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 VAGABOND 
 IN 
 NEW YORK 
 
 OLIVER MADOX 
 HUEFFER, 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
A VAGABOND IN NEW YORK 
 
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 s 
 
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My favorite pitch is the ring of benches round the fountain 
 opposite the General Post Office. 
 
A VAGABOND 
 IN NEW YORK 
 
 BY 
 
 OLIVER MADOX HUEFFER 
 
 Author of "The Artistic Temperament," "Hunt the 
 Slipper," "Where Truth Lies," etc., etc. 
 
 EIGHT ILL USTRA TIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 ROY E. HALLINGS 
 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 
 TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIII 
 
Copyright, 1913 
 By JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 The Vail-Balloo Company 
 Binghamton, New York, U. S. A. 
 
 O'Cl,A354500 
 
"EHRWARTEND" 
 
"For to admire and for to see, 
 
 For to be'old this world so wide ; 
 
 It never done no good to me, 
 
 But I can't stop it if I tried." 
 
 Kipling. 
 
I 
 
PREFACE 
 
 AT the time when some of these 
 sketches were appearing in the 
 pages of Truth I received a 
 letter from an earnest-minded reader, enquir- 
 ing whether they were supposed to be " re- 
 motely founded on fact," or were merely " the 
 imaginative efforts of a common or garden 
 liar." Perhaps I should therefore preface 
 them in their collected form with the assurance 
 that they are one and all " founded on fact," 
 not over and above remotely. They are 
 based, as they profess to be, upon the experi- 
 ences of a young Englishman during a period 
 of vagabondage enjoyed In New York and 
 thereabouts. They do not however claim the 
 exact fidelity to fact of Hansard or a Law Re- 
 port. Vagabondage is a mental no less than a 
 physical state of being and, just as a tramp's 
 
 9 
 
Preface 
 
 progress across the sunny side of life is less 
 direct than is, say, that of a bank-manager 
 through the shadows, so his mind recalls less 
 faithfully all and every entry in the mnemonical 
 ledger. Perhaps then, in this narrative some 
 terminological inexactitude may here and there 
 find expression in word, or exclamation mark, 
 or period. Here and there memory may 
 heighten a high-light or erase a shadow. No 
 vagabond could be expected to swear in a court 
 of law to the exact size or brilliancy of every 
 politician's near-diamond bosom-pin which may 
 have cast its light across his path — or his 
 pages — or that the politician smoked exactly 
 such a cigar as memory recalls, or indeed 
 that he smoked a cigar at all. Sufficient, 
 surely, that as such the Vagabond recalls him, 
 as smoking, and smoking a cigar, and that the 
 cigar was very large and rank. Be it at least 
 believed by the gentlemen of the jury that such 
 a politician there was, such a steamboat skip- 
 per, such a policeman, such an elephant, as 
 those the Vagabond has sought to draw, and 
 that their doings and sayings, their relation- 
 
 lO 
 
Preface 
 
 ship towards him and towards each other are 
 recorded with as much fidelity as memory will 
 allow. 
 
 Naturally again, they do not appear under 
 their real names. You may walk miles along 
 Sixth Avenue and never find Mr. Cholmondely's 
 laboratory; the Officer who directs the traffic 
 at the corner of Broadway and Union Square 
 will not answer to the name of Dempsey; may 
 even deny the existence of any officer answer- 
 ing to that name. Yet you may believe with- 
 out fear of being led astray that Mr. Chol- 
 mondely, however called, is at this moment 
 somewhere adapting chickens to a new career; 
 that Dempsey, whitest man who ever trod shoe- 
 leather, is somewhere directing traffic; that 
 somewhere Gladys, unmindful of her earlier 
 loves, Is making eyes — red, piggy eyes — at 
 her mahout of the moment. 
 
 Let It not be thought that these poor 
 sketches make any claim to pass as " Impres- 
 sions of America " or that they profess to pic- 
 ture New York, or any aspect of It, or any- 
 thing at all but the little piece of sidewalk upon 
 
 II 
 
Preface 
 
 which the Vagabond's eyes have fallen as he 
 quartered it in search of cigarette-ends. His 
 not the conquering brain, the all-seeing eye, 
 that can compress a nation within the limits of 
 a single volume, as do those Kings of English 
 Literature who from time to time make Royal 
 Progresses across the Atlantic and back for 
 Literary purposes. No fatted calves were 
 ever slain for the Prodigal Vagabond; no 
 streets were ever decorated; no Fifth Avenue 
 mansions flung open against his coming. He 
 has but hung upon the skirts of the cheering 
 crowd, thankful if, from afar off, he might 
 catch some vague glimpse of the Features, the 
 Repose, of the Great Man. Not for him to be 
 dined and wined, to be feted and ovated; to 
 discuss, while thousands hang enraptured on 
 his lips or weep over the whorlings of his 
 fruitful pen, the Spirit of the American People, 
 the Tendencies of American Social Life, the 
 Prospects of American Literature, or, most 
 precious of all. Himself and his Undying 
 Works, considered in the light of American 
 royalties. No one realises more fully than 
 
 12 
 
Preface 
 
 does the shabby Vagabond the impertinence 
 that bids him cry, even in the smallest of voices, 
 these Gutter Gleanings. At least let it be re- 
 membered in his favour that he docs fully 
 realise his own limitations; that he Is well 
 aware that his vision is from Below, not from 
 Above. He would plead also that If his point 
 of view be petty and sordid, and with no wish 
 or claim to be Literary, it is at least sincere. 
 
 I have to express my thanks to the the editor 
 of Truth for his courteous permission to in- 
 clude among the rest certain sketches which 
 originally appeared In that journal. 
 
 O. M. H. 
 
 n 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Preface 9 
 
 I A Baby in the Bronx .... 21 
 
 II On Sleeping Out 35 
 
 III Thieves' Kitchen 41 
 
 IV The " Cop " and the " Copper " . 52 
 V The Free and Enlightened . . 60 
 
 VI Business Is Business 68' 
 
 VII Among the " Movies " .... 75 
 
 VIII Coney Island 82 
 
 IX "Gladys" 90 
 
 X " Who's Got the Button ? " . . 104 
 
 XI A Pair of Boots 115 
 
 XII " Seeing New York " 130 
 
 XIII A Turn at Starving 137 
 
 XIV The Child Terrible i45 
 
 XV Called to the Bar 157 
 
 XVI A Son of the Empire .... 169 
 
 XVII Under the Red Light .... 182 
 
 XVIII In the Matter of Manners . . 190 
 
 XIX " Follow the Crowd " . . . . 207 
 
 XX Eastward Ho! 218 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 My favourite pitch is the ring of benches round 
 the fountain opposite the General Post Office 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 I was making myself a cup of tea over the gas- 
 stove when Mrs. Isaacs came in to have a little 
 business chat 26 *^ 
 
 I was to call at O'Keefe's cafe when I was sent for 64 ^ 
 
 From him they learnt that, as well as a magician 
 and a Brahmin of the highest caste, I was a fakir 
 and a guru 84 ^ 
 
 We used to take exercise together on the sands of / 
 
 Coney Island in the very early morning . . . io2 ^ 
 
 <^ 
 
 I had a megaphone and explained the sights in a 
 loud voice 134 
 
 She made love to me from the first time she saw me 
 
 with my ice-cream tray 150 L^ 
 
 I was sent to Mott Street to get the details of an 
 
 affair 180 (/ 
 
A VAGABOND 
 IN NE W YORK 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 A Baby in the Bronx 
 
 I AM not, fundamentally, a baby-worship- 
 per. Though, admittedly, necessary to 
 our present stage of evolution, they have 
 always seemed to me to be adorable rather in 
 the abstract than in the concrete and, although 
 I hope that, in a case of shipwreck, I should 
 willingly give up my place In the boats to all or 
 any babies who might be involved, I am not 
 altogether sure that my motive would be one 
 of pure chivalry. Better death, I am inclined 
 to think, than, say, six babies within a radius of 
 twenty feet. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are babies and babies, 
 and I gratefully admit that, at one very impor- 
 tant crisis in my life, I owed the preservation, 
 if not of my sanity, at least of my sense of 
 proportion, to a very young baby indeed. It 
 
 21 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 was two months old, or thereabouts, and It 
 lived by itself in the Bronx. 
 
 I was very down on my luck just then and 
 I was feeling It rather badly. I got used to It 
 very soon, thanks partly to the baby and partly 
 to a policeman, as you shall hear; but at first I 
 felt very lonely and that is quite the worst 
 feature of being down on your luck. I am 
 inclined to think, also, that for an English- 
 man, New York is one of the worst cities to 
 choose for the purpose. I have tried several 
 other capitals, Paris, Berlin, Rome and so on, 
 but none of them affect me with quite the same 
 sense of loneliness. Personally, I should not 
 very much mind starving, or going to prison, 
 or even, I daresay, being hanged, so long as the 
 company was good. In Paris now, or Berlin, 
 you do not expect company, good or bad. 
 The people speak another language, look at 
 life out of other eyes; to be lonely among them 
 is no more than natural, just as it would be in 
 a forest or a big field. To a New Yorker, I 
 have no doubt London would seem just as 
 lonely as does, or did, New York to me. As 
 
 22 
 
A 'Baby in the Bronx 
 
 it happens, I am a Cockney, and when it comes 
 to starving within the four-mile radius, I can 
 always, at a pinch, find some one I know going 
 through the same experience at the same time, 
 and we can be bright and cheerful together and 
 share our impressions, with our noses pressed 
 against the same cook-shop window. So no 
 doubt could a New Yorker, if he were a vaga- 
 bond, in New York. And it came to me with 
 a shock to find that In a city where my own 
 language was spoken, with minor variations, 
 and the people looked and thought and acted 
 so very similarly to my own people, that I had 
 no one, absolutely no one, with whom to share 
 my lack of a good dinner. 
 
 I do not mean to say that I knew no one In 
 New York. At the time I must have known 
 at least half-a-dozen people, some of them. If 
 not intimately, at least sufficiently to ask them 
 for my passage back to England with a fair 
 chance of getting it. I don't know, because I 
 never tried, but I expect so. I did very nearly 
 try, once. The man I thought of had an 
 office, off Fifth Avenue, In the Thirties. I 
 
 23 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 started off, three times, I think, or perhaps 
 more, to call upon him. I was living up in a 
 cheap hall-room on the North Side of Central 
 Park at the time — and you have no idea what 
 a long way it was to walk. The first time I 
 did actually summon up courage to see him, and 
 we had a pleasant chat together, and he asked 
 me how I was getting on and I found myself 
 telling him, quite involuntarily, of the lot I was 
 thinking of buying on Fifth Avenue and the 
 palace I was going to run up there when I 
 could find time to think about choosing an 
 architect. I tried, I suppose, a dozen times 
 during that Interview, to come to the point, 
 arid every time I got within half the dictionary 
 of It my tongue shied and threw me and bolted 
 off on its own account round a corner and out 
 of sight. I gave It up at last and decided I 
 would leave it until next day because there was 
 just a chance that I might before then pick up 
 a purse with a million dollars in it that some 
 one had dropped In the street, and in that case, 
 of course, I should have bothered my acquaint- 
 ance unnecessarily. 
 
 24 
 
A Bahy in the Bronx 
 
 I didn't find any purse and I started out to 
 call on him next morning bright and early. I 
 forced myself into the lift all right and into his 
 office and he was out. I said I would call back 
 in the afternoon, and I did, and I forced myself 
 into the lift all right; but, when I got to the 
 top, I couldn't force myself through the door, 
 so I hung about the corridor for a bit and then 
 went down again. And the next time I called 
 I even funked entering the lift, and I knew by 
 then that it was no good and if I wanted to 
 raise money that way I should have to get 
 somebody to do it for me. 
 
 I needn't go into the reasons why I was 
 down on my luck just then, but I can time the 
 moment when I really became a vagabond. It 
 was the evening of my return from that office 
 in the Thirties. It was about seven o'clock 
 and I was making myself a cup of tea over the 
 gas-stove when Mrs. Isaacs came in, to have a 
 little business-chat. She was a very kind- 
 hearted woman and I have no doubt I could 
 have got round her again if I had tried hard 
 enough. She didn't really give me a fair 
 
 25 
 
'A Vagabond in New York 
 
 chance though, because almost at the beginning 
 she told me that she had only trusted me so 
 long because I was English — and that sort of 
 thing. 
 
 I really believe she meant it, too — she had 
 never let lodgings in England of course — so 
 there was only one thing to be done. She let 
 me stop there that night and in the morning we 
 went into the value of what I had got left in 
 the way of dressing-cases and clothes and 
 things. She was much too generous ; they were 
 really worth uncommonly little, I fear, but it 
 ended as satisfactorily to both parties as could 
 be expected. We parted quite good friends, 
 that is to say, and I had three dollars and no 
 liabilities whatever. When It Is a question of 
 owing money that you can't pay I would very 
 much rather have an American, and especially 
 a Jewish- American as creditor, than an Eng- 
 lishman. I may of course have been lucky, 
 but, as far as my experience goes, they do real- 
 ise that It Is possible to be hard-up without 
 being necessarily a swindler, and that the hard- 
 est words cannot get money out of an empty 
 
 26 
 
I was making myself a cup of tea over the gas-stove when 
 Mrs. Isaacs came in to have a Httle business ctiat. 
 
A Baby in the Bronx 
 
 pocket. What is more, they put very much 
 more faith in your word — especially, I 
 honestly believe, if you are English. Mrs. 
 Isaacs, for instance, was quite ready to let me 
 depart and take my bag and baggage with me, 
 if I would only promise to pay her when I 
 could. I refused, for one thing because I 
 didn't see the remotest chance of ever being 
 able to pay her and, after what she had said, 
 I didn't feel like bilking her; for another I 
 didn't see what good a dressing-case and a port- 
 manteau would be to me if I had nowhere to 
 put them. 
 
 That morning I made the acquaintance of 
 the Baby. 
 
 In the days before I became a vagabond I 
 was very fond of going to the Bronx Zoo, I 
 liked the beasts, and the gardens were charm- 
 ing, and I used to go with friends I was fond of 
 and altogether I had very pleasant memories 
 of the place. So while I was suffering under 
 the first shock of realising exactly what those 
 three dollars meant to me, I started out for 
 the Bronx Zoo. I hadn't any reason that I 
 
 n 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 know of; my mind had gone out of action for 
 a time, and I suppose I went to the Elevated 
 station and took my ticket and got down at the 
 other end and walked into the Zoo quite auto- 
 matically. At least I cannot remember going 
 there, or how, or why. It was a bright, glit- 
 tering day and I was mooning about, passively 
 enjoying the sunshine and thinking of nothing 
 at all, when suddenly, coming from somewhere 
 very close at hand, I heard a sigh. It was 
 quite the most melancholy sigh I ever heard, 
 as though it was the outcome of bearing the 
 whole weight of the world upon some one's 
 shoulders. *' 0-o-gh-h-o-o ! " it went, tailing 
 away into a perfect infinity of weariness. " O- 
 o-o-gh-o-o ! " 
 
 Somebody was feeling pretty bad — that was 
 obvious enough; who that somebody could be 
 I had no idea. I was at the top of a little 
 hillock, where four paths met; I could see 
 round me clearly in every direction and there 
 was not a soul in sight, man, woman or child, 
 cat, dog or elephant. There was a bench-seat 
 under a tree just behind me, and I found my- 
 
 28 
 
A Baby in the Bronx 
 
 self bending down to look under it in search of 
 that mysterious misery. I was still bending, 
 when I heard it again, more melancholy if pos- 
 sible than before. It came from behind me 
 that time and I jumped round as though I 
 thought some one was going to hit me. 
 
 In the angle formed by two of the paths was 
 a low, wired enclosure, triangular in shape and 
 about the size of a small room. The railing 
 round it was not more than a couple of feet 
 high and it was open to the sky, so it obviously 
 did not contain any very savage or active beast. 
 In the middle was a little round cemented pool 
 and beside it, with its back to me, a low square 
 wooden hutch. Evidently the sighing came 
 from that. I had visions of finding a dying 
 millionaire, kidnapped by toughs and left there 
 to die, who, when I rescued him, would bless 
 me with his last breath and press into my hand 
 a purse containing several millions. I peered 
 into the hutch just as another sigh came from 
 it. 
 
 It was not a millionaire, at all; it was a baby 
 sea-lion and it was very unhappy because it was 
 
 29 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 lonely. I knew that at once, because as soon 
 as it saw me it came waddling out of its hutch 
 and romped. If you can imagine a black 
 sleeping sack, made of American cloth and 
 rather badly packed, romping, you will know 
 what it looked like. It had an old, old face, 
 hundreds of years old, and it had a shiny bald 
 pate and it had whiskers and a healthy mous- 
 tache, and it was really glad to see me. I 
 thought at first it might be hungry, but it had 
 a sufficiency of food at hand. It was only un- 
 happy and lonely and wanting its mammy and 
 feeling horribly small and insignificant in a 
 great, hostile world that it couldn't understand, 
 and dying for some one to talk to. I was feel- 
 ing like that, too, and so we made friends at 
 once and I have never had a truer friend or one 
 who greeted me with more unfailing gladness 
 or was more unfeignedly sorry when I left him. 
 It wasn't cupboard love either, for I never 
 gave him anything. He never thought of of- 
 fering me anything -^ or I might have accepted 
 it gladly. I called him Chris, after a former 
 friend, because their eyes were very much alike. 
 
 30 
 
 i 
 
A Bahy in the Bronx 
 
 We could never quite decide which of us had 
 most to put up with. Chris had more food 
 than he wanted and I had liberty; he was al- 
 ways longing to be back among the big waves 
 and the ice-packs and I would have given a 
 good deal to have some one to bring me my 
 meals regularly. We had our loneliness in 
 common. 
 
 Chris never knew how much he meant to me 
 — in the way of giving me something to think 
 of beside my own troubles. I worked out at 
 least five distinct schemes for carrying him off 
 and setting him at liberty in the Hudson. I 
 would have done it, too, had I felt certain he 
 would benefit by the change. But at that time 
 I was realising rather fully that there are worse 
 things in this world than a regular position, 
 with a regular income attached to it, even if it 
 meant being chained to a desk, or forced to 
 adapt a round body to a square hutch — so I 
 didn't. I feel sorry, sometimes, even now, 
 that my heart failed me. Chris was delicate, 
 the keeper told me, and they scarcely expected 
 to raise him, so I suppose he is dead now and 
 
 31 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 out of his troubles. He was very good to me, 
 he was. 
 
