to the first, wider appreciation to the second, and universal conquest to the third!

CHAPTER LI.

MANAHACHTANIENKS.

We should like to tell so many of our readers as have survived the p.r.o.nunciation of the above word that the Indians first called the site on which New York was built Manahachtanienks. The translation of it is, ”The place where they all got drunk.” Most uncomplimentary t.i.tle; We are glad that it has been changed; for though New York has several thousand unlicensed grogshops, we consider the name inappropriate, although, if intemperance continues to increase as rapidly for the next hundred years as during the last twenty years, the time will come when New York may appropriately take its old Indian nomenclature.

Old-time New York is being rapidly forgotten, and it may be well to revive some historical facts. At an expense of three thousand dollars a year men with guide-book in hand go through the pyramids of Egypt and the picture-galleries of Rome and the ruins of Pompeii, when they have never seen the strange and historical scenes at home.

We advise the people who live in Brooklyn, Jersey City and up-town New York to go on an exploration.

Go to No. 1 Broadway and remember that George Was.h.i.+ngton and Lord Cornwallis once lived there.

Go to the United States Treasury, on Wall Street, and remember that in front of it used to stand a pillory and a whipping-post.

In a building that stood where the United States Treasury stands, General Was.h.i.+ngton was installed as President. In the open balcony he stood with silver buckles and powdered hair, in dress of dark silk velvet. (People in those days dressed more than we moderns. Think of James Buchanan or General Grant inaugurated with hair and shoes fixed up like that!)

Go to the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, and remember that was the scene of Was.h.i.+ngton's farewell to the officers with whom he had been so long a.s.sociated.

Go to Ca.n.a.l street, and remember it was so called because it once was literally a ca.n.a.l.

The electric telegraph was born in the steeple of the old Dutch Church, now the New York post-office--that is, Benjamin Franklin made there his first experiments in electricity. When the other denominations charge the Dutch Church with being slow, they do not know that the world got its lightning out of one of its church steeples.

Was.h.i.+ngton Irving was born in William street, halfway between John and Fulton. ”Knickerbocker” was considered very saucy; but if any man ever had a right to say mirthful things about New York, it was Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, who was born there. At the corner of Varick and Charlton streets was a house in which Was.h.i.+ngton, John Adams and Aaron Burr resided.

George Whitefield preached at the corner of Beekman and Na.s.sau streets.

But why particularize, when there is not a block or a house on the great thoroughfare which has not been the scene of a tragedy, a fortune ruined, a reputation sacrificed, an agony suffered or a soul lost?

CHAPTER LII.

A DIP IN THE SEA.

Shakespeare has been fiercely mauled by the critics for confusion of metaphor in speaking of taking up ”arms against a sea of troubles.” The smart fellows say, How could a man take ”arms against a sea?” In other words, it is not possible to shoot the Pacific Ocean. But what Shakespeare suggests is, this jocund morning, being done all around the coast from Florida to Newfoundland, especial regiments going out from Cape May, Long Branch, East Hampton, Newport and Nahant; ten thousand bathers, with hands thrown into the air, ”taking up arms against the sea.” But the old giant has only to roll over once on his bed of seaweed, and all this attacking host are flung prostrate upon the beach.

The sensation of sea-bathing is about the same everywhere. First you have the work of putting on the appropriate dress, sometimes wet and chill from the previous bathing. You get into the garments cautiously, touching them at as few points as possible, your face askew, and with a swift draft of breath through your front teeth, punctuating the final lodgment of each sleeve and fold with a spasmodic ”Oh!” Then, having placed your watch where no villainous straggler may be induced to examine it to see whether he can get to the depot in time for the next train, you issue forth ingloriously, your head down in consciousness that you are cutting a sorry figure before the world. Barefoot as a mendicant, your hair disheveled in the wind, the stripes of your clothes strongly suggestive of Sing Sing, your appearance a caricature of humankind, you wander up and down the beach a creature that the land is evidently trying to shake off and the sea is unwilling to take.

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