But Words Have Been Spoken Which Will, I
Fear, Long Sound In Men's Ears, And Thoughts Have Sprung Up Which
Will Not Easily Allow Themselves To Be Extinguished.
CHAPTER XIV.
NEW YORK.
Speaking of New York as a traveler, I have two faults to find with
it. In the first place, there is nothing to see; and, in the
second place, there is no mode of getting about to see anything.
Nevertheless, New York is a most interesting city. It is the third
biggest city in the known world, for those Chinese congregations of
unwinged ants are not cities in the known world. In no other city
is there a population so mixed and cosmopolitan in their modes of
life. And yet in no other city that I have seen are there such
strong and ever visible characteristics of the social and political
bearings of the nation to which it belongs. New York appears to me
as infinitely more American than Boston, Chicago, or Washington.
It has no peculiar attribute of its own, as have those three
cities - Boston in its literature and accomplished intelligence,
Chicago in its internal trade, and Washington in its Congressional
and State politics. New York has its literary aspirations, its
commercial grandeur, and, Heaven knows, it has its politics also.
But these do not strike the visitor as being specially
characteristic of the city. That it is pre-eminently American is
its glory or its disgrace, as men of different ways of thinking may
decide upon it. Free institutions, general education, and the
ascendency of dollars are the words written on every paving-stone
along Fifth Avenue, down Broadway, and up Wall Street. Every man
can vote, and values the privilege. Every man can read, and uses
the privilege. Every man worships the dollar, and is down before
his shrine from morning to night.
As regards voting and reading, no American will be angry with me
for saying so much of him; and no Englishman, whatever may be his
ideas as to the franchise in his own country, will conceive that I
have said aught to the dishonor of an American. But as to that
dollar-worshiping, it will of course seem that I am abusing the New
Yorkers. We all know what a wretchedly wicked thing money is - how
it stands between us and heaven - how it hardens our hearts and
makes vulgar our thoughts! Dives has ever gone to the devil, while
Lazarus has been laid up in heavenly lavender. The hand that
employs itself in compelling gold to enter the service of man has
always been stigmatized as the ravisher of things sacred. The
world is agreed about that, and therefore the New Yorker is in a
bad way. There are very few citizens in any town known to me which
under this dispensation are in a good way, but the New Yorker is in
about the worst way of all. Other men, the world over, worship
regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and
complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the
religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.
That is the amount of the charge which I bring against New York;
and now, having laid on my paint thickly, I shall proceed, like an
unskillful artist, to scrape a great deal of it off again. New
York has been a leading commercial city in the world for not more
than fifty or sixty years. As far as I can learn, its population
at the close of the last century did not exceed 60,000, and ten
years later it had not reached 100,000. In 1860 it had reached
nearly 800,000 in the City of New York itself. To this number must
be added the numbers of Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and Jersey City, in
order that a true conception may be had of the population of this
American metropolis, seeing that those places are as much a part of
New York as Southwark is of London. By this the total will be
swelled to considerably above a million. It will no doubt be
admitted that this growth has been very fast, and that New York may
well be proud of it. Increase of population is, I take it, the
only trustworthy sign of a nation's success or of a city's success.
We boast that London has beaten the other cities of the world, and
think that that boast is enough to cover all the social sins for
which London has to confess her guilt. New York, beginning with
60,000 sixty years since, has now a million souls - a million
mouths, all of which eat a sufficiency of bread, all of which speak
ore rotundo, and almost all of which can read. And this has come
of its love of dollars.
For myself I do not believe that Dives is so black as he is painted
or that his peril is so imminent. To reconcile such an opinion
with holy writ might place me in some difficulty were I a
clergyman. Clergymen, in these days, are surrounded by
difficulties of this nature - finding it necessary to explain away
many old-established teachings which narrowed the Christian Church,
and to open the door wide enough to satisfy the aspirations and
natural hopes of instructed men. The brethren of Dives are now so
many and so intelligent that they will no longer consent to be
damned without looking closely into the matter themselves. I will
leave them to settle the matter with the Church, merely assuring
them of my sympathy in their little difficulties in any case in
which mere money causes the hitch.
To eat his bread in the sweat of his brow was man's curse in Adam's
day, but is certainly man's blessing in our day. And what is
eating one's bread in the sweat of one's brow but making money? I
will believe no man who tells me that he would not sooner earn two
loaves than one - and if two, then two hundred.
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