 As long as my three dollars lasted I hung 
 about the Bronx. It was bright, warm weather, 
 and In the park and the woodlands round about 
 it there was ample sleeping accommodation, 
 and most of the daytime I spent talking to 
 Chris — in a sort of dazed day-dream, not 
 thinking at all, only feeling dimly that there 
 wasn't anything particular to do or any partic- 
 ular reason to do it. By about the fourth day 
 I began to re-orientate my position. Chris 
 had taught me that I was not the only person 
 in the world who had his difficulties and grad- 
 ually it began to come over me that my posi- 
 tion was really very much better than his, be- 
 cause he could not escape from his troubles, try 
 how he would, and, if I would only try, I 
 could. I waited until the Monday, because on 
 the Sunday there were a great many people 
 about, and we had very little chance of private 
 talk together. On the Monday I bade him 
 good-bye for the time, and he gave me all 
 the encouragement he could think of, and as I 
 
 32 
 
A Baby in the Bronx 
 
 walked away down the little hill he stood up 
 on his tail against the railing and looked after 
 me and rolled his head from side to side as 
 though he were trying to wave his handker- 
 chief to me. 
 
 It seems silly enough to look back to, but it 
 felt uncommonly like saying good-bye to a 
 friend. Some day, when I am very rich, I am 
 going back to the Bronx Zoo — and if Chris is 
 still alive I am going to buy him and take him 
 back to somewhere In the Arctic Circle and 
 there offer him the chance of his liberty. I 
 don't believe he will, take it, somehow. 
 
 I took the Elevated all the way down to the 
 Battery, because it was so cheap, and I knew 
 that there was the business end of New York, 
 where I must look for a clerkship, or some- 
 thing of that sort, for I was not particular. 
 The sight of the shipping-ofEces at the Bowling 
 Green made me wonder whether I should not 
 be wise to get myself shipped back to England 
 as a pauper immigrant. But somehow the idea 
 didn't smile upon me, especially when I thought 
 of Chris. I couldn't find any work — you 
 
 33 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 wouldn't be surprised, If you could know how 
 shabby I was or how vague about my acquire- 
 ments — and that night I slept upon a bench 
 in Union Square. 
 
 34 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 On Sleeping Out 
 
 I HAVE starved in three capitals — Lon- 
 don, Paris, and New York — but I was 
 never so depressed in my life as to hear, 
 when coming home to the Embankment re- 
 cently, of the absurd new system they have 
 started there. To wake a man out of a com- 
 fortable snooze and give him a ticket for a 
 casual ward — as I understand is now being 
 done — is to reduce starvation to an absurdity, 
 to bring us all to the vulgar level of the small 
 
 shopkeeper. 
 
 Hitherto, for general eligibility, London has 
 been but a little way behind New York in the 
 matter of sleeping out. To Paris I have never 
 been partial; it is too full of adventure for a 
 quiet man. There are at least as many un- 
 speakables in London or New York, but they 
 
 35 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 are for the most part opportunist; your Apache 
 of Paris is a sportsman. There may be twenty 
 thousand night-birds in either English-speaking 
 city who would cut your throat for half-a- 
 crown, but the half-crown is to them a neces- 
 sary incidental. Without it you are safe from 
 anything more than horseplay. But your 
 Parisian murders from the sheer joie de vivre. 
 You are to him no more than a head of game 
 and the state of your pockets immaterial. I 
 have known a man to be killed on the Boule- 
 vard de Clichy at three in the morning for not 
 possessing a box of matches. And if you con- 
 sider the kind of matches obtainable In Paris 
 you can realise the significance of such an In- 
 cident. 
 
 Compared with, say, Madison Square, I have 
 always found the Embankment rather depres- 
 sing. The company does not seem able to 
 forget that It Is under a cloud. It Is down and 
 out; it refuses to be proud of it. I am not 
 sure that the coming of the all-night trams has 
 not done something to Improve this, by Intro- 
 ducing a certain bustle; but at the same time it 
 
 36 
 
On Sleeping Out 
 
 has diminished the chances of really refreshing 
 sleep, chiefly because of the absurd arrange- 
 ment of the roadway, by which groaning Jug- 
 gernauts are made to rush by within a foot of 
 your head. The police, too, have always been 
 needlessly officious — perhaps as being under 
 the immediate eye of New Scotland Yard. 
 They manage these things better in New York. 
 
 There are three very good sleeping-out cen- 
 tres in New York — Madison Square, Union 
 Square, and City Hall Park. They are strung, 
 like beads on a rosary, at convenient distances 
 along Broadway, so that if you get bored in the 
 one, it is not too far to stroll along to another. 
 There are other possibilities, of course — the 
 Bronx, to which I have already referred. Cen- 
 tral Park, or the Battery. But they are too far 
 from the centre of things to be convenient. 
 Central Park, again, is too lively — almost as 
 bad as Hyde Park — and there Is something 
 suburban about it in suggestion. Personally, 
 I would as soon sleep out on Turnham Green. 
 
 Each of my three chosen squares has its pe- 
 culiar advantages. The benches of all alike 
 
 37 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 are well designed, with backs at the proper 
 angle. They are In some ways better than 
 those on the Embankment, where, If you hap- 
 pen to get a corner seat, there Is an unpleasantly 
 sharp metal rim to the arm — In Itself too 
 sloping — which Is awkward for your elbow. 
 On the other hand, although you are In some 
 danger of slipping off, the London design fits 
 the small of the back, which New York Ignores. 
 As for Paris, you might as well try to sleep on 
 a tombstone for any comfort you will get out 
 of It. 
 
 City Hall Park Is lively, Union Square is 
 reposeful, Madison Square faintly aristocratic. 
 City Hall Park has the newspaper offices, and 
 IS the best for a night when you are not sleepy 
 and wish to be amused. My favourite pitch 
 is the ring of benches round the fountain op- 
 posite the General Post Office. In hot weather 
 little boys abound there, who use the basin as 
 an open-air swimming bath at all hours, usually 
 jumping In fully dressed — for what It implies 
 — and having pleasant skirmishes with the not 
 too officious police. The east side of Union 
 
 38 
 
On Sleeping Out 
 
 Square is quiet and well wooded — excellent 
 when you are really tired; Madison Square, for 
 some reason, attracts those who have seen bet- 
 ter days. My last bench neighbour there was 
 a British baronet, and dropped his aitches like 
 a man. All three are open and free, without 
 annoying railings or gates, well lighted by 
 strong arc lights, with drinking fountains handy 
 and lavatory accommodation fair for New 
 York, where it is, generally speaking, abomi- 
 nable. All are on the main street-car lines, 
 which run, however, discreetly after midnight, 
 and thus are cheerful without being intrusive. 
 The company is delightful: optimists to a 
 man and woman. I have talked to a hoary 
 patriarch of, I suppose, seventy-five. He said 
 he had not slept in a bed for ten years, and I 
 believed him. Yet his whole conversation was 
 on the best location for a motor works. He 
 had invented, and had in his pocket, an entirely 
 new system of electrical ignition — I am not an 
 expert on these things — and when I left him 
 he was figuring out the precise number of mil- 
 lions he would make when the factory was 
 
 39 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 working at its full capacity. Every one has 
 some scheme or other, and is quite ready to 
 share it with you. The last time I slept in 
 Union Square I was offered a partnership in 
 one which I believe really had something in it. 
 Some of the Elevated stations up-town are high 
 above the streets over which they run — espe- 
 cially about the Cathedral Parkway — and they 
 are approached from the roadway by long iron 
 staircases, roofed in, so as almost to resemble 
 tunnels. My neighbour's idea was to arrange 
 a private company of three, two to hold up 
 passengers — drunkards preferred — on their 
 way down to the street, the third to keep watch. 
 The working hours were from midnight to 
 four in the morning and the probable returns 
 magnificent. I did not accept the offer — as a 
 matter of fact, before I had really time to con- 
 sider it, I received another, which struck me as 
 more promising, though, in the end, I did not 
 accept that either. At least it is a fact that I 
 never had such an offer on the Embankment; 
 and now that they have turned it Into a sort of 
 annexe to the casual ward, I never shall. 
 
 40 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Thieves' Kitchen 
 
 F 
 
 ,EW things have made me reahse more 
 fully Man's superiority to the Beasts 
 that Perish — I except Chris because 
 he is my friend — than my own adaptability 
 to circumstances. Granted the transportation 
 of a lion to the Arctic Circle and I am ready 
 to believe that in four or five generations he 
 will evolve for himself the fur, claws and anat- 
 omy of a walrus, a Polar bear, or whatever 
 other beast meets him half-way upon the path 
 towards fitness. Mankind, if I am any ex- 
 ample to go by, would reach the same point in 
 four or five days. When I parted company 
 with Mrs. Isaacs and my portmanteau I had 
 all the prejudices of those born to the ringing 
 of bells, as compared with those fated to the 
 answering of them. It was certainly not the 
 
 41 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 first time the wolf had curled himself upon my 
 hearth-rug, but such earlier experiences differed 
 in that they lacked the element of finality, that 
 in every case the certain hope remained that 
 either by coaxing or compulsion the wolf could 
 sooner or later be expelled. But, as I sat on 
 the benches of Union Square, it was unpleas- 
 antly brought home to me that the case was 
 altered. Fortune, at whom I had so long 
 made faces, was showing herself suddenly apt 
 at the same game. No longer could I ring 
 bells; I had not even the chance of answering 
 them. Not only was I hungry, but gazing 
 ahead I could see nothing but an eternity of 
 empty stomachs. I was become, in earnest, the 
 vagabond I had sometime played at being. 
 
 Within three days I adapted myself, un- 
 consciously, to my new conditions. I gazed at 
 a new world with new eyes and from a new 
 angle. No longer was a policeman to me a 
 henchman; he was become the Giant Corcoran, 
 lord of dread powers, the more awful that 
 their limits were to me unknown. No longer 
 were clean faces and white linen the normal 
 
 42 
 
Thieves' Kitchen 
 
 setting for humanity; they were mere abstract 
 ideas, to be regarded from afar, lacking in ac- 
 tuality. I lounged upon my bench as though 
 to the manner born, as though I had lounged 
 there for long centuries, as though I had done 
 nothing else this side the Blue Chamber of 
 which Mr. Maeterlinck has told us. Then It 
 was that the Tempter — as I am sure he would 
 love to believe himself — came to me. 
 
 Not an hour after I was offered the chance 
 of holding-up belated passengers on the Ele- 
 vated came my Introduction to the thieves' 
 kitchen. I was sitting at the end of the bench 
 nearest the central arc-light. I was sitting 
 there the more easily to read, In a stray copy 
 of the Journal, an article detailing the mil- 
 lions paid for a famous blue diamond, reputed 
 to bring bad luck to its possessor, which yet had 
 recently changed hands. There the Tempter 
 found me. He was a small man, shabbily 
 smart, and he told me that he was English. 
 Then he sat down on the bench beside me — it 
 was a little after three in the morning — and 
 we chatted together, as one does on the 
 
 43 
 
 m 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 benches of Union Square, without any formal 
 introduction. He asked me several questions. 
 He asked me if I was English and up against 
 it, and I said I was both. Then he asked me if 
 I would like to make some money, and I said 
 there was nothing I should like better, except 
 to have some given me. Then he asked if I 
 was a University man and I said yes, but not of 
 an English University, only German. He was 
 a little disappointed at that, I could see, so I 
 told him that I had a cousin who was at Balliol 
 and who often let me speak to him. That 
 cheered him up considerably and he said that if 
 I liked to walk with him as far as Second Ave- 
 nue it might be worth while. I was getting 
 horribly tired of my own company by that time, 
 so I went gladly. 
 
 We went into a saloon just off the avenue. 
 We went in through the Family Entrance and 
 into a sort of lobby lined with mirrors and 
 through one of the mirrors, which were fitted 
 so neatly together that you couldn't see any 
 doors, into a little private room. There were 
 two ladies and two gentlemen, and my friend 
 
 44 
 
Thieves' Kitchen 
 
 the Tempter introduced me to one of the gen- 
 tlemen, whose name was Mr. Birmingham. I 
 am not using real names, of course, but they 
 are near enough. Mr. Birmingham was what 
 they would call in New York a near-gentleman, 
 so near that you could scarcely tell the differ- 
 ence by artificial light. He was a good fellow, 
 too, because when he asked me what I would 
 take to drink, and I said I would much rather 
 have something to eat, he was quite nice about 
 it and sent out for a cold lunch of sliced sau- 
 sages and dill pickles and crullers and things 
 like that, and very glad I was to have them. 
 Meanwhile he introduced me to his friend, 
 whose name was O'Fallon and who was too 
 shiny to be quite convincing, and to the two 
 ladies, who only had given-names and for some 
 reason, as soon as I spoke to them, began to 
 laugh until they cracked their complexions. 
 One of them was rather pretty and both were 
 more fashionably dressed than seemed abso- 
 lutely necessary. However, they were kind 
 enough to say that I was some boob, or Rube, 
 I am not quite sure which, as they were laugh- 
 
 45 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 ing so much, which I took to be complimentary. 
 Mr. Birmingham, also, seemed struck with my 
 appearance and intimated to the Tempter, 
 whose name I gathered was Tripper, that he 
 thought I should do. Then he asked me what 
 my line was and I said that I was a teetotaller, 
 which I wasn't, only I thought It seemed an ap- 
 propriate thing to say and the two ladies 
 laughed more than ever and one of them said 
 that I was great. 
 
 Mr. O' Fallon for some reason did not seem 
 to like me. He was rather a surly person who 
 kept on muttering to himself under his breath, 
 and at last beckoned Mr. Birmingham out of 
 the room, leaving me alone with Mr. Tripper 
 and the ladies. Mr. Tripper didn't seem very 
 pleased with me either, I thought. He whis- 
 pered to me something about not trying to put 
 it over them too much, or something of that 
 sort. The ladies kept on laughing all the 
 time. They were very merry souls. 
 
 When Mr. Birmingham came back he got 
 right down to business at once. He began by 
 asking questions about my past career and fu- 
 
 46 
 
Thieves' Kitchen 
 
 ture prospects, which I answered as untruth- 
 fully as was possible on such short notice. 
 Then he asked if I had ever turned my thoughts 
 towards bunco-steering or the green-goods 
 game. 
 
 I do not know If it is necessary to explain 
 that bunco-steering is what is known in Eng- 
 land as the confidence trick, and is worked by 
 forcing your acquaintance on a complete and 
 guileless stranger and so gaining his confidence 
 in one of many ways, that you induce him to 
 hand over to you all his valuables, wherewith 
 you then decamp. You may see it in operation 
 almost any day In or about the big Strand hotels 
 where Americans mostly congregate. For 
 some reason Americans seem about the only 
 people ever taken in by It. I am sure I don't 
 know why. 
 
 The green-goods game consists In selling or 
 pretending to sell forged United States bank- 
 notes — " green-backs," whence the name — to 
 persons with more greed than honesty. Of 
 course you profess to be able to supply them 
 very much under the usual rates — ten cents on 
 
 47 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 the dollar is, I think, customary. Equally, of 
 course, you haven't any forged banknotes to 
 sell at all, and you simply trick your customer 
 out of his money. The ingenious part of the 
 *' game " is that, having himself embarked in 
 a criminal business, he dare not afterwards 
 prosecute you, and with any luck you can make 
 further sums out of him in the way of black- 
 mail. As you will understand, an appearance 
 and manner of virtuous gullelessness is of great 
 value in either of these " games," and I there- 
 fore felt that Mr. Birmingham's question was 
 distinctly flattering. 
 
 He went on to point the moral by saying 
 that being large and fat and fair, with a stupid 
 face and an expression of blank idiocy, it struck 
 him that Nature had cut me out for either — 
 especially the first. I said that I had heard of 
 them, but was not fully familiar with their de- 
 tails. He explained them to me carefully and 
 added that if I took a hand in either I might 
 very soon expect to attain a high position. At 
 first I should have to start in a humbler ca- 
 pacity, merely to watch-out, when a game was 
 
Thieves' Kitchen 
 
 In progress and make myself familiar with the 
 faces of the slops who might be dangerous. 
 Even so, he said, there was more dough to be 
 made in a week than I could expect to earn in 
 any other way in a year, supposing I ever man- 
 aged to earn anything at all in New York. 
 One thing only I must remember — and remem- 
 ber always. Obedience to orders — obedience 
 and again obedience. 
 
 I am not at all sure that I should not have 
 accepted the suggestion, had it not been for the 
 presence of the ladies. As it was, it occurred 
 to me that I should probably be expected to be 
 on friendly terms with them and, somehow, I 
 didn't feel like it. I doubted, too, whether I 
 could ever really become intimate with Mr. 
 O'Fallon. So I said I should like to think it 
 over a little first. I said It with a certain diffi- 
 dence, because I had visions, gained chiefly 
 from the perusal of light literature, of being 
 told to hold my hands up, knocked on the head, 
 and dropped down a drain through a trap-door 
 opening somewhere behind the fireplace. 
 Nothing of the sort occurred. Mr. Tripper 
 
 49 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 looked as if he was very sorry and Mr. O'Fal- 
 lon looked as If he was very glad, and the two 
 ladies laughed until the colour began to drop 
 off their eyelashes, and Mr. Birmingham said 
 that he could quite understand how I felt and 
 that I could find him there any evening when I 
 had made up my mind. Then we shook hands 
 all round and I left them. 
 
 That was my only real experience of profes- 
 sional criminality In New York, and I feel my- 
 self that It was more than a little disappoint- 
 ing. If there had been only a pass-word or 
 two, or a few oaths of inevitable vengeance if 
 I played the part of traitor, I should have liked 
 it better. But there was nothing of the sort, 
 nor did I see so much as one revolver 
 (technically known as " gun "), nor any masks, 
 nor, Indeed, any of the properly romantic ac- 
 cessories of crime. My friend Dempsey, who 
 as a policeman himself should know something 
 about it, told me later, when I discussed It with 
 him, that Mr. Birmingham was probably 
 brother-in-law to an Alderman and hand-In- 
 glove with the superior officers of the police- 
 
 50 
 
Thieves' Kitchen 
 
 force and that, did I attempt to betray them I 
 should very likely be knocked on the head, not 
 by the Criminal Band, but by a police-lieutenant 
 on a charge of D. and D. It is true that 
 Dempsey is something of a cynic and may have 
 exaggerated. I only know that such was my 
 Introduction to the World of Crime and that 
 if it Is lacking in romantic features it is not my 
 fault. 
 
 I had no regrets, for I got a square, If indi- 
 gestible meal, out of It all, and just then I 
 wanted one rather badly. 
 
 SI 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The ''Cop'' and the "Copper" 
 
 I FIRST met Dempsey — as I will call 
 him — when I was looking for the 
 Bread Line. I had heard of it as offer- 
 ing the chance of something to eat, but I did 
 not know its whereabouts. It was the second 
 day after my interview with Mr. Birmingham 
 and I happened to pass Dempsey, who was reg- 
 ulating the traffic at the corner of Broadway 
 and Union Square and I asked him. Broad- 
 way belies its name at that point and the traf- 
 fic was very heavy, but he found time to smile 
 amiably, to ask me if I was up against it, 
 and to lend me a pin, which I wanted urgently 
 as I was unprovided with serviceable braces. 
 Afterwards, in the intervals of dragging old 
 ladies from under the wheels of street cars, he 
 found more time to cheer me up, which I 
 
 52 
 
The 'Top'' and the 'Topper' 
 
 needed badly, to lend me fifty cents, which I 
 needed more, and to tell me of a man who kept 
 a delicatessen store on Sixth Avenue, and who 
 needed an assistant. Officer Dempsey thought 
 that if I said he had sent me, and that I could 
 speak German, I might get the job. I did get 
 it, and very interesting it proved, though that 
 is beside the point for the present. 
 
 I do not for a moment say that the New 
 York police force spends all its time in prac- 
 tising active benevolence towards needy foreign 
 vagabonds, but this story happens to be true 
 — and I have met nothing like it in London, 
 Paris, Berlin, or Constantinople. No doubt 
 Dempsey Is an exceptional man; possibly he 
 judged that I was not quite such a hobo as I 
 looked; at least to me he typifies the whole 
 splendid force of which he is a member. And 
 I never read a little ha'penny press attack upon 
 that force without wishing to mobilise a few 
 corner-boys, toughs and gunmen, and to make a 
 clean sweep of the particular office from which 
 it originates. There is only one other police- 
 man with whom it is not an insult to compare 
 
 53 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 the New York " cop " — the London *' cop- 
 per," — and the comparison Is not altogether to 
 the American's disadvantage, 
 
 I suppose it is because the Police Universal 
 sees so much of the realities that it is ubiqui- 
 tously benevolent, so far as my experience goes. 
 The policeman of Paris is benevolent and ineffi- 
 cient; in Berlin, he is benevolent — yes, really 
 — and officious; in Constantinople, benevolent 
 and a fatalist; in London, benevolent and a 
 snob; In New York, benevolent and a gentle- 
 man. Given two drunken seafarers fighting 
 in the street who refuse to desist when chal- 
 lenged, the Paris policeman will pretend not to 
 see them; the Berlin policeman will ring up a 
 regiment of Uhlans; he of Constantinople will 
 shrug his shoulders, cry aloud " Is this the will 
 of Allah? " and proceed upon his beat with dig- 
 nified aloofness. London and New York will 
 alike arrest the combatants, or a dozen of them, 
 single-handed, but London will consider 
 whether they are admirals or deck-hands, and 
 only use his truncheon In the latter case; New 
 York will hammer either with equal joy. In 
 
 54 
 
The ''Cop'' and the "Copper" 
 
 other words, if you are unwillingly ragged be- 
 yond reason, London will arrest you for inde- 
 cency; New York will lend you three pins and 
 a piece of string. I can vouch for this, because 
 at a time when I only possessed one pair of 
 trousers, and they split — but I need not go 
 into that. I do not blame London ; the police- 
 man merely honours the spirit of his nation; 
 but so it is. 
 
 Granted, as I honestly believe, that the New 
 York " cop " is, man to man, so nearly on an 
 equality with his London brother, why is it that 
 he gets all the kicks and his brother all the 
 ha'pence? Simply because the Londoner is 
 well officered, well supported, and sufficiently 
 numerous; the New Yorker is none of these 
 things. He suffers for the faults of his bet- 
 ters. I say this, not on my own authority, but 
 on the strength of many facts, which I have 
 seen and noted, and upon which Dempsey and 
 his colleagues have commented with refreshing 
 frankness, in my hearing. 
 
 There are at least as many — Dempsey says 
 twice as many — criminals of the lowest type 
 
 55 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 in New York as in London, Paris, and Berlin 
 put together. I do not remember the exact 
 figures, but there are fewer policemen in New 
 York than in either. The " scum of South- 
 eastern Europe," as President Wilson truth- 
 fully and rashly called them — and thereby 
 risked a heavy loss of support during the re- 
 cent presidential campaign — arrive in New 
 York year after year in ever-increasing num- 
 bers, and stay there. The police force remains 
 stationary, or nearly so. What is more, the 
 policeman runs serious danger in arresting 
 them, not from them but from his superiors. 
 The magistracy is selected by and subservient 
 to certain corrupt politicians of Albany and 
 New York, whose personal retinue, for election 
 and other purposes, is largely composed of 
 gunmen and foreign criminals generally. Ar- 
 rest a notorious criminal in the act, and as often 
 as not, though you bring fifty witnesses of un- 
 impeachable standing, he will be acquitted 
 without a stain on his character. Let me 
 again emphasise that these words are not my 
 own, that the facts may not be as Dempscy 
 
 56 
 
The "Cop" and the "Copper'' 
 
 believed. At least they are as he told them 
 to me. 
 
 Such a state of things does not induce effi- 
 ciency. Neither does the existence of the 
 Mayor — as Mayors are understood in New 
 York. It is perhaps worst when the Mayor is 
 a politician; it is very little better when he is 
 a reformer, which is to say a crank. In my 
 time he was a senile person called Gaynor, 
 with an itch for popularity and designs on the 
 Presidency which, I am happy to think, came 
 to nothing. In the case of any law which he 
 thought unpopular he had a pleasant little 
 habit of writing to the papers to the effect that 
 he hoped the police would turn their blind eyes 
 towards any breach of it. And the Mayor has 
 more power over the police than has any Chief 
 Commissioner. New York again, in common 
 with the rest of America, is. ridiculously over- 
 lawed — with absurd little laws that are merely 
 vexatious and do no good to anybody. Any 
 crank with money and influence — which is the 
 same thing — at Albany, the State Capital, can 
 get any measure passed that he pleases — if he 
 
 57 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 will but pay enough. Most of such laws are, 
 of course, unworkable and unworked; they are 
 nevertheless included, which is to say confused, 
 with those really necessary to the public safety 
 and convenience. The unhappy policeman has 
 always to consider whether in enforcing the 
 written law he may not be breaking one unwrit- 
 ten. I would not be a New York PoHceman 
 for a very great deal ; I would very much rather 
 borrow money from him. 
 
 Of the immediately superior officers, cap- 
 tains, lieutenants and the rest, we have been 
 recently hearing so much that I need say little 
 about them. I do not believe — neither does 
 Dempsey, who knows what he is talking about 
 — that the great majority of them are more 
 corrupt than other men. Only — they all hap- 
 pen to be human beings, and some of them no 
 doubt inherit their first ancestor's little weak- 
 nesses. We, after all, have had our own 
 Piccadilly police scandals ^ — and there are fifty 
 Piccadillys in New York, forty or so concen- 
 trated in the one Tenderloin district. Do 
 away with your politicians, your aldermen, your 
 
 58 
 
The ''Cop" and the 'Topper'' 
 
 people with a pull, and especially your cranks, 
 and there will be no need to talk of reforming 
 the New York Police. The " cop " is drawn 
 from much the same class as is the " copper." 
 He is better educated; he has similar ideas of 
 duty and he is as efficient to carry them out. 
 Give him half a chance and he will make 
 Heaven — even out of New York. 
 
 I know that this digression has little to do 
 with my own vagabondage; but we hear so 
 much, especially of course In England, of 
 Dempsey's deficiencies and those of his officers 
 that It seems only fair to remember that there 
 Is another side to the picture. Whether or no, 
 I am sure of one thing: if Dempsey dies before 
 I do, when I arrive In Purgatory I shall find 
 him there, directing the traffic, and I shall trust 
 myself to his care with absolute confidence that 
 he will shepherd me safely past the Infernal 
 trap-doors. What Is more, he will be pro- 
 moted Upstairs millions of years before most 
 of those who now sit In judgment upon him. 
 
 59 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Free and Enlightened 
 
 SO far as I was ever an earnest politician, 
 in New York or elsewhere, I became 
 one through eating too much canned 
 — or, as we should say, tinned — asparagus. 
 It came about through my gaining the post of 
 assistant to Mr. — I will call him Cholmondely, 
 though his real name was very much more 
 British and aristocratic — who kept a deli- 
 catessen store on Sixth Avenue, above Forty- 
 second Street. My friend Dempsey, when he 
 recommended me, told me that Mr. Chol- 
 mondely was a tightwad — and he was. He 
 was an interesting combination, even for New 
 York. His mother was Greek — a descendant 
 of the Byzantine Emperors, as is every Greek 
 in New York; his father was German — a de- 
 scendant of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, 
 
 60 
 
The Free and Enlightened 
 
 as is every German in New York; and he was a 
 Jew, and his name was Cholmondely, as I have 
 said. He knew, because Dempsey told him, 
 that I was " up against it." Dempsey lent me 
 fifty cents, and it is always a pleasure to me to 
 remember that however much I owed when I 
 left New York I repaid him. Out of it I spent 
 ten cents on getting my shoes polished, for 
 dandy. It was really only five cents, but it was 
 so long since I had had any money in my pocket 
 that I slipped the guy a nickel — as we should 
 say on the benches of Union Square — as a tip, 
 and the accession of self-respect was worth it. 
 Then I spent twenty-five cents on two collars 
 
 — one must take some luggage on engaging 
 new lodgings ; and ten cents on a shave — the 
 barber called It a hair-cut and wanted fifteen 
 
 — so that I had exactly a nickel left when I 
 took up my new position. 
 
 I hoped that Mr. Cholmondely would ad- 
 vance me something on my first week's salary, 
 but he was of another opinion. If I had man- 
 aged to live so long without, he thought I 
 could last out another week and be spared the 
 
 6i 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 mortification of having to pay more than my 
 salary back before I got it; which was log- 
 ical enough. He liked the look of me, though, 
 as he was kind enough to say, and he let me 
 live on the surplus stock, on credit, for the first 
 week. I spent my nickel on a loaf of bread, 
 very good but painfully dear, and I made 
 good on the surplus stock. It consisted of 
 canned asparagus and sardines. If I live to be 
 a hundred I never wish to see either of them 
 again. They were bad enough separately; on 
 the Thursday, having finished my loaf, I tried 
 them together. On the Friday a dear little 
 pantomime lady, who was engaged at a vaude- 
 ville house in the next block, said that for a fat 
 man I was the hungriest-looking boob she had 
 ever seen and asked me to have a sandwich 
 with her. I had six and without shame; I told 
 Mr. Cholmondely next morning that she was 
 a principal, and that her credit was good, and 
 it passed off all right. I have nothing against 
 Mr. Cholmondely; he allowed me to sleep in 
 the space behind the counter for the first week. 
 I think it was harder, but it was very much more 
 
 62 
 
The Free and Enlightened 
 
 respectable than a bench on Union, or even on 
 Madison, Square. 
 
 It was through Dempsey' — my good angel 
 — that I became a politician, though I honestly 
 think I should have held back If It had not been 
 for the asparagus. 
 
 I was alone In the store when Mr. Hawes 
 came In. I had never before seen anybody 
 who looked so prosperous. He had a big 
 black moustache and a smile, a corporation, a 
 diamond bosom-pin, and a cigar. He shook 
 hands with me quite warmly and said he was 
 glad to meet me. If you only knew what that 
 meant to me! Then he said I was English. I 
 hadn't had a chance to say a word, so I asked 
 him how he knew. He said, because I dropped 
 my altches. Englishmen always did. Then to 
 my surprise he ticked me off In a little note-book 
 and said that my name was provisionally Alf 
 Cohnstamm, a native of Paterson, New Jersey, 
 and that I was to call at O'Keefe's cafe on 
 Avenue A when I was sent for. 
 
 He was just bustling off when, I suppose, 
 something In the voice with which I thanked 
 
 63 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 him struck him as umisual. He looked at me 
 rather queerly and asked me if I were a smart 
 Aleck. I said that I did not know; that, from 
 my name I imagined myself to be of Jewish 
 descent. He still looked a little annoyed, so I 
 smiled at him, and he relented and asked me if 
 Mr. Cholmondely had not made me wise. I 
 said that he had done his best — and that was 
 really true, so far as the delicatessen trade 
 goes. Mr. Hawes put his head on one side 
 and shook hands again, quite warmly. They 
 have a perfect mania for shaking hands in 
 America. I have been told — though I do not 
 know it for an actual fact — that as soon as you 
 are born you celebrate the occasion by shaking 
 hands with the accoucheur and that, if you are 
 unlucky enough to be executed for murder — 
 which you are not unless you are very unlucky 
 indeed — you first shake hands with the elec- 
 trician and the governor and the chaplain and 
 the warders and the newspaper men, and tell 
 them to be sure and drop in whenever they are 
 passing. Anyway, Mr. Hawes shook hands 
 
 64 
 
- ..."j^^ll.nf 
 
 I was tu call al O'Keefe's cafe when 1 was sent for. 
 
The Free and Enlightened 
 
 with me twice and then, when he had already 
 got as far as the door, came back and shook 
 hands for the third time and said that I had 
 got to quit kicking his dawg aroun', and that I 
 was a bright-eyed mother's darling, and then 
 the bosom-pin steered the cigar out on to the 
 sidewalk. 
 
 When the chance came I asked Mr. Chol- 
 mondely about it, and he told me that mein roll 
 was not zhick zat it might not be zhicker, and 
 zat ze old Tiger was gut enough for him and 
 for me, too. 
 
 A week later I was summoned to Mr. 
 O'Keefe's cafe. Mr. O'Keefe was rather a 
 bigger edition of Mr. Hawes, which was only 
 natural, as he was a shade nearer the rose. 
 His moustache and his smile and his corpora- 
 tion and his bosom-pin and his cigar were all a 
 shade bigger and ranker, and he told me that I 
 was a Democrat. I liked him at once, because 
 he had bulgy purple eyes that looked as if it 
 was only by the exercise of marvellous self- 
 restraint that they did not jump out of his head, 
 
 65 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 and reminded me of Chris, whom I was long- 
 ing to see again, only the fare to the Bronx 
 was five cents. 
 
 Mr. O'Keefe poured me out a chaser as he 
 told me that I was a Democrat and he went on 
 to say, with a chaser between each paragraph, 
 that I was a fervent believer in 
 
 Smith for Mayor 
 
 'And Jones for State Attorney 
 
 And some one else for something else. 
 
 And so were Mr. Breitstein 
 
 And Mr. Tuchverderber 
 
 And Mr. Letztergrosschen 
 
 And Mr. Mavrogordato 
 
 And Mr. Ferrati 
 
 And quite a number of other people 
 
 And that I was all of them 
 
 And that we were worth three dollars each 
 for being what we were — a trifle under the 
 usual rates because a large batch of emigrants 
 had arrived a few days before and depressed 
 the market. 
 
 Between surprise and the chasers and the 
 
 66 
 
The Free and Enlightened 
 
 memory of the canned asparagus I believed 
 everything that he told me. 
 
 In due course Mr. Breitstein and Mr. Fer- 
 rati and Mr. Mavrogordato and the rest of me 
 all recorded our votes for Smith and Jones and 
 the rest of the ticket. Incidentally, we made 
 quite a lot of money out of our refusal to bolt, 
 and I made up my mind to remain a Democrat 
 for the rest of my life, or until the Republican 
 rates became a shade less niggardly. I was 
 glad of the money because, just about then, Mr. 
 Cholmondely and I parted company and, until 
 I got a job with the " movies " a month later 
 I was rather badly unemployed. 
 
 57 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Business is Business 
 
 YOU have to pay ten cents in New 
 York for a chicken sandwich, and it 
 is usually made of turkey. You 
 pay live cents for a ham sandwich, and you 
 have no idea what it is made of. I was in the 
 delicatessen trade in New York for three weeks 
 — and I have my suspicions. For twenty-five 
 cents you can have a club sandwich. That is 
 made of toast and chicken-turkey and bacon, all 
 hot and very good. It is well worth the extra 
 expense, because the smell of the bacon dis- 
 guises that of the chicken. American bacon is 
 not good; it is nearly always sold in glass bot- 
 tles, as we sell jam, which prevents its getting 
 away. I prefer its flavour to that of delicates- 
 sen chicken, however, because I was in a hos- 
 pital once and I hate being reminded of it. 
 
 68 
 
Business is Business 
 
 There are as many delicatessen stores in 
 New York as there are wine-shops in Paris or 
 tailors in the City of London. To millions of 
 good New Yorkers the most dazzling kind of 
 orgy is to spend the evening in a cinema theatre, 
 which costs five cents, and then go to a delicates- 
 sen store and have a ham sandwich. For the 
 rest of the week you live upon dill pickles. 
 Dill pickles are what we call gherkins, and they 
 are far and away the most popular article of 
 food in New York. You can get one for a 
 cent; a really big and juicy one, which will do 
 you for breakfast, with a bit Over for lunch, 
 costs two cents. The people of New York are 
 simple and long suffering; the existence of the 
 delicatessen store is the proof of it. In no 
 other trade in the world can you make so large 
 a profit with so little ruth. I should be in the 
 trade now — and perhaps a millionaire — if it 
 had not been for a chicken. 
 
 They sell chickens by the barrel in New 
 York — wholesale, I mean — for much the same 
 reason that they sell bacon in bottles. I was 
 keeping store one day when Mr. Cholmondely 
 
 69 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 came in In a state of great excitement. He had 
 just heard of three barrels of chickens to be 
 got at a bargain. They belonged to a big 
 storekeeper, in a fashionable district up-town, 
 who had quarrelled that morning with the In- 
 spectors' Association — of which I will tell you 
 more in a minute. As the result, they had to 
 be sold at once, after being, I dare say, ten 
 years in the family, and considered heirlooms. 
 Mr. Cholmondely was anxious to get them be- 
 fore rival traders could hear of them. He 
 didn't want to appear in the deal himself for 
 political reasons, so I was to rush up at once 
 and secure them. I forget the actual figures, 
 but supposing the market price in the ordinary 
 way would have been twenty dollars, I was to 
 give three. It took me four hours bargaining 
 and two interviews with the local Rabbi, but in 
 the end I got them for three dollars and fifty 
 cents, and Mr. Cholmondely very kindly of- 
 fered to share half the loss with me. He 
 even said he was pleased with me, and he 
 showed it. I asked him if he would let me 
 have a little money; I said I wanted to buy a 
 
 70 
 
Business is Business 
 
 collar. He wouldn't give me any money, be- 
 cause he said New York was full of tempta- 
 tions, but he very kindly offered me the loan of 
 a used collar of his own, which he thought 
 would pass for another day or two if I chalked 
 it over in places; and when we found it wouldn't 
 fit, he said I could take as much packing paper 
 or string as was needed to eke it out and pay 
 nothing. 
 
 There never was such a busy afternoon as 
 we had when those chickens arrived. It meant 
 no end of arithmetical calculations to start 
 with, because to the cost of the chickens you 
 had to add that of the chemicals, then to de- 
 duct the share of the value of those chickens 
 that were so irretrievably gone that they could 
 only be used for sausages or club sandwiches, 
 next add the percentage of the inspector's fee, 
 and finally average the whole thing over each 
 chicken. We worked it out at a little over 450 
 per cent, profit. 
 
 We were in the middle of adapting the 
 chickens to their new life; I was wearing the 
 oxygen mask and coaxing them out of the bar- 
 
 71 
 
A VagahoTid in New York 
 
 rels, and Mr. Cholmondely standing by with a 
 club in case they turned nasty and attacked me, 
 when the inspector came in. It worried me for 
 the moment, and I wondered whether my em- 
 ployer would try to pass the barrels off as a 
 soap-works or patent manure or something. 
 He didn't, though. He handed the inspector a 
 cigar, calculated to dominate even those chick- 
 ens, and asked him to wait a bit. When he 
 was ready he got a ten-dollar bill out of the 
 cash register and handed it to him, and the in- 
 spector walked out. Mr. Cholmondely ex- 
 plained to me afterwards how these thh.gs are 
 done in New York. There is an association 
 of dishonest traders and another of dishonest 
 inspectors — Inspectors of Nuisances I sup- 
 pose we should call them over here — who 
 regulate the amount of graft to be paid for 
 each visit. (I don't mean to Imply that there 
 are no honest traders or honest Inspectors 
 either — but Mr. Cholmondely did not tell me 
 about them. He was not interested in them.) 
 In my time it worked out at ten dollars a visit, 
 
 72 
 
Business is Business 
 
 which was very moderate, considering that the 
 trader can do anything he chooses in the way of 
 selling rotten food, besides getting valuable 
 hints as to the best kinds of preservatives and 
 anti-stink chemicals and so on. If there is any 
 dispute the associations settle it, and their word 
 is final. If an inspector kicks he is bounced, 
 and if a trader does he is prosecuted, and the 
 newspapers marvel over the efficiency with 
 which the people of New York are protected 
 from the dangers of bad food. The system 
 works admirably, and on the very few occasions 
 it has broken down it has been almost entirely 
 due to the mistakes of new assistants fresh from 
 Europe, who do not understand business. 
 For which reason Mr. Cholmondely explained 
 that if ever a would-be assistant told him he 
 was an honest man, he turned him down at once. 
 He did not believe in taking risks, he said. I 
 felt quite glad it had not occurred to me to lie 
 to him. 
 
 We parted in the end over those same chick- 
 ens. Mr. Cholmondely wanted me to take out 
 
 73 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 part of my salary in club sandwiches, which he 
 said I could eat at any time, and so not waste 
 time over my meals. I had turned vegetarian 
 by that time, and so I left. 
 
 74 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Among the "Movies' 
 
 I SUPPOSE there must be at least twice 
 as many British baronets in New York 
 as In London. I have foregathered 
 with three in one night on the benches of Mad- 
 ison Square, where they mostly sleep. I have 
 been told, though I cannot vouch for this, that 
 on any fine afternoon hundreds of them may be 
 seen in the Central Park Zoo, hungrily looking 
 on while the animals are fed. In comparison, 
 the sprinkling of honourables is but small, and 
 in all my experience I met with but one peer. 
 He was, when in employment, a collector for 
 worthy causes, and he frankly admitted that his 
 title was only assumed for philanthropic pur- 
 poses. Next to the baronet the army captain 
 holds pride of place. He has Invariably 
 served either In the Guards or the Lancers. I 
 
 75 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 never met a British officer of any other grade 
 or arm sleeping out, though I was for a few 
 days on intimate terms with a field-marshal, 
 who practised, I was told later, what would in 
 London be known as the " kinchin lay " — steal- 
 ing nickels from small children who had been 
 sent on errands. He was, however, only a 
 Cuban, and it was doubted in our set whether 
 he really had the right to any rank higher than 
 General. 
 
 When the New York press caricatures, in- 
 tentionally or otherwise, the British aristocrat, 
 it always represents him as being prejudiced 
 against the letter " H." So widespread is this 
 belief that when the Duke of Connaught, some 
 time since, visited New York, those notabilities 
 who saw any prospect of being presented to 
 him spent hours beforehand practising aitch- 
 lessness, with the kindly desire to make him 
 feel thoroughly at home. If you had met as 
 many exiled British baronets as I have, you 
 would understand the origin of this belief. 
 When for a time I assumed a baronetcy I 
 never could understand why the simplest- 
 
 76 
 
Among the ''Movies' 
 
 minded landlady recognised me at once for an 
 impostor. Not until I had for three weeks 
 acted as joint-assistant with another man of title 
 to an Italian who kept a peanut stand at the 
 corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Ave- 
 nue did I discover that it was because I had not 
 the proper accent, or perhaps I should say 
 " eccent." When I say assistant, I should ex- 
 plain that the Itahan was fond of his glass, and 
 that Sir Alured — I mean my colleague — and 
 I used alternately to mind the stand in his ab- 
 sence, and be rewarded with from two to three 
 cents-worth of peanuts, according to time and 
 business done. Peanuts are very satisfying, 
 and for some time I lived literally on nothing 
 else. Then I heard that it was forbidden to 
 feed them to the squirrels in Central Park — 
 because they were supposed to give them mange 
 — so I decided to try a change of diet. 
 
 It was after I resigned my post in Mr. Chol- 
 mondely's delicatessen store that I went into 
 the peanut trade. I should probably, with any 
 luck, have had a stand of my own by this time 
 had I not one day run up against a former cus- 
 
 77 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 tomer, Miss Lamartine, as I will call her, of 
 the vaudeville stage. She was the nice girl who 
 had regaled me with sandwiches in Mr. Chol- 
 mondely's store, and when she heard that my 
 whole worldly wealth consisted of three collars 
 which I carried about in my pocket until I could 
 afford to have them washed, she suggested that 
 I should get work with the " movies." She 
 was doing so already, and thought she could 
 help me towards being taken on by the same 
 people. I didn't quite know what " movies " 
 were. I thought they had something to do 
 either with the furniture trade or woollen un- 
 derwear, but I jumped at the offer, especially 
 when she told me it was worth three or even 
 five dollars a day. 
 
 Theatre folk are proverbially generous, in 
 New York as elsewhere. When we decided 
 that my clothes were not calculated to inspire 
 confidence, she took me to a former colleague 
 who roomed on the East Side. As he had no 
 more money than had she, he very kindly of- 
 fered to lend me his only suit, which was ex- 
 tremely smart, in which to call upon the 
 
 78 
 
Among the "Movies' 
 
 Schutzenheimer Film Company — staying in 
 bed until I came back. What he would have 
 done if I had not come back, I tremble to 
 think. I am glad to say, for the credit of Eng- 
 land, that I resisted temptation. His clothes 
 fitted me quite sufficiently well, considering my 
 nationality — the average New Yorker has a 
 prejudice against English tailoring, preferring 
 something In which he can wrap himself five- 
 fold against the cold blast of adversity — and 
 I got the job. 
 
 The American stage Is largely recruited by 
 English actors who cannot make a living at 
 home. When the English actor in New York 
 falls In the legitimate — as Is not Infrequent — 
 he recruits the " movies." There were many 
 of him in the Schutzenheimer Company — 
 along with a sprinkling of baronets and army 
 captains. 
 
 I do not think I ever enjoyed a week more; 
 there was only one drawback — a serious one It 
 Is true — the necessity of getting up at six in 
 the morning. The Schutzenheimer studio was 
 on the other side of the Hudson and work 
 
 79 
 
'A Vagabond in New York 
 
 started at eight. They were doing a film of 
 strong moral purpose that week, showing the 
 evil results of gambling. In one scene the 
 gambler wandered into a wood, I don't know 
 why, and there fell asleep. A pitched battle 
 took place over him between a legion of devils 
 and his guardian angel. I was one of the dev- 
 ils, although the producer considered me rather 
 stout for the part. I know I made an effective 
 devil; my costume was black and skin-tight, and 
 I wore horns and tail. The place where we 
 did our scene was in the woods, about three 
 miles from the studio. We went there ready 
 made up, in the company's auto, and it broke 
 down, so that we had to walk back. Miss 
 Lamartlne, who was the angel, and I got sepa- 
 rated from the others, trying to find a short 
 cut through the woods. After wandering for 
 something like an hour we came across a row 
 of unfinished houses. That part of New Jer- 
 sey is In process of being developed as suburbs, 
 so that unfinished roads and virgin forest are 
 mixed up in the queerest way. We saw a 
 workman doing something outside the last 
 
 80 
 
Among the ''Movies' 
 
 house, and I went up to ask him the way. As 
 soon as he saw me he went down on his knees 
 and explained that he had only taken such a 
 little drop that it could hardly be considered 
 backsliding at all, and that if I would only let 
 him off this time he would never touch another 
 drop as long as he lived. When Miss Lamar- 
 tine came up, all in white with golden wings 
 behind her, he began to weep with joy and 
 gratitude that his prayer had been answered. 
 
 It was my own fault that I did not stay with 
 the Schutzenheimers. I found, though, that 
 the only way I could get up early enough to 
 catch the seven o'clock ferry boat was by sit- 
 ting up all night beforehand. One of the men 
 in the company gave me an introduction to a 
 man who had a booth at Coney Island, opposite 
 Luna Park, and wanted a Hindu magician in a 
 hurry. The pay was less than I was making, 
 but I didn't have to start work till three in the 
 afternoon, so I applied for the place and got it. 
 
 8i 
 
CHAPTER Fill 
 
 Coney Island 
 
 I 
 
 F you take Earl's Court, Shepherd's Bush, 
 Blackpool, Douglas, I. O. M., and the 
 Hammersmith Broadway on a Saturday 
 night ; arrange them along both sides of a street 
 a little broader than Kingsway and perhaps 
 three times as long, and a multitude of little 
 alleys, for footpassengers only, leading from 
 it to the sea; set the whole down somewhere 
 beyond Shoeburyness in the Essex Marshes and 
 fill up the space between It and London with 
 unfinished suburbs of the cheaper kind — say 
 Cricklewood, only built of wood instead of red 
 brick — you will have a very faint approxima- 
 tion of Coney Island, where I was for a time 
 a Hindu magician. 
 
 In the elaborate works of art which covered 
 the front of the marquee wherein I performed 
 
 82 
 
Coney Island 
 
 my miracles, I was pictured as a high-caste 
 Brahmin. I was also represented as having a 
 long white beard and as sitting on a carpet sur- 
 rounded by Oriental hourls. In actual fact I 
 had no beard and there was a distressing lack 
 of hourls. Instead, there was a bearded lady 
 
 — quite genuine and rather pathetic, seeing that 
 she powdered the upper part of her face with 
 an eager earnestness that overran Its purpose — 
 a lady with four legs, the thinnest man on earth, 
 the most despondent giant — or so I suppose 
 
 — on earth; two horribly deformed negresses, 
 described as bear-women, and a snake-charmer, 
 reputed Oriental, but not answering the descrip- 
 tion of a houri. 
 
 We were displayed upon platforms ranged 
 round the Interior of the marquee, each about 
 the size of a large dinlng-table ; and at ten-min- 
 ute Intervals a lecturer came round and de- 
 scribed us to those members of the public who 
 paid a dime admission. From him they learnt 
 that, as well as a magician and a Brahmin of 
 the highest caste, I was a fakir and a guru. To 
 be quite truthful I myself suggested to him that 
 
 83 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 I should be a guru, and the idea appealed to 
 him. We neither of us knew what the word 
 meant — not, I hope, anything improper — but 
 it had an Oriental atmosphere about it. I was 
 the intimate of a long line of Viceroys; I had 
 cured the late King Edward, Kaiser Wilhelm, 
 and the President of the Swiss Republic of tic- 
 douloureux in its most advanced stage; I had 
 been visiting the western slopes of the Rocky 
 Mountains in search of curative herbs, and, on 
 my homeward journey to Mofusselbad, I had 
 been prevailed upon, at enormous expense, to 
 break my journey at Coney Island. My sal- 
 ary was $12 a week and two meals a day, with 
 the privilege of sleeping in the marquee at 
 moments of financial stress, but this the lecturer 
 did not mention. 
 
 My more immediate purpose was to sell lit- 
 tle bottles of toothache tincture at the reduced 
 price of a dime each — never retailed to 
 crowned heads at less than a hundred dollars, 
 and then only to potentates in reduced circum- 
 stances. Towards this end I had a turban, an 
 olive complexion, a tom-tom, upon which I beat 
 
 84 
 
From him they learned that, as well as a magician and 
 Brahmin of the highest caste, I was a fakir and a guru. 
 
Coney Island 
 
 with my fists at slack moments, and an Oriental 
 prayer, which I intoned upon my knees, beating 
 the floor with my forehead and raising my 
 hands heavenwards alternately. It was a very 
 good prayer, and had an excellent effect. It 
 was a very good toothache tincture, too; I made 
 it myself in full view of the audience, from a 
 large white root that looked like cheese and 
 smelt like a pig's idea of Paradise. I boiled 
 it in a lotah — I called it a loofah several times, 
 by mistake — over a charcoal brazier. I used 
 to address the audience in flowery English — 
 a really moving address, that had been written 
 for Mr. Czartorisky, my proprietor, by a mem- 
 ber of the staff of the New York American. 
 As a rule, the audience were quite satisfied with 
 it, but one evening a young gentleman of the 
 kind ticketed in New York as a " smart Aleck," 
 spoke to me in my native tongue. He had a 
 young lady with him, to whom he loudly de- 
 scribed me as a fraud, which annoyed me, con- 
 sidering how hard I was working for my living. 
 He said that he had lived for quite a time in 
 Calcutta. The young lady suggested that he 
 
 85 
 
'A Vagabond in New York 
 
 should expose me, and he came forward for 
 that purpose, while the crowd stood round ex- 
 pectant. I felt the lecturer behind me tremble 
 so that the platform shook, but I was not 
 alarmed. I caught an appealing expression in 
 the young man's eye more expressive than many 
 marconigrams. Accordingly, when he spoke to 
 me in unknown tongues, I replied to him in a 
 variation of Hindu which surprised even my- 
 self. We had quite a pleasant little chat, to 
 the admiration of the beholders, after which I 
 saluted him in English, as " Lord Sahib," and 
 told him that he reminded me of Lord Curzon, 
 who had bought two dozen bottles of my 
 specific, and that I hoped he would do no less. 
 He was quite a nice boy; he bought a dozen bot- 
 tles there and then and gave me a five-dollar 
 bill for them — at least a third of his weekly 
 salary, I suppose. If you had seen the look 
 in the young lady's eyes, though, you would 
 have realised that it was well worth it to him. 
 I salaamed to him as he turned away, purple 
 with joy, and called him " Lord Sahib of all 
 the Elephants "> — and the young lady kissed 
 
 86 
 
Coney Island 
 
 him even before they had left the tent. The 
 rest of the audience cheered, and In about five 
 minutes I had sold out my whole stock. They 
 are simple souls, the Great American People, 
 even simpler, I think, than the English. I will 
 not say that they are without forethought, 
 though. I had two written proposals of mar- 
 riage the first week, and both Insisted that I 
 should put away any other wives I might al- 
 ready have In India. One lady added that I 
 must never expect her to ride on a camel. 
 
 We were really a very happy little family, 
 and some of the supper-parties we used to have 
 in the marquee after closing hours — which is 
 to say about one In the morning — were perfect 
 Agapes. Czartorisky, who was much too gen- 
 erous ever to be a successful man, I fear, pro- 
 vided the fare, which was always the same — 
 beer, Frankfurters, and boiled corn. These 
 are the staple dishes at Coney Island; there 
 must be a thousand establishments, I suppose, 
 devoted to the sale of " Domestic " Frankfurt- 
 ers in Coney Island, not a very large number 
 either, If you remember that In a successful sea- 
 
 87 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 son they have crowds running into the seven 
 figures in the course of a day, and that every 
 one of them eats at least one Frankfurter. 
 
 I was — and knew that I was — a fool to 
 throw up such a job, but the truth of the 
 matter was that I could not stand the Bear- 
 women. I don't know that I am more squeam- 
 ish than another, but there was something so 
 horrible about their deformities that I used to 
 squirm every time I saw them. I thought I 
 should get used to it, but I didn't somehow, and 
 in some extraordinary way they got to like me 
 — they were sisters — and used to come and 
 talk to me at odd moments. 
 
 I stood it for three weeks — and that really 
 was a continued act of heroism, although I 
 say it myself — and then the lady with four 
 legs began to discuss the works of Mr. Arnold 
 Bennett with me — (this is quite true, although 
 you will not believe a word of it) — and the 
 combination was too much. I told Mr. Czar- 
 torisky about it and he understood — he was 
 a white man all through and a gentleman — 
 and he introduced me, over a " clam-bake " 
 
 88 
 
Coney Island 
 
 dinner on the sea-front, to a business acquaint- 
 ance, who ran one of the saddest little circuses 
 you ever saw in your life. He said — and I 
 really believe that for the moment he believed 
 it himself — that I had a life-long acquaintance 
 with the East Indies and was a natural-born 
 mahout. I mention this because it shows that 
 Mr. Czartorisky was a poet and an artist. His 
 friend, whose name was Wolff, had an elephant 
 — such a sad, pathetic little elephant, as you 
 shall hear — named, of all names in the world, 
 Gladys, and he was anxious about her health. 
 He thought she was fretting — which was not 
 at all unlikely considering that her mission In 
 life was to balance herself ungracefully upon a 
 large wooden ball and fit herself, disgracefully, 
 into a chair and pretend that she was drinking 
 champagne. So he engaged me as her attend- 
 ant, to double the part, so to put It, with that 
 of assistant-groom to Danny, who was a mule 
 and was advertised as the strongest kicking mule 
 In the world, with a standing offer of fifty cents 
 to any member of the audience who should 
 succeed In sitting him twice round the ring. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ''Gladys'' 
 
 IF I had been Mr. Wolff I do not think I 
 should have engaged me to act as attend- 
 ant to Gladys. Not, at any rate, to ap- 
 pear publicly in that capacity. I freely admit 
 that I am large, for my species — both in 
 length and depth and width. Gladys, on the 
 other hand, was distinctly small. She was an 
 elephant all right, because she had a trunk. 
 She was an African elephant, too, as her ears 
 witnessed — although I have been told that 
 African elephants are untamable. On the 
 other hand, African elephants have large ears 
 and, at the risk of being accused of exag- 
 geration, I can only say that her ears were so 
 large that, had she been only a foot or two 
 smaller, and accustomed to hang upside down 
 from one foot, she could easily have passed as 
 
 90 
 
"Gladys" 
 
 a bat. We got so fond of each other that I 
 sometimes used to feel that I was unfaithful to 
 poor Chris. 
 
 I never became really intimate with Danny. 
 For one thing he had a distorted sense of hu- 
 mour and a long reach. He could kick all 
 round him with each leg separately or all to- 
 gether, and when he hit you he hurt. He was 
 a consummate hypocrite. One particular trick 
 of which he was very fond was to pretend that 
 he was an amiable horse muzzling his nose into 
 your pocket In search of a carrot. He didn't 
 want any carrot in reality. He didn't like 
 them. He very much preferred a plug of chew- 
 ing tobacco. What he wanted was a bit of 
 you, and when he had got that he would go off 
 into a perfect volley of malicious laughter in 
 case you should miss the point of the joke. I 
 will say for him, though, that with all his little 
 faults of character he was a conscientious work- 
 man. Mr. Wolff might safely have offered 
 five hundred dollars to whoever could ride him 
 twice round the ring against his will; even a 
 monkey couldn't sit him for two minutes and we 
 
 91 
 
'A Vagabond in New York 
 
 had one monkey, called Ipecachuana, who was 
 the best rider I ever saw. It was really a 
 pleasure to see Danny get to work. He would 
 start with two or three harmless buckings, to 
 give the enemy confidence. Then he would 
 drop his head until his nose touched the sawdust, 
 stand on three legs and use the fourth — it 
 was immaterial which, though he got the pret- 
 tiest action out of his off hind foot — as a rake 
 or comb or whatever you like to call it. He 
 would begin along one side, to stretch his 
 muscles a bit and worry his rider, and he would 
 gradually work upwards until there was not an 
 inch of his own backbone, from withers to tail, 
 that had not been explored by that extremely 
 quick-action hoof. I haven't the least doubt he 
 could have combed himself down the other side 
 as well, if he had felt like it, but he never needed 
 to. His enemy was always outside the ring 
 by that time. 
 
 He had the artistic temperament, had Danny, 
 with all that it implies for good and evil. One 
 way in which he showed it was his method of 
 entering the ring. He was never the same in 
 
 92 
 
"Gladys" 
 
 any two performances, always altering and im- 
 proving and experimenting towards the perfec- 
 tion of his art. Sometimes he would adopt the 
 despondent suggestion of a broken-down cab- 
 horse, tottering sluggishly into the ring and 
 standing there awaiting trouble — the other 
 man's trouble — the very picture of despond- 
 ency. He even used to keep his eyes shut — or 
 that one which was towards the audience — to 
 veil the red light of savage anticipation within 
 them. Another time he would rush into action 
 like an embattled volcano, eyes blazing, ears 
 laid so far back that you could not see them, 
 mouth wide open and every hair on his hide 
 standing up in separate defiance. Then he 
 would rollick round and round the ring, daring 
 any one to come within five foot of his four. 
 
 There was only one weak spot in Danny, re- 
 garded in the light of a money-maker, and 
 that was his independent spirit. Even in my 
 limited period of acquaintanceship with him he 
 three or four times played Mr. Wolff the nasty 
 trick of pretending that he was a sheep. He 
 would amble into the ring with an air of the 
 
 93 
 
'A Vagabond in New YorJc 
 
 sweetest reasonableness and there he would 
 stand until a boy got on his back. Then, while 
 we were all watching-out to catch the boy when 
 the explosion should take place, he would sur- 
 prise us by ambling gently round the ring, doing 
 everything that his rider told him and finally 
 standing still for him to dismount, with the 
 expression on his hypocritical face of a well- 
 trained butler conscious of having done his best. 
 It used to annoy Mr. Wolff quite considerably; 
 but it was really very good for trade, because 
 It encouraged other boys to try their luck and 
 he never did the ambling palfrey act twice In 
 one week. 
 
 It was as well that we had Danny to liven 
 things up a bit; apart from him I suppose we 
 were the most despondent sort of circus that 
 ever tried to exist. And Gladys was the most 
 despondent creature in It. Nature never In- 
 tended her for a circus-performer; she ought to 
 have been a nun, attached to some Order where 
 she was allowed melancholy love affairs with 
 consumptive young boy-elephants and given 
 
 94 
 
"Gladys" 
 
 stated hours for weeping over their early graves. 
 Failing that she ought to have been a char- 
 woman — or as we should say in America, a 
 scrub-lady — with a husband who beat her, and 
 eight children. She had very little hair, but 
 she carried the permanent suggestion that she 
 never put it up properly, only made it into an 
 unkempt wisp when she got up in the morning, 
 and left the rest to Providence. I always think 
 of her now as wearing a rusty black bonnet with 
 strings and as shedding tears. 
 
 I never knew for certain, but I think she must 
 have had an unhappy love-affair with the man 
 who preceded me as her mahout. I think that 
 he borrowed all her money, under promise of 
 marriage and forgot to pay it back before he 
 left. If it were so, I am not sure that the blame 
 was altogether his. I think he must have been 
 sorely tempted. Before I had known her three 
 days she signified to me in the usual manner 
 that her heart was mine alone and only mine. 
 She used to put her trunk round my waist and 
 whisper her troubles into my ear and when she 
 
 95 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 felt sure that I was what the Italians would call 
 simpatica, she tried to climb onto my knee and 
 lean her head on my shoulder. 
 
 I have never been able to make sure whether 
 she suffered from stage-fright or was merely 
 incompetent. Sometimes — about once in five 
 attempts — she would go through her act quite 
 perfectly; sit upon her chair, if not gracefully, 
 at least solidly; raise herself up on end, plac- 
 ing one foot on the table; ring her bell with a 
 certain dignity and, when I brought her the 
 Indian club wrapped in silver-foil that passed 
 for her champagne bottle, drink from it at least 
 as convincingly as you could expect from any 
 untutored African ingenue. But — the odd 
 four appearances could only be described as 
 tragic fiascos. Either she would go on her 
 knees and look at me out of the corners of her 
 eyes — they were small and red and rather 
 piggy — so appealingly that members of the 
 S. P. C. A. who happened to be present would 
 be stirred to instant action, or else she would 
 seize her hand-bell, give it one tragic, despair- 
 ing clang, attempt to drink out of it, as though 
 
 96 
 
"Gladys" 
 
 she thought it was her champagne bottle and 
 then promptly lie down — a performance that 
 was not expected of her until the end of her act 
 
 — and refuse to get up, whatever the means of 
 compulsion, until the five bears, introduced by 
 the Signora Esmeralda, who was really Mrs. 
 Wolff under another name, were half-way 
 through their melancholy pretence at gymnas- 
 tics. She would confide to me afterwards, as I 
 led her to the canvas stable which she shared 
 with Danny and the three pie-balds, and Senor 
 Vivaldas' monkeys, and Joey the vulgar donkey 
 
 — that she was a femme incorjipromise — her 
 French was not very good — and that until 
 Women got the vote — and things like that. I 
 believe so, at least, because grief usually made 
 her incoherent and she was feeling for bits of 
 sugar — which she did not deserve — in all my 
 pockets while she spoke. 
 
 If Mr. Wolff had been the ordinary kind of 
 circus-proprietor I should certainly have got the 
 sack within a week of my enlistment under his 
 banner. Fortunately for me — for I was very 
 happy with him — he was not. His ambition 
 
 97 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 was to be a minister. I know it sounds as if I 
 were making this up, but I am not — ■ and any- 
 one who performed at Coney Island in the 
 spring of 19 12 can tell you so. He was 
 quite a young man and he had studied theology 
 somewhere in Mamaroneck, New York, and if 
 he had not married, I think — from what I 
 know of him — that he would be studying there 
 now. 
 
 Before her marriage Mrs. Wolff was a 
 school-teacher. She was the niece of the orig- 
 inal proprietor of the circus, but she was not 
 on visiting-terms with him, because her mother 
 held that circuses were immoral. Her hus- 
 band agreed with her mother, and I have no 
 doubt that she agreed with her husband and 
 listened to his prosy arguments on the Whole 
 Duty of Man with all the earnest-eyed adora- 
 tion into which a really nice girl can persuade 
 herself when she is in love. They had been 
 married about six months — starving genteely, 
 I suppose, most of the time — when the uncle 
 died and left her the circus. Mr. Wolff would 
 have flinched from the responsibility and at- 
 
 98 
 
''Gladys" 
 
 tributed his cowardice to high moral tone. 
 Mrs. Wolff did not. She pointed out to him 
 
 — of course I was not present, but so I believe 
 
 — that if the affair were sold up at once it 
 would bring in enough to support them — and 
 a probable third person — for about a fort- 
 night. If it were run as a going concern and 
 with ability, enough might in the end be 
 made out of it for him to be able to afford to 
 enter the ministry. 
 
 Mrs. Wolff was raised somewhere in the 
 back-blocks of Vermont, which is to say that 
 she was a young woman of New England; 
 which is to say that she had ideas on the pro- 
 prieties and the respectabilities and the de- 
 cencies which you will find nowhere else In the 
 world, except perhaps In parts of Surbiton and 
 Croydon and the lower end of the Balham High 
 Road. Wh^n I joined the aggregation they 
 had been running it for just over a year, and 
 she used to put five sad-eyed bears through 
 their paces three times a day. They were 
 dressed for soldiers and she wore a very smart 
 vivandiere's costume and very pretty she 
 
 99 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 looked in it She was not a good bear-leader. 
 She has told me herself that she was horribly 
 afraid of the bears at first, ragged and de- 
 pressed and lacking in enterprise as they were. 
 The costume outraged all her sensibilities, also 
 — but she was up against it, and she meant to 
 make good and she did. That was the sort of 
 woman she was. The original Signora Es- 
 meralda — I imagine that she was something 
 of a hussy, though I never saw her — was re- 
 ceiving thirty dollars a week and extras. 
 When the concern changed hands she thought 
 she saw her opportunity for blackmail and de- 
 manded seventy-five. Mr. Wolff would have 
 given It her, to save trouble. Mrs. Wolff got 
 rid of the Signora at short notice, carried out 
 some legal arrangement that vested in her the 
 ownership of the dismal troupe and herself as- 
 sumed the vacant leadership. 
 
 I am not a New England school-marm, and 
 I have no objection to fancy dress or the smell 
 of sawdust, and I am not afraid of bears, at 
 least of mangy, melancholy bears without a 
 decent claw-stroke among them — so I cannot 
 
 100 
 
"Gladys" 
 
 myself realise all that it must have meant to 
 Mrs. Wolff. But I can imagine it. It was not 
 all she did either, by a long way. She had a 
 very small pink son, called Tobias, and she used 
 to mother him and see to all the business side 
 of the affair, and run the staff and book the 
 tours and make contracts for hay, and do a hun- 
 dred other things as well. Her husband had a 
 little canvas room just behind the stables and 
 he spent nearly all his time in it. I think he 
 used to pray there, and I know he was writing 
 a book on the most profitable Way of Conver- 
 sion, because as soon as he found that I had 
 lived for a time in Wales — which is where all 
 the best brands of religion come from nowa- 
 days — he insisted on reading some of it to me. 
 He was disappointed in me at first, because 
 Czartorisky had — with the kindest intentions 
 — given him the impression that during my 
 long years of residence at Mofusselbad I had 
 become slightly tainted with Buddhism, and he 
 scented a shining reconversion. 
 
 Mr. Wolff did not convert me to anything; 
 Mrs. Wolff made me a feminist and a suffra- 
 
 lOI 
 
'A Vagabond in New York 
 
 gist and at Mrs. Pankhurst's service whenever 
 she cares to call upon me. Even Gladys, who 
 Is, I suppose, the most feminine creature with 
 whom I ever foregathered, was never again 
 able to rouse in me the Pride of Manhood. 
 That was a good proof of the sincerity of my 
 conversion because, disregarding the proprie- 
 ties, we used to take exercise together on the 
 sands of Coney Island in the very early morn- 
 ing. We used to walk arm-in-trunk, picking 
 our way among the thousands of New Yorkers 
 who find there cheap sleeping-places during the 
 warmer months. Gladys, holding the tip of 
 her trunk so that I could not escape a word of 
 it, used to open her heart to me — and even so 
 I am still a suffragist, 
 
 I remained associated with Wolff's Mam- 
 moth Hippodrome and Concise Compendium 
 of the World's Most Marvellous Miracles 
 until it again changed hands. It happened not 
 very far from a place called Montauk, which 
 is at the furthest extremity of Long Island and 
 quite a long way from New York, so I suppose 
 that I ought not to include it in these remlnis- 
 
 I02 
 
.1 
 
 *,', 
 
 03 
 
 
 
 "en 
 
 C 
 
 o 
 O 
 
 C 
 
 G 
 
 o 
 
 M 
 O 
 
 05 
 
 0) 
 
 (1) 
 
 M 
 
 3 
 
"Gladys" 
 
 cences. As however the reader who has ac- 
 companied me so far has already paid, I am 
 not unduly worried. 
 
 We were performing In a certain village, the 
 name of which I will not mention, when Mr. 
 Wolff got a call. I don't know how he got It, 
 because I was down at the railroad depot at 
 the time, seeing after a shipment of hay that 
 had gone astray; and before I got back Mrs. 
 Wolff had arranged everything, sold the whole 
 concern over the telephone as It stood, settled 
 all the bills, given us all formal notice, inter- 
 viewed a doctor about some childish trouble — 
 I think it was croup or convulsions or some- 
 thing of that sort with which Master Tobias 
 was experimenting — and was looking up the 
 times of the boats from Montauk Point to 
 somewhere In Connecticut where the call came 
 from. 
 
 She had grown quite fond of her bears by 
 that time and felt she couldn't part with them, 
 so she excepted them from the sale and took 
 them with her. I often used to wonder what 
 the congregation thought of them. 
 
 103 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Who's Got the Button?' 
 
 I MIGHT have remained with the Com- 
 pendium under the new proprietary, but 
 somehow I did not feel anxious to do so. 
 I was sorry to part with Gladys; I am bound 
 to say that she showed few signs of grief at 
 losing me, displaying instead, when I intro- 
 duced her new mahout, a deeper interest in the 
 contents of the new Amurath's pockets than in 
 the farewells of the old. I do not blame her, 
 the less so that when I again met with her, by 
 chance, In Paterson, New Jersey, some months 
 later, she indubitably recognised me — her 
 trunk-tip darting as undeviatlngly towards the 
 pocket in which I used to keep the sugar as 
 does an arrow towards its goal. She was of a 
 different temperament to Chris. On my re- 
 turn to New York I paid him an early visit and 
 
 104 
 
''Who's Got the Button?' 
 
 he positively howled with delight on seeing me 
 again. I very nearly did myself, so honours 
 were easy. 
 
 I had thirty dollars in my pocket when I 
 parted brass-rags with the Wolffs, and quite an 
 album of photo-postcards. It was characteris- 
 tic that those representing Mr. Wolff all 
 showed him in clerical guise; poring over a 
 massive tome; raising his eyes heavenwards in 
 ecstatic thought or, in one of which he was 
 very proud, in prayer before a mahogany tall- 
 boy — the shoe-heels rather larger than life 
 owing to perspective difficulties. This last 
 he autographed as " Rev. Meander S. Wolff." 
 His wife preferred to be remembered in my 
 mind in two alternative aspects — as Vivan- 
 diere, putting her bears through their exercises; 
 and as Mother, yearning over her first-born 
 Y/ith that intensity, photographically sacred to 
 maternity, which suggests the fear that the 
 first-born is going to be sick and spoil the pic- 
 ture. They were very good people, the 
 Wolffs, and if I ever enter Heaven I shall ex- 
 pect to meet him there. I am not so sure about 
 
 105 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 his wife, because I know she will insist on tak- 
 ing her bears with her and If any officious arch- 
 angels are about, difficulties may result. Per- 
 haps, though, she will succeed in passing them 
 off as those that ate up the small boys who told 
 the bald-headed prophet to go up. 
 
 I decided to walk back to New York, because 
 when you have money in your pocket you feel 
 that it is unfair to others less happily situated 
 to spoil the market. I had not gone twenty 
 miles on my homeward way before I fell in 
 love and stayed there — in situ I mean. I did 
 not fall in love with one woman, but with two, 
 I suppose I ought to be ashamed to say. 
 It happened at Hopkins's, which is within a 
 thousand miles of Good Ground, which is in 
 Long Island and would be ideal were it not In- 
 fested with golfers. Hopkins's stands In a 
 wood a couple of miles away from the golfers 
 and I have never seen a prettier place, nor one 
 that more completely satisfied the desire occa- 
 sionally felt, even by those of us who are vaga- 
 bonds, for a place where one could really settle 
 down and be at rest. Its first attraction to me 
 
 1 06 
 
WJw's Got the Button? 
 
 yf 
 
 was a little nmnel of water, springing up out of 
 nowhere and dimpling along over a natural 
 carpet of grass. I was thirsty and I bent 
 down to drink, and while I was drinking a large 
 buck nigger fell upon me — literally I mean — 
 out of a cherry-tree. He did not hurt me at 
 all, but we rolled over and over together in the 
 runlet, and in due course I held his head under 
 it until I thought he was drowned — and then 
 Sarah and Billy appeared. 
 
 I didn't know who they were and they cer- 
 tainly didn't know who I was, and as they came 
 up to where I sat, vilifying my Maker, on the 
 edge of the runlet, they held out fat podgy 
 fists, rigidly clasped, towards me — and I 
 am bound to confess, also towards the nigger, 
 who was squattering on the bank like a 
 wounded duck — and they said " Button — 
 Button — Who's got the button ? " They said 
 it in the queer little high-piped voice of child- 
 hood that is sometimes an ecstasy and some- 
 times an intolerable pain — according to what 
 you have been doing for the last six months or 
 so. 
 
 107 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 I was not initiated about the button, but I 
 felt it would be right to extend my hands as 
 they did — and Sarah dropped something into 
 my palm and pouted. " He's got the button," 
 she said — and I certainly had, and it was evi- 
 dently part of the game that if you had the 
 button you lost the game. It was a little white 
 button. I have still got it. 
 
 Sarah was two and a half and Billy was a 
 year older, and they had ordered Jake, who was 
 the nigger, into the cherry-tree to pick them 
 cherries. And because they were Billy and 
 Sarah he had gone, although it was weeks after 
 the last cherry had been picked — and if you 
 had been there you would have done the same. 
 Billy, let me say, was a young lady. She it was 
 who continued the conversation. " I said 
 something very funny just now," she confided 
 to me, with a shade of abruptness in her man- 
 ner. 
 
 I suppose I looked interested, for she did 
 not wait for a reply. " I said Dod," she ex- 
 claimed. " And it means, ' Tumble ri^ht 
 down.' " 
 
 io8 
 
Who's Got the Button? 
 
 }y 
 
 As I have already said I do not know that 
 I am partial to babies. As a rule I prefer 
 elephants, because you are not afraid to lecture 
 them if they annoy you. But I certainly did 
 like Billy and Sarah. They were not babies, 
 for one thing, they were whole millions of 
 years old — you had only to see them walk to 
 be sure of it. They always walked together, 
 hand-in-hand rather stiffly and with a certain 
 care. They were not particularly pretty — as 
 I have been told by neighbouring mothers — 
 but they had little twiny fingers that used to 
 twist round yours very trustfully, and big round 
 eyes that when they caught yours used to make 
 something click inside you, and I know in 
 my heart, although he never admitted it, that 
 Jake tumbled from the cherry-tree on top of 
 me — although he saw that I was white and 
 large and that trouble would ensue — because 
 he thought that it would make them laugh. It 
 did not — I never knew them to laugh except 
 at Inward thoughts of their own which they 
 never shared with mere mortals — but it was 
 worth the risk. I did much more absurd 
 
 109 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 things myself before I had done with them — 
 and I am a very clever man and they no more 
 than farmer's brats. I forget if I mentioned 
 that I have got that button still. 
 
 I wasn't a hobo just then, and I was not 
 looking out for the chance of doing " chores " 
 but I really had no say in the matter. They 
 walked very stiffly, one on each side of me 
 — as I suppose the angels do when you are 
 trying to dodge Saint Peter — and after ex- 
 actly ten steps, as if they were doing it to 
 signal, each took one of my hands — they 
 had soft little fingers, as I have said, of the 
 sort that make you wish you had married de- 
 cently twenty years ago and had a safe job in 
 a bank. We made a little procession — Jake, 
 who was already murderously jealous, follow- 
 ing behind — to an old frame house that was 
 covered over from roof-tree to ground with wis- 
 taria boughs. It stood in a little grove of its 
 own, all wedged In among bright flowers, most 
 of them purple and blue, with a very strong sun- 
 light shining down on them, and brown fields 
 and woods just thinking about getting golden. 
 
 no 
 
Who's Got the Button?' 
 
 We went in by a back door — it was none of 
 my doing — and just before we entered I half 
 turned my head for some reason that I don't 
 remember, and I saw a blue vision of sea slither 
 up among the trees. As we get older we re- 
 member things more by little impressionist pic- 
 tures than as actual happenings. The sea, as 
 I have said, was blue — real blue — and there 
 was a false blue — some kind of a flower I 
 suppose — just beside it and a touch of pearl 
 colour above it edged with golden pink, and 
 the grey door opening slowly, and rich umber 
 within and a face — it seemed ash-colour — 
 watching out of it. The children were there 
 also in the picture, although I wasn't looking at 
 them and could not see them. They were of 
 some warm colour that filled up the edges. I 
 often see it now — although I am living in 
 Chelsea and have no other outlook than the 
 chimney-pots over the way. Even Jake — who 
 was five feet behind me and clamantly Invisible 
 — enters that picture as a sort of brown 
 smudge. 
 
 The face was that of the mother, who was 
 
 III 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 named Mrs. Hopkins and whose husband was 
 a farmer. Our introduction was " He's got 
 the button " and I am inclined to think that the 
 same thing had happened before, because Mrs. 
 Hopkins took everything for granted, and told 
 me that I could sleep in the barn, before I had 
 broached any subject at all. We had prayers 
 that night — the family and Jake and a girl and 
 two hired men — and I slept like a lamb and 
 woke at four in the morning, which as it turned 
 out was exactly the time I was supposed to 
 wake and gave Mr. Hopkins a very good opin- 
 ion of me. I expect that Sarah — who was 
 the more mystical of the two — rang up one 
 of her particular friends among the angels and 
 told him about me and that I was not naturally 
 an early riser. 
 
 I am not going to tell you any more about 
 Billy and Sarah because I should hate to be 
 thought a sentimentalist. Like Jacob I served 
 three weeks for Sarah and another three weeks 
 for Billy, hewing wood and drawing water, and 
 one morning I realised that I was in danger of 
 catching the prevalent American disease — 
 
 112 
 
'Who's Got the Button? 
 
 t* 
 
 sentimentality — and I cliose a moment when I 
 knew that Billy and Sarah were busy with the 
 tortoise, and I drew my money and left. I 
 don't know whether the tortoise was wild or 
 domesticated, whether he just grew or whether 
 he had escaped from somewhere, but we 
 found him, we three, on the edge of the 
 runlet one morning when I was supposed to 
 be chopping wood in the barn, and I made 
 a little hole In his shell and put a bit of 
 string through It and we tethered him there 
 and called him Alphonso — at least I did; 
 Billy and Sarah called him Funs — and we 
 made a little dam across the runlet with clay 
 and branches in case he should want a swim, 
 which I don't think he ever did, and we made 
 up a story about his being a Spanish Prince, 
 who was looking for the Princess Bright-Eyes, 
 and had been turned Into a tortoise by a 
 Wicked Witch, and we spent a great deal of 
 our time there safeguarding him against 
 further enchantment. 
 
 I left by the path that went through the 
 wood and past the spring-head and as I 
 
 113 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 walked along I saw two little figures in blue 
 overalls and two little flaxen heads very close 
 together bending down over the runlet — and 
 since I got back to England quite a number of 
 asses have condoled with me over the hard 
 times I had in America. 
 
 114 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 A Pair of Boots 
 
 'HEN I have made my fortune and 
 buy America I am going to re- 
 serve Long Island for my private 
 residence and divide the rest among my friends. 
 I do not say it is the most beautiful or desirable 
 place in the Continent, because there are some 
 parts that I don't know; but it happens to 
 please me best and as I shall be paying the 
 piper I see no reason why I should not call the 
 tune. My chief residence will be somewhere 
 very near Amicus and for the same reason; I 
 don't say it is the most beautiful part of the 
 Island — as a matter of fact, it is not — but I 
 have very pleasant memories of it indeed. It 
 is not called Amicus, but something rather lilce 
 it. 
 
 I arrived in Amicus on foot, but as I had 
 
 115 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 nearly forty dollars in my pocket I put up at 
 an hotel. It was not one of the big summer 
 palaces down on the Ocean-shore, but a very 
 pleasant, old-fashioned place near the railroad 
 depot, with a dear old landlady who mothered 
 you, and who took no end of trouble to find the 
 store where they sold exactly the brand of 
 dentifrice you liked best, and who had a hus- 
 band who used to come into your bedroom in 
 the morning before you were up and sit on the 
 edge of the bed and discuss the latest murder 
 with you. His way of discussion was rather 
 unusual. He would begin, as if he were a 
 newspaper headline. " Love drama in Ho- 
 boken. Octogenarian millionaire asphyxiated. 
 William J. Jones — wife's sister's son sus- 
 pected." When he had said that he would 
 put something into his mouth and ruminate. I 
 never found out what It was — chewing gum, I 
 think — but at least he never spat, although 
 sometimes he would wander away towards the 
 window and take whatever it was out of his 
 mouth and look at it very carefully as though 
 it were a clue, and then put it back again and sit 
 
 ii6 
 
'A Pair of Boots 
 
 down on the edge of the bed and resume the 
 discussion. I don't mean that he said any- 
 thing. As a matter of fact he never spoke; 
 only stared very hard at a text hung over in 
 one corner of the room, with his head up so 
 that you could see the veins and muscles of his 
 throat working under his chin-beard In time to 
 the great thoughts that were pouring off him. 
 After about ten minutes he would get up and 
 go away; and I know that he thought well of 
 me, because he afterwards got me a job and he 
 told the other man that I was the brightest 
 talker he had ever known — although, beyond 
 "Good-morning" and "Good-night," I really 
 do not think I ever said twenty words to him. 
 
 It was not until some weeks later that I un- 
 derstood why we always discussed murders. 
 It came about because I bought a pair of shoes 
 or, as we should call them, boots. I was wear- 
 ing, and had been for weeks past, a pair 
 of patent-leather Oxfords or, as we should 
 say, shoes. They were intolerably outworn, 
 but they were very comfortable and somehow 
 I had got it so firmly fixed into my head that I 
 
 117 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 could not afford to buy any others, that I just 
 went on wearing them, even when I had money 
 in my poclcet. They cracked very badly — I 
 do not blame their maker because they were 
 never intended for heavy wear. They had 
 thirty-eight large cracks — besides the gaping 
 abyss behind the left toe-cap, which stood in a 
 class by Itself — and a whole network of little 
 ones — at the time I parted with them. I 
 dropped them Into the clear water of the 
 lagoon and three weeks later, when I passed 
 over the same spot In a motor-launch, some 
 kind of a deep-sea beast — a hermit crab, I sup- 
 pose — had made his home In one of them and 
 was complaining bitterly to his friends about 
 the draughts. 
 
 I should never have bought the new pair if 
 It had not been for the small boy In charge of 
 the store. It was on the main street, about 
 three blocks from the hotel, and It was a little 
 store of the kind that calls Itself a Mammoth 
 Emporium. I happened to look Into the win- 
 dow In passing, and something incredibly red 
 caught my eye. I could not be sure what it 
 
 ii8 
 
A Pair of Boots 
 
 was, and so I went into the store, and it was a 
 small boy's head bent down over a paper- 
 covered book. He looked up as I came in, 
 and on the spur of the moment I bought the 
 boots. They were the best boots I ever 
 bought. I have them now and they are still in 
 fine fettle. They profess to be made of elk- 
 skin and I have no doubt they are — and they 
 cost me two dollars and seventy-five cents. 
 
 The weather was glorious and the country 
 was charming and I didn't feel like doing any 
 work and I just loafed around. About two 
 days after I bought the new shoes I began to 
 realise that I was the object of universal, 
 though quite respectful, interest. I found It 
 impossible to be alone, wherever I went. If I 
 was in a place that no one else had visited since 
 the days of Captain Kidd, I might be sure that, 
 after I had been there ten minutes, I should 
 run across a whole band of aborigines — most 
 of them young — trying their very hardest to 
 look as if they had foregathered by accident 
 and without the remotest idea of finding me 
 there. It became embarrassing at last and I 
 
 119 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 began to think of going back to New York. 
 Then, one evening, an elderly gentleman called 
 at the hotel and sent in his name to me, and 
 said that he had been robbed of six couple, or 
 brace, or pair, whichever is the technical term, 
 of his prize strain of Buff Orpingtons, and was 
 I ready to take up the case? 
 
 I discovered then that I was a famous detect- 
 ive, or " sleuth," disguised, for professional 
 reasons, as an English vagabond. There had 
 been a burglary at a country-place near Amicus 
 and I had been sent for from New York to 
 trail down the burglars; and that was why I was 
 lounging around Amicus, seeming to do noth- 
 ing, but all the while stretching my stupendous 
 brain and my super-eagle eye to their utter- 
 most. My red-headed young friend In the 
 shoe-store was the first to discover me. He 
 was a fervent student of the works of that 
 greatest of all great " sleuths," Mr. Nick 
 Carter, whose multitudinous exploits, re- 
 counted In I know not how many hundreds or 
 thousands of little paper-covered books at 
 fifteen cents each, have made him one of the 
 
 120 
 
A Pair of Boots 
 
 most deservedly popular figures of the West- 
 ern Continent. I have read hundreds of his 
 adventures myself. At one time I had a per- 
 fect passion for them and used to buy them by 
 the half-dozen, at a reduced price after he had 
 read them himself, from a news storekeeper on 
 Sixth Avenue. 
 
 The red-headed boy, overwhelmed by the 
 spectacle of a total stranger to Amicus buying 
 a pair of shoes at two dollars and seventy-five 
 cents, very naturally set his wits to work along 
 the lines suggested by his favourite hero and, 
 as naturally, decided, from the vacuity of my 
 countenance, that I must be a disguised de- 
 tective. I am inclined to think and to be 
 flattered by the thought that he took me for 
 Mr. Carter himself, from the respect, almost 
 amounting to veneration, with which I was 
 treated by the youth of Amicus. I am in- 
 clined to fear also, that he lost, or imperilled, 
 his situation in the shoe-store world, for, wher- 
 ever and under whatever circumstances I might 
 become aware of my respectful circle of ad- 
 mirers, there you might be sure, blazing in the 
 
 121 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 van, like the white plume of King Henry, was 
 the scarlet poll I came to know so well. I 
 think he hoped that I might some day give him 
 a position in the ranks of my assistants; I have 
 not the least doubt In the world that he it was 
 who spread my fame in Amicus. 
 
 I was sorely tempted to accept the task of 
 trailing the lost Buff Orpingtons to their lair, 
 but respect for the character of the distin- 
 guished gentleman I was representing, who I 
 was sure would never have accepted a commis- 
 sion so trivial, led me to refuse. Instead, 
 I came next morning to an understanding with 
 my host, wherein I assured him that I was no 
 sleuth but a simple vagabond on the look-out 
 for a job, and that I should greatly value his 
 assistance In finding one. 
 
 I believe, although he spoke no word, that 
 he was bitterly disappointed. I know that he 
 was perturbed, because he three times went 
 towards the window and studied his clue with- 
 out once pausing to sit down on the bed-edge. 
 Still without speaking, he left the room and I 
 saw no more of him that day. Without any 
 
 122 
 
A Pair of Boots 
 
 real reason I felt as remorseful as though I had 
 intentionally deceived him, and sooner than face 
 his reproachful silence I decided to leave 
 Amicus that evening. In the end I put it off 
 until the next morning and I was glad of it. 
 In the first place I received an anonymous let- 
 ter, which I still preserve for guidance when I 
 bring out my long-projected Spelling Primer. 
 It was addressed to " Nick Carter or Chick or 
 Patsy Sleuth." It was written in red ink and 
 sealed, so to put it, with the representation of 
 a blood-red hand holding a scarlet dagger, 
 from which dripped very realistic drops of 
 gore. It ran as follows: "You are none 
 bewair the red hand is upon your trale iff you 
 would escap yore liffe mete me disgusd cor. 
 First and Vale Av at midnite i will gide too a 
 place of safety a frind who meanes you well." 
 It was written in an appropriately unformed 
 hand, girlish I am inclined to think, rather than 
 boyish and I was delighted to receive It, If only 
 that It proved that Young England and Young 
 America are united by bonds stronger than 
 could be forged by many arbitration treaties. 
 
 123 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 I have been sorry ever since that it did not at 
 the time enter my head to keep the appoint- 
 ment. I can only hope that any disappoint- 
 ment I unwittingly caused was more than out- 
 weighed by the undoubted fact that I left my 
 hotel next morning; sufficient proof, I hope, to 
 the friend who meant me well that his (or her) 
 warning had been treated with proper respect. 
 I was compelled to leave, quite against my 
 will and almost under physical compulsion. 
 Mine host turned up at my bedside at his usual 
 hour, in a state of high excitement, which he 
 showed by adding to his expected headline 
 (on that occasion, " Clam Beach. Gustave 
 Olaffson. Lost his help.") something about a 
 boat. Thereafter he rushed to the window, 
 consulted his clue, returned at racing pace and 
 uttered the further command, " Come right 
 now." He then departed without further 
 words, but he left me so disturbed by his por- 
 tentous loquacity that I rose at once, to find 
 him awaiting me at the stair-foot, as though he 
 feared I might otherwise escape him. He al- 
 lowed me but little time for my breakfast; and 
 
 124 
 
A Pair of Boots 
 
 then, hooking his arm in mine, led me away 
 with him as might Mr. Carter a defaulting 
 cashier. 
 
 Thus personally conducted I arrived some 
 half-hour later, before a little wooden shanty 
 on Clam Beach. Clam Beach itself was a kind 
 of holiday annexe to Amicus — a tiny settle- 
 ment on the long, sandy barrier reef that 
 guards the southern shores of Long Island. 
 There were perhaps twenty wooden bungalows 
 and a ramshackle hotel, and Mr, Olaffson's 
 bathing establishment; and they were all con- 
 nected, like captured flies on a cobweb, by 
 single planks across the sand-dunes. You got 
 to it from Amicus by a crazy old motor-launch 
 across the shallowest, clearest of lagoons. 
 
 Mr. Olaffson's establishment was set on a 
 sand-dune midway between the Ocean and the 
 lagoon. It is a curious fact, by the way, that 
 what is referred to as the sea in England is 
 always known in America as the Ocean. It is 
 just the same old Atlantic at Long Island as 
 it is at the Land's End, but when an American 
 talks about It you can see it swelling itself out 
 
 125 
 
'A Vagabond in New York 
 
 with pride and bridling with pleasure. It is 
 the same with most natural things somehow. 
 If you took an English hill over to America, 
 and set it down all small and humble-minded in 
 a field, by the time it woke up next morning it 
 would be a Mountain, with all the appropriate 
 airs and graces, boasting of its cousins the 
 Rockies and speaking pityingly of the Hima- 
 layas because, being Asiatics, they can never be- 
 come naturalised American citizens. I have 
 been told, though I do not vouch for it, that 
 when the moon — the same old moon that we 
 have in England — looks down on America 
 she calls herself a Planet and not a satellite at 
 all. It has something to do with the atmo- 
 sphere, I suppose. 
 
 Mr. Olaffson was a very, very old man and 
 he really wanted a help or, as we should say, 
 an assistant. He was much too old to do any- 
 thing but sit outside his castle in the sunlight, 
 smoking and cursing under his breath. I say 
 cursing, because it sounded like it, though he 
 was really a very amiable person, and we got on 
 famously. Out of the kindness of his heart 
 
 126 
 
A Pair of Boots 
 
 my friend Mr. Godly assured him that I spoke 
 Swedish perfectly. It was a safe enough asser- 
 tion because, although Mr. Olaffson was a 
 Swede all right, he had been in America so 
 many centuries that he had quite forgotten 
 Swedish, He had never succeeded in learning 
 more than three words of American either, and 
 he could not master the meaning even of them. 
 So we used to communicate by signs. 
 
 The Castle, as I called It — a name which I 
 am told it has ever since retained — was a 
 wooden building that was a cross between a 
 barn and a mediaeval gate-house. There was 
 a big room on top, where bathing suits and 
 towels and things were stored, and a little one 
 below on each side where Mr. Olaffson and I 
 slept, and another big one In the middle that 
 was more a corridor than a room, with a huge 
 door at either end. Through it you reached 
 the bathing-boxes. They stood round a yard 
 or compound and they were arranged In the 
 shape of a big M, one wing for women and the 
 other for men. The boxes themselves were 
 about the size and shape of roomy coffins, with 
 
 127 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 a little seat inside, and besides being bathing- 
 boxes they acted as incubators for sand-flies. 
 I believe myself that all the sand-flies of Long 
 Island looked upon our compound as their ter- 
 restrial Paradise. They used to settle there 
 in millions and bring up their families and wait 
 for visitors. It was very shrewd of them, be- 
 cause, by the time a bather was undressed, the 
 superficial area of their food-supply was in- 
 creased I don't know how many fold, com- 
 pared with what it was either before he got 
 out of his ordinary clothes or after he was in 
 his bathing-suit. Evidently, too, they liked the 
 flavour of women better than men, perhaps 
 because they smoke less, for there were always 
 three times as many in the women's wing and 
 they looked healthier and bit more blithely. 
 
 Although Clam Beach was a delightful place 
 in its way and the bathing glorious, it was not 
 the kind of work I really cared about, and I 
 should never have taken it on but that I hated 
 the thought of hurting Mr. Godly's feelings. 
 There has been always something repulsive to 
 me in the feel of a dank, cold, limp bathing- 
 
 128 
 
A Pair of Boots 
 
 suit after it has been used and Is all covered 
 with sand. When I had to deal with dozens 
 and dozens of them, they grew more and more 
 repulsive, and I got to feel like a rheumatic 
 ghoul condemned to work in a damp cemetery. 
 Mr. Olaffson's company was not inspiring 
 either. The visitors were always nice enough 
 to me and their Ideas about tips compared more 
 than favourably with those prevalent in Eng- 
 lish sea-side resorts, and if I had stopped on I 
 might have had a castle of my own by this time. 
 But the heat of the summer was waning and I 
 felt the call of the city again, and one morning 
 I ran away and took the first train back to 
 New York. I felt I couldn't face Mr. Godly, 
 so I sent him a message to say I had been 
 called away on urgent business and that some- 
 day I was coming back again. I am going, too, 
 whenever I get the chance, because I have 
 nothing but pleasant memories of Amicus and 
 there are very few places of which I can say 
 that. 
 
 129 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 'Seeing New York' 
 
 THE millionaire baby, before and after 
 birth, is an important asset to the 
 social life of New York. I do not 
 mean only to people in the same station of life 
 to which he has been called, but to quite a lot 
 of low vulgar common folk, myself among 
 them. Three — or It may have been four — 
 millionaire babies — two of them unborn — 
 provided me with two solid weeks of lucrative 
 work on my return from Amicus, and It was 
 only through my ungrateful neglect of them 
 that I lost It. 
 
 As I walked out of the Pennsylvania Ter- 
 minus I suddenly realised that I was the victim 
 of a bad attack of ambition. For one thing, I 
 had over twenty dollars in my pocket; for an- 
 other, I had quite a presentable suit of clothes 
 
 130 
 
'Seeing New York' 
 
 — so long as I stood in the shadow and hid my 
 knees and my shoulder-blades behind some- 
 thing. I bought the suit second-hand when I 
 was a Hindu magician, and the vendor assured 
 me that he could guarantee it, as he had worn 
 it for five years and it had never flinched. 
 
 I took a hall-room on West Forty-fourth 
 Street, and by some marvellous good luck the 
 coloured lady who answered the door, when she 
 felt like it, was rather struck by me — and I 
 escaped having to pay a deposit beforehand. 
 I was rather struck by the coloured lady, too — 
 especially when she supposed I was English, 
 made a casual remark about " damn Yankees," 
 and told me she was English herself. She 
 said that children of the Empire on which the 
 sun never sets should stand shoulder to shoul- 
 der. She asked me if I came from London, 
 and, when I said I did, she rather thought we 
 might be cousins, because she was born in 
 Brixton herself. As a matter of fact, I had 
 washed quite hard that morning, but I only 
 said It was very likely indeed. 
 
 It was through Cousin Euphemia that I be- 
 
 131 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 came a guide-lecturer. It was quite by acci- 
 dent, too; if I had had enough money left at 
 the end of the third week to pay my bill, I 
 should very likely be looking for work now. I 
 tried hard to get a clerkship or something that 
 would live up to my clothes, but I don't sup- 
 pose I went the right way about it. I an- 
 swered advertisements, but somehow, as soon 
 as I had found the place and screwed up my 
 courage to go In and ask about the job, I used 
 to get turned out. I don't mean physically. 
 I used to be taken into a room where there was 
 a wooden desk and a man sitting behind it with 
 a face that had been carved out of the same 
 piece of wood. Before I could say anything 
 he would look at me and say, " Nop," and go 
 on with what he was doing. It never varied. 
 In the end I got desperate, and I went to one 
 of the big office-buildings on Broadway and I 
 tried every office in it. There was always the 
 same man and the same desk, and he always 
 looked at me and said, " Nop " — all the way 
 down from the eighteenth floor to the ground. 
 After that I lost interest and went down to the 
 
 132 
 
'Seeing New York' 
 
 Battery and watched the liners on their way to 
 England. 
 
 At the end of the third week I only had two 
 dollars towards the five I owed. I told Cousin 
 Euphemia about it, and she suggested that 
 I should be a guide-lecturer. She told me of a 
 firm on Broadway, and I got a recommenda- 
 tion from my friend Dempsey, the policeman, 
 in which he very kindly said I was his brother, 
 and so I got the job. I used to drive about on 
 a motor char-a-banc, a long, sloping arrange- 
 ment like those you see in London in the sum- 
 mer. I had a megaphone and explained the 
 sights in a loud voice. New York isn't half a 
 bad place, but it is deficient in sights, and if it 
 wasn't for the millionaire babies I am afraid 
 I should have sometimes had to invent things. 
 Fortunately, though, the country tripper who 
 comes to New York doesn't care about sights 
 as we understand them in England — unless 
 they are very expensive. My most popular 
 tour used to start by passing the Waldorf 
 Hotel. We used to stop there while I told 
 them what was the annual income of the guests 
 
 133 
 
"A Vagabond in New York 
 
 who put up there, and how much the ladies in 
 the Peacock Parade spent on diamonds for 
 their shoe-heels, and that sort of thing. I am 
 no good at figures, and I expect they varied 
 sometimes, but my clients were always satis- 
 fied. Then we used to take them to Saint 
 Patrick's Cathedral. They didn't trouble to 
 go inside, of course, but we stopped for a min- 
 ute or two while I told them what the site cost, 
 and the average value of the jewels in the copes 
 and things worn by the clergy. Then we went 
 on up Fifth Avenue to where the babies lived. 
 Luckily for me there was quite a glut of them 
 at that time. When we passed a likely look- 
 ing house — you can always tell, because mil- 
 lionaire architecture reminds you of a new 
 restaurant in Leicester Square — we used to 
 pull up while I explained, through the mega- 
 phone, that we were opposite the princely 
 home of Mr. Potiphar J. Scrawlenfeldt, 
 whose income was so many millions a week, 
 and who had spent so many billions on the 
 house and so many on the furniture, and had 
 married the daughter of so many more, and 
 
 134 
 
I had a megaphone and explained the sights in a loud voice. 
 
''Seeing New York' 
 
 was expecting a son in about three weeks, who 
 would be heir to so many trillions. I was 
 rather successful. 
 
 We weren't the only sightseers by any 
 means. Sometimes there would be half-a-dozen 
 cars at once, stopping opposite one man- 
 sion, each with a megaphone going, which 
 made things cheerful for the expectant mother. 
 If I had been her I think I should have felt 
 embarrassed, but in New York she gets to look 
 for it, and sometimes she would appear at a 
 window by accident amid the cheers of the rub- 
 berers, and the booming of the megaphones, and 
 the clicking of the living-picture cameras. As 
 I said, I was rather successful and I am not at 
 all sure that I had not really found my occu- 
 pation in life if only my success hadn't resulted 
 in a bad attack of swelled head. There is one 
 bit of Manhattan where there really are some 
 sights, as we of the old world understand them. 
 Between Wall Street — where the old wall 
 stood in the Dutch days — and the nose of the 
 island there are a lot of quaint streets and one 
 or two old houses — seventeenth-century sort 
 
 135 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 of style — with a certain amount of old-world 
 feeling about them that, in my insular preju- 
 dice, I thought would make up a good lec- 
 ture. I got my proprietor to try sending a 
 car round there for a change, and rashly guar- 
 anteed that I could make a success of It. I 
 couldn't. On my fourth trip I only had two 
 rubberers, and they were both furious because 
 I didn't show them where the Bilkheimer baby 
 was expected. They complained when we got 
 back. The boss told me I was too intellectual 
 — only he didn't put It quite so nicely — and I 
 had to leave. 
 
 136 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A Turn at Starving 
 
 F we had always to eat the same food I 
 suppose we should never eat anything. I 
 know at least that quite the worst aspect 
 of starvation is its monotony; there is nothing 
 else anywhere that can equal it in lack of in- 
 cident. After I lost my job as a guide-lec- 
 turer I had a run of really bad luck, and I 
 learnt the whole philosophy of starvation at 
 first hand. I was not a bit well, to start with. 
 If I had been moving in a more exalted sphere 
 I suppose I should have said I had a nervous 
 breakdown. As it was, I could only call it an 
 absolute lack of energy, or moral force, or 
 something of that sort, that gave me an infinite 
 distaste for doing anything at all. Unkind 
 people might call it sheer laziness; but it was 
 not that. On the contrary, I used to have 
 
 137 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 terrific fits of energy; but they always tailed 
 away just at the moment when they began to 
 produce results. I used to spend hours work- 
 ing out great schemes towards this, that or the 
 other mighty end, and then dropping them. 
 Very naturally they none of them came to any- 
 thing and I came to real starvation. 
 
 There is only one good thing about starving; 
 the longer it lasts the less it hurts. The first 
 day is the worst — because your mind feels it 
 most. If ever I wanted to start a Terror, I 
 should pick only men who had starved abso- 
 lutely for twenty-four hours. After that you 
 begin to lose interest. 
 
 I had to leave my hall-room — which corre- 
 sponds to an attic in London, though it is really 
 a little room fitted in over the entrance hall — 
 after the first week. I left It with thirty-five 
 cents in my pocket and the well-wishes of my 
 coloured cousin Euphemia. I husbanded my 
 fortune, but it did not last long; New York is 
 an expensive city. I couldn't get a job; I 
 knew nobody who could help me towards one; 
 even my friend Dempsey was absent from his 
 
 138 
 
A Turn at Starving 
 
 usual beat. I was absurdly ignorant about 
 charities. They exist, of course, by dozens, 
 but I didn't know of them. If any one who 
 reads this wants to start a charity, let him estab- 
 lish one for strangers, without regard to their 
 deserts, and let him advertise its whereabouts 
 by huge posters, so that any poor devil can find 
 It. He mustn't ask any questions either. I 
 have no doubt a native New Yorker — as, In 
 London, a native Londoner — would know ex- 
 actly where to find a free meal and have a dozen 
 excellent reasons for getting it. I didn't, and 
 there are many thousands like me. While I 
 had sufficient energy left to inquire, I had suffi- 
 cient to look for a job, and when that was gone 
 I was past Inquiring. I did have some vague 
 idea of appealing to the British Consul. I 
 even went to look for him, but when I found 
 the place — down by the Battery, at the cor- 
 ner of Whitehall Street, I think It Is — It was 
 so shabby and had so dirty an entrance that I 
 didn't go in. This sounds absurd enough, but 
 it is true. That was the third day of my fast, 
 and I suppose I was getting fanciful. 
 
 139 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 The first day, as I say, my mind suffered 
 most. I stormed and raved inwardly at every 
 one who looked as If he had enough money on 
 him for the next meal. The second day my 
 body suffered. I had the most horrible Indi- 
 gestion sort of cramps — exactly as If I had 
 eaten too much. I remember thinking how 
 unfair It was. The third day both mind and 
 body suffered, only less acutely. I was fool 
 enough to eat something on the fourth. A 
 bench neighbour — a working man who had 
 got drunk over night and had a black eye, and 
 was afraid to go home and face his wife — 
 gave me a quarter, and I spent twenty cents of 
 It on food, most of It on corned (or, as we 
 should say, salt) beef hash. It made me quite 
 horribly 111 — until I was mercifully sick, after 
 which I felt better. I spent the remaining five 
 cents upon cigarettes — they were called 
 " Hassans," — ten of them. I don't know who 
 made them, but here Is an unsolicited testi- 
 monial: I never enjoyed anything so much in 
 my life. Like a fool, I smoked them all right 
 off on end, with no thought for the morrow, 
 
 140 
 
A Turn at Starving 
 
 and I felt uncommonly ill afterwards for the 
 second time. I was beyond caring about things 
 much. 
 
 Past the Battery Park, at the very nose of 
 the island of Manhattan, are the big termini 
 from which the ferry boats start for Brooklyn 
 and Staten Island and other suburbs. There is 
 an iron gallery beside one of them, approached 
 by a long flight of steps, where you can stand 
 and watch all the shipping coming up and down 
 the harbour. I found it out by accident, the 
 day I was looking for the Consulate — and I 
 got into the way of going there and watching 
 out for ships that flew the Union Jack. There 
 were three of them to one of any other flag, 
 and somehow it did me a lot of good. I felt 
 quite a ridiculous amount of pride in the 
 thought that there was still something in the 
 world in which I had some little share. I ex- 
 pect I should have pawned my share just then 
 if it had had any cash value, but the feeling was 
 there all the same. 
 
 On the sixth day I was feeling thoroughly 
 content — in a sort of dreamy haze in which 
 
 141 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 nothing mattered in all this world or the next. 
 I slept on a bench in the Battery Park. It 
 rained a little and I got wet, but was too lazy 
 to move in under the shelter of the Elevated, 
 and I saw the Olympic, I think it was, going 
 out, and followed her with my eyes all the way 
 until she got lost in the mist somewhere by 
 Staten Island, and gloried to myself that she 
 was the biggest boat in the world and English. 
 Then I took it into my head to walk round the 
 path between the little park and the water's 
 edge, where the excursion steamers start. It 
 was about ten o'clock in the morning. 
 
 The excursion boats are very popular In the 
 warm weather, and there is a good deal of 
 competition among them, and they all have 
 runners out to catch the unwary tripper who 
 hasn't quite made up his mind. I was mooning 
 along, thinking about nothing at all, when there 
 came a little spirtle of wind from the water 
 and something slapped me across the eyes. I 
 grabbed at it, and it was a dollar bill. I saw 
 then that it must have come from one of the 
 ticket touts, who stand about with tickets in 
 
 142 
 
A Turn at Starving 
 
 one hand, ready to sell, and bunches of dollars 
 in the other, to show what good business they 
 are doing and how popular their boats are. 
 
 I suppose if I had thought about it I should 
 have stuck to that greenback, but the habit of 
 instinctive honesty is difficult to throw off. 
 Anyway, I took it to its proper owner. He 
 was a large red Jew, but a white man all the 
 same. I must have looked like a second-class 
 pirate; I hadn't shaved or washed, or had my 
 clothes off, for a week, and I think I was a bit 
 unsteady in my walk by that time. But either 
 he was amazed at my honesty or he saw I 
 looked rather faded; anyhow, he took me in 
 and did for me. He made me sit down on a 
 bench and wait until he was off duty, and then 
 he stood me a meal — a sensible meal, only 
 hot soup to begin with — and a wash and a 
 shave. And, by the way, whoever starts my 
 ideal stranger's charity should provide it with 
 free baths and washing accommodation and 
 free shaving. How any man who looks as I 
 did, dirty and ragged, and with a week-old 
 beard on his face, and the smell — for even 
 
 143 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 the cleanest of us are unpleasant after we have 
 worn our clothes for a week consecutively — 
 how he can be expected to find work, or to have 
 the heart to look for It, Is past my compre- 
 hension. There ought to be free collars and 
 cuffs provided, too, even if they are only made 
 of paper; nothing Improves a man's chances so 
 much as wearing a clean collar. The coat 
 doesn't matter nearly so much. 
 
 To make a long story short, my Jewish 
 friend got me a berth on the Lake Island boats 
 — ^ as I will call them — to go round among 
 the passengers and take orders for beer. 
 Afterwards, when a vacancy fell In, I might 
 look forward to acting as bar-man In a curious 
 little horseshoe bar tucked away between the 
 paddle-wheels. I had a white coat and a clean 
 face, and I bought myself a dandy yachting 
 cap, and altogether If I had met myself of a 
 week before I shouldn't have cared to be seen 
 speaking to me. That was the worst week I 
 spent in New York, and I don't want another 
 like It anywhere. 
 
 144 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The CUld Terrible 
 
 I SOMETIMES wonder whether London 
 or New York has most to complain of, 
 In the way of reputation. If you believe 
 the accounts of the untravelled American, who 
 has not been there, London Is a chaotic dust- 
 heap, only rendered tolerable by the fact 
 that constant fogs prevent your seeing It. 
 New York again is revealed to the unseeing 
 eyes of the English world as a wilderness of 
 Impossibly tall skyscrapers, divided up Into ex- 
 actly regular blocks, and peopled by hurrying 
 hordes who dash madly about rectilinearly, 
 overturning each other without shame In the 
 race for wealth. 
 
 As a matter of fact, except for a few out- 
 lying examples, the skyscrapers of New York 
 are all bunched up together In a space very 
 
 145 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 much smaller than the One Square Male, and the 
 rest of the city is a cross between Bloomsbury 
 and Berlin. So much for the works of Man; 
 Nature has given it a setting so gracious that 
 not all mankind working for eternity will ever 
 be able to make it anything less than beautiful. 
 And its greatest beauties are concentrated 
 about its waterways. The best way to see 
 New York is by steamer and the only draw- 
 back is that in that case you can scarcely avoid 
 the huge advertisement sign, set out in enor- 
 mous letters in front of Brooklyn, which tells 
 you that a certain Hungarian mineral water is 
 invaluable for stomachic complaints. I have 
 bowdlerised it considerably, but such is its 
 general message. It is at least as blatant to 
 the eye of incoming steamship passengers as is 
 the statue of Liberty. 1 do not say that it is 
 out of place. Liberty and stomachic com- 
 plaints are certainly the keynotes of American 
 life; and whoever arranged that the Liberty 
 Statue should stand with her back to America, 
 looking towards Europe with a hopeful expres- 
 
 146 
 
The Child Terrible 
 
 sion, as though watching out for a really re- 
 liable liver-pill, knew his country. 
 
 As has been said of Manchester, one of the 
 best features of New York is the ease with 
 which you can get away from It. It has a 
 service of excursion steamers to everywhere 
 that could not be bettered anywhere in the 
 world, despite a tendency to explode at odd 
 moments. You can go by steamer to I know 
 not how many ports and towns and pleasure 
 resorts at whatever distance you prefer; you 
 can go for very little indeed, and you may be 
 sure that wherever you go you will thoroughly 
 enjoy the voyage. 
 
 The steamer on which I sold beer for a time 
 was called, let us say, the Jatte McCracken, 
 and plied between the Battery and Lake 
 Island, which Is a pleasant summer resort In 
 the State of New York, about thirty miles by 
 water from the City, and looking over the 
 Sound which divides Long Island from the con- 
 tinent. It Is a very popular voyage and very 
 rightly, for even I, who had to make the trip 
 
 147 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 twice a day in the way of duty, enjoyed it 
 thoroughly, embarrassed though I was by a 
 tray of ice-cream cornucopias, a collection of 
 beer-glasses, or a load of pop-corn, according to 
 circumstances. 
 
 I know no better way of getting acquainted 
 with a people than by studying them at their 
 pleasures, and I would defy any one to study 
 the New York populace, as exemphfied by 
 travellers on the Lake Island Line, without lik- 
 ing them. They were not so well disciplined, 
 in the way of queues and crowding, as would 
 be, say, a Bank Holiday mob In London; they 
 were at least as kindly and very much more so- 
 ciable. Thanks, I suppose, to the large pro- 
 portion of Jews among them, the Lake Island 
 trippers were more patrlarchally gregarious 
 than are the Londoners. I do not mean to say 
 that there was not a fair percentage of de- 
 tached couples; but for the most part they 
 tripped in family batches, grandfather and 
 grandmother, father and mother, four assorted 
 aunts and uncles, and, say, three hobbledehoys 
 and as many flappers — or, as New York has 
 
 148 
 
The Child Terrible 
 
 it, " broilers " — each provided with an ap- 
 propriate sweetheart, and courting under the 
 maternal eye with a determined earnestness only 
 to be equalled by the couples on the benches in 
 Hyde Park of a Sunday evening. Then, of 
 course, there were the children — shoals of 
 them. Professionally speaking, the children 
 were the most welcome of all our patrons, in 
 that they had an insatiable appetite for ice- 
 cream, which I vended, arranged in little 
 cornucopias of wafer at five cents each. Their 
 elders, on the other hand, not infrequently 
 brought their own viands, and were as such less 
 desirable, seeing that I was partly paid by a 
 percentage on the receipts. 
 
 We were not, of course, confined to tripper 
 trafiic. We had a large number of regular 
 passengers, living in and around New Rochelle 
 and similar suburban centres, who used our boat 
 as the pleasantest link with New York. Some 
 of them I got to know very well, and especially 
 Helga, who was at once the wickedest and the 
 most fascinating little minx I ever knew. 
 
 Actually I know very little about her, as she 
 
 149 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 would vary her information about herself ac- 
 cording to her mood of the moment. I call 
 her Helga because such was the first name she 
 mentioned to me, but she called herself by 
 quite a number of others, according as she 
 thought them momentarily desirable. So with 
 her age; at different times she told me that she 
 was five, seven, eight, nine, ten and even once, 
 sixteen, which I did not believe. She was an 
 uncommonly pretty monkey with a fresh little 
 face, full of deviltry, a mop of golden hair, 
 and very long, slim, black legs, which were I 
 think her most characteristic feature. She 
 made love to me most scandalously, from the 
 first time that she saw me with my ice-cream 
 tray; and thereafter whenever she was aboard 
 paid me, or it, unending breathless court. She 
 had an exceedingly comfortable-looking papa 
 and a very pretty mamma, whom I used to ob- 
 serve gazing at her with languid surprise as 
 though wondering how she could be responsible 
 for such a bantling. She would refer to her 
 father in casual conversation as " the Man " 
 and considerably embarrassed me, upon our 
 
 150 
 
She made love to me from the first time she saw me with 
 my ice-cream tray. 
 
TJie Child Terrible 
 
 second meeting, by leading me, tray and all, 
 up to her mother and demanding loudly, " Isn't 
 she perfectly sweet?" 
 
 I mention her with some particularity, firstly 
 because I fell desperately In love with her, and 
 secondly because she was, directly, the cause 
 of my very narrowly escaping drowning and, 
 indirectly, of my losing my employment. At 
 Lake Island, our terminus, the boat used to be 
 made fast to an ornamental pier-head in a tiny 
 bay. Into and out of which it had to back with 
 unusual care. On one occasion while it was 
 backing towards the pier I happened to be 
 standing beside the Monkey on a little plat- 
 form just abaft the paddle-box. In the usual 
 way It was protected by an iron railing, but 
 that had been removed, In readiness for land- 
 ing. The Monkey, whose chief joy was to 
 arouse her seniors' fears by pushing herself 
 Into dangerous positions, managed in some way 
 to drop overboard a large model of a torpedo- 
 boat with which her father had that day dow- 
 ered her. I daresay It was an excellent model, 
 but It was no swimmer and promptly dlsap- 
 
 151 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 peared in the foam from the starboard paddle. 
 About to burst into a scream of anguish, the 
 Monkey, presuming as usual, upon my devo- 
 tion, changed her mind and ordered me, with 
 her most fascinating rnoiie, to jump overboard 
 after it. I declined. Thereupon, with the 
 calm remark, " Then perhaps you will jump 
 after me," she promptly leapt after her toy into 
 the water. Drowning is a death after which 
 I have no sort of hankering and I was about 
 to turn on my heel, in order to acquaint the 
 captain with the loss of one of his passengers, 
 when my foot somehow slipped and I followed 
 her. Once in the water there seemed no par- 
 ticular reason why I should not so far assist 
 the imp as to guide her away from the paddle- 
 blades, which were twirling about in the air 
 just over and unpleasantly close to our heads. 
 I have an impression that the water was not 
 more than three or four feet deep. However 
 that may be, we scrambled ashore, without dam- 
 age, except to my temper, in about a minute; 
 whereafter ensued a scene of which I cannot 
 think even now, without a blush of reminiscent 
 
 152 
 
The Child Terrible 
 
 shame. There happened to be a clergyman on 
 board and a reporter — it would be amazing if 
 there had not been, in a country where both are 
 so common — and I will not dwell upon the 
 horrid orgy that ensued. I did not see most 
 of it, because I was engaged in borrowing dry 
 clothes from the rest of the crew, but by the 
 time I got on deck again the clergyman had 
 arrived at Fourthly; and the reporter, having 
 interviewed all the passengers, the crew and 
 the pier officials, was discussing with the cap- 
 tain the possibility of having the affair re-en- 
 acted before the cinematograph machine he 
 proposed to rush down from New York by 
 automobile. 
 
 You will understand that there was only one 
 thing to be done. My borrowed plumes for- 
 tunately proved sufficient disguise; a trolley-car 
 was about to start on the other side of the 
 ferry; in half-an-hour I was in New Rochelle 
 and in another ninety minutes or so I was back 
 in New York, a workless wanderer once more. 
 I cannot say how sorry I was. I was quite ab- 
 surdly fond of the Monkey, and apart from her, 
 
 153 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 I was very happy on the Jane McCracken. I 
 have knocked about the world a good deal in 
 my time, but I do not know when I have seen 
 anything more beautiful than some of the trips 
 we used to make homewards after sunset, down 
 the Sound. It is an enchanted shore at the 
 worst of times — something hke the trip up to 
 Southampton from the Needles, only five times 
 as long and, especially after sundown, a dozen 
 times as beautiful. There is always a mys- 
 terious shore to right and left, fading and 
 advancing as you turn and twist along the chan- 
 nel. Just as you start you will have the melt- 
 ing gold and russet and saffron of the sunset, 
 deepening into violet, on your right hand; and 
 suddenly behind you the whole of Lake Island 
 bursts into a luminous outline of little points of 
 fire, as they turn on the illuminations. They 
 are only electric lights and they outline quite 
 ugly things, a Ferris Wheel and a mountain 
 railway and so on, but as you leave them be- 
 hind they twist themselves into pagodas and 
 enchanted palaces and vague dancing shapes 
 that are too elusive to build thoughts upon, or 
 
 154 
 
The Child Terrible 
 
 more than visions. The Sound is very still, 
 only a soft fresh breeze fans your temples and 
 all around you the pale shadows of the islands 
 deepen to purple invisibility; and somewhere 
 ahead are the blood-red and flowery green pin- 
 pricks of passing vessels; and little bustling 
 lights spring out on the growing shores and 
 behind you the glimmer of the golden palaces 
 of fairyland fades and fades. Everything 
 seems hushed and stilled into eternal immobil- 
 ity; you only are rushing through space on the 
 wings of the night; somewhere above you, wav- 
 ing solemnly across the starlight, are the great 
 propeller beams that make the Jane McCracken 
 seem like a sluggish spider drawing Itself 
 along an unseen web. The lights of Lake 
 Island fade at last into a mere incandescence 
 behind you, and other stars rise slowly from 
 the unseen distances you go to meet. To 
 sit there, on the upper deck, with the woman 
 you love and gaze out forward, to where one 
 solitary golden star set high in the heavens 
 tells you — although it Is In itself nothing more 
 romantic than the clock-face of the Metropoli- 
 
 155 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 tan Life Building in Madison Square a dozen 
 miles away from you — that somewhere the 
 only real Paradise — they call it Home — is 
 waiting . . . 
 
 But this is all very absurd, well enough for 
 married, respectable folk, lords and slaves of 
 small imps with warm, confiding palms, but not 
 for vagabonds, with no more useful mission in 
 life than to take orders for beer. " Ice-cream I 
 Ice-cream ! ! Now then. Folks — who wants 
 ice-cream ? Five cents ! Only Five Cents ! " 
 
 156 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Called to the Bar 
 
 I ATTAINED the summit of human am- 
 bition — as understood by many mil- 
 lions of people in New York, London, 
 and elsewhere — on the same day that I be- 
 came a life-long teetotaller from birth, like 
 Mr. Bryan, Mr. Lloyd George and other nota- 
 bilities. I do not mean because of it. It hap- 
 pened after I had dismissed myself from my 
 job on the Jane McCracken. I had to visit 
 her, in secret, in order to give back the clothes 
 I had borrowed and to collect what was left 
 of my own. They were not unshrinkable, un- 
 fortunately, and there was very little of them 
 left. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the most remark- 
 able thing about humanity is the number of 
 really nice people — white men, as you would 
 
 157 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 say in America — it includes. In my erratic 
 wanderings through life the preponderance of 
 white folk I have come across is quite over- 
 whelming; it is true that, judged by the ordi- 
 nary standards of morality, some of them might 
 be regarded, by respectable people, as very 
 rank outsiders indeed. I am reminded of this 
 when I think of Captain — technically known 
 as " Cap " — Lane, who was the skipper of the 
 Jane McCracken. I have heard it darkly 
 hinted, among the crew — a crew, be it remem- 
 bered, is at least as devoted to scandal as is a 
 convent or a small provincial town — that 
 " Cap " Lane was a most immoral man — that, 
 exceeding the proverbial privilege accorded to 
 sea-faring men, he not only had a wife in every 
 port, but two or three. If so, I am sure they 
 were all devoted to him, and that however many 
 children he may have had, he was an ideal 
 father to each and all of them. He was rather 
 a small man, with a bluff voice that yet had in 
 it the sort of timbre that made you want to 
 put your head on his shoulder and sob out your 
 troubles to him. I never did, because my re- 
 
 158 
 
Called to the Bar 
 
 lations with him were purely official, but if I 
 had been his wife, or somebody else's, I can 
 imagine myself doing it all day long. He was 
 just coming off the Jane McCracken when I 
 met him. 
 
 Cap Lane used to drink a great deal more 
 than was good for him. He drank according 
 to a system of his own. For twenty-two hours 
 out of the twenty-four he was strictly teetotal. 
 I think it was the result of some promise he had 
 made to his mother on her death-bed, but any- 
 way he had to crowd into two hours all the 
 drinking that the ordinary man can spread 
 through the day and part of the night. He 
 was very methodical about It. Our last trip 
 usually brought us back to New York some- 
 where after nine in the evening. As soon as 
 the ship was moored Cap Lane left her at once, 
 betook himself to a saloon on Greenwich 
 Street, and set himself solidly to the task of 
 pouring into himself as much liquor as was 
 humanly possible in the short one hundred and 
 twenty minutes available. I do not believe he 
 liked it — not, at least, taken at railway speed; 
 
 159 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 he regarded it as a stern duty and he did. I do 
 not think it ever made him drunk. On at least 
 one occasion I was privileged to see him home 
 — to one of his homes at any rate, in Green- 
 wich. He was certainly not drunk then; he 
 explained to me, I remember, the method in 
 which pilots " con " a ship and he did it as 
 clearly as might a mathematical professor. 
 Yet, as it was currently reported, he already 
 carried within himself that evening enough 
 liquor to enable a moderate-sized steamer to 
 come to her moorings without any fear of 
 grounding whatever. 
 
 I met him, as I say, just as I was slinking 
 towards the gangway, in the faint hope that I 
 might secure my small property without at- 
 tracting undue attention. He captured me, in 
 silence, and drew me with him across the park 
 and into the saloon of his choice. There, fix- 
 ing me with his eye, he held me in irons until 
 he had produced from his pocket a letter. It 
 was from Helga's father and it was quite flat- 
 tering — evidently the Monkey had held fast 
 to her self-imposed convention of never telling 
 
 i6o 
 
Called to the Bar 
 
 the truth where a lie was possible — and it 
 enclosed a hundred-dollar bill. 
 
 One of the commonest mistakes made by 
 people of the middle and upper-middle classes 
 is to suppose that they and their superiors 
 monopolise the finer shades of sensibility. 
 Cap Lane was not " geboren," as the Germans 
 have it. He first saw the light in the cabin 
 of a barge on the Erie Canal, and spent most 
 of his youth irritating with a bent pin at the end 
 of a stick the tails of the mules who drew his 
 father and his fortunes. Yet he understood at 
 once why I did not feel like taking that hundred- 
 dollar bill, and he agreed to divide the reward 
 among the members of the crew and their 
 auxiliaries and did it faithfully. What is more, 
 he carried me off with him, that same evening, 
 to the saloon on Eighth Avenue owned by a 
 friend named Macgregor. Mr. Macgregor 
 had all the assistants he required, but that made 
 no difference at all. He had to accept me — 
 and knowing Cap Lane I suppose he knew it; 
 and within five minutes I was setting up the 
 bottles and the Cap was pouring chasers down 
 
 i6i 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 his throat; and I can honestly say that I was 
 not nearly so clumsy as you would have thought 
 at the time, but that I really was trying to help 
 him go slow. 
 
 What we call a public-house, and usually be- 
 lieve that the Americans call a saloon, calls 
 itself in New York a cafe — or as an American 
 Pitman would spell it, a kaafe. When I be- 
 came a bar-tender in a cafe I had to become a 
 lifelong teetotaller from birth, because that is 
 almost a sine qua non in New York bar-tending. 
 At the same time I was raised in the public eye 
 to a rank a little higher than a marquisate in 
 England and a little lower than a dukedom. 
 
 The bar-tender is the only person in New 
 York who is addressed as " sir " — In the Eng- 
 lish way of using the word — by what we 
 should call the lower classes. The policeman 
 is sometimes similarly honoured by unln- 
 structed foreigners, but only when they are 
 honest. The rest, who are in the majority, 
 call him " son " or " youse guy," according to 
 the closeness of their intimacy. The bar-tender 
 : — and especially the proprietor — is not at all 
 
 162 
 
Called to the Bar 
 
 the pimply, dirty old Irish reprobate with an 
 impossible brogue, a hard-worked sense of hu- 
 mour and an unquenchable loquacity, popular- 
 ised by Mr. Dooley and other humorists. 
 Instead, he is a silent, keen-eyed, close-lipped 
 business man, with a neat taste in tailoring and 
 a prejudice against alcoholic stimulant. I have 
 said I was a teetotaller; so were my three col- 
 leagues, and the boy and the terrier and the 
 proprietor — some of even longer standing. 
 Two were earnest church workers — Scotch 
 Presbyterians, as well — but I was not, because 
 it was optional. 
 
 You need a character if you wish to prosper 
 as a New York bar-tender. In some other 
 trades — politics and the delicatessen industry, 
 for instance — you are better without one. 
 Instead, in applying for a job. If the boss — 
 pronounced " baws," by the way — asks if you 
 have had experience, you say nothing at all — 
 you just wink and smile. The more meaning 
 you can get into that wink the more certain you 
 are of getting the job. I had a character — 
 given me by Cap Lane, and he knew the boss's 
 
 163 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 prejudices. The boss's name was, as I have 
 said, Macgregor, and he was from County 
 Down, and had a liking for his fellow-country- 
 men. So I was from County Down, too, like 
 the rest of the establishment, down to the ter- 
 rier. My name was Mackintosh — with the 
 accent on the I — but I left home very young 
 before I learned to speak Ulster, as my father 
 was an earnest Orangeman, much persecuted by 
 the local Papistry. I was born in a village, the 
 name of which I forget, but which Mr. Mac- 
 gregor recognised as soon as Cap Lane told 
 him of it, though he had not visited it for some 
 years. He was able to tell me all about it, and 
 even to describe the cottage I must have been 
 born in. After a time he began to remember 
 my father and what a decent man he was, and 
 how he had a son who used to go about in a 
 hat three sizes too large for him. I said it 
 was my elder brother, but he insisted it was I, 
 because he began to remember the boy's face, 
 and it had exactly my eyes and hair and nose, 
 and was inclined to stoutness. We nearly 
 quarrelled over it, and I found out he was an 
 
 164 
 
Called to the Bar 
 
 ill man to contradict. He insisted on calling 
 me Alexander afterwards, which was the elder 
 brother's name, instead of William, which was 
 mine, because he was quite sure I z(fas the elder 
 brother, who had got into trouble for shooting 
 at a parish priest from behind a hedge, and 
 was trying to pass myself off as my own junior. 
 It was a bit mixed, but it made us very good 
 friends again, and he promised to put me up 
 for the " martyr " branch of his Lodge, which 
 included all those who had suffered for the 
 Cause. 
 
 The cafe was on the corner of a block, as 
 most of them are. Nearly every block in New 
 York has a cafe at each of its four corners, a 
 couple of gambling-hells somewhere handy, 
 eight shoe-shining stands, where they also sell 
 oranges and chocolates, and a church. I don't 
 say this is universal; sometimes one of the shoe- 
 shining stands is left out and sometimes the 
 church, but never the cafes. They are rather 
 like churches themselves in atmosphere. Ours 
 was, at any rate. I suggested, when I had been 
 there some little time, that it would not be a 
 
 165 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 bad idea to open proceedings with prayer, ac- 
 cording to the ritual of the Church of Scotland. 
 I meant it humorously, but Mr. Macgregor 
 was struck with the idea, and only gave it up 
 for fear it would be bad for the business, as we 
 had so many Jewish customers. He liked me 
 all the better for it, though. 
 
 Curiously enough, one of our customers was 
 Mr. Cholmondely, whose delicatessen store 
 was only a few blocks off. As you may remem- 
 ber, we had parted unfriends on a matter of 
 chickens. So the first evening he came in when 
 I was serving, feeling rather proud of my white 
 coat and white apron — white suits my com- 
 plexion, I have been told — I made up my 
 mind to Ignore him. He wouldn't be Ignored, 
 though; he reached out for my hand as if it 
 had been a greenback, and stood there slob- 
 bering with his hat off and calling me " Ma 
 tear," and waiting with a pathetic little smile 
 for me to nod to him. I realised then for the 
 first time how high I had risen. 
 
 When I say the cafe was like a church, I 
 mean that you never heard loud voices or bad 
 
 1 66 
 
Called to the Bar 
 
 language in it. Customers all had a deferen- 
 tial air, and used to swallow their whisky — 
 always " chasers," whisky first and water after- 
 wards out of two separate glasses — as if it 
 was medicine. The place was all swathed in 
 white muslin, with pink rosettes, to keep the 
 flies off the looking-glasses, and the bar was a 
 big round horseshoe, like a rostrum, swept and 
 garnished, and behind it was a sort of trophy of 
 bottles like an organ-case. All this decency 
 and propriety was because there were no bar- 
 maids and no women customers. None visible, 
 I mean. I have often heard good Americans 
 lament over the number of women you see in 
 public-houses in London, and rejoice that such 
 a spectacle is unknown in New York. That 
 is because they know nothing of the " Family 
 Entrance." There aren't "public" and "pri- 
 vate " and " saloon " bars In New York, but 
 there is a family entrance, which In our case 
 meant a little room at the back of the cafe with 
 a separate door. It was used chiefly on Sun- 
 days when we were supposed to be shut, and 
 there would be more women than men In It 
 
 167 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 half the time. It was used after closing hours, 
 too. We nominally closed at one, by which 
 time the really seasoned topers hadn't got 
 properly to work, but we kept open as long as 
 there were any customers. Because I was 
 rather large and heavy Macgregor put me on 
 duty In the " Family " department right from 
 the beginning, and there was not any ecclesias- 
 tical atmosphere about that. Chucking out was 
 not so easy as it is in London, because every 
 cafe has storm doors — glass-porch arrange- 
 ments to keep out the cold In winter — and If 
 your man struggled It was difficult to get him 
 through without breaking the glass. Mac- 
 gregor was In favour of stunning him first, but 
 if you killed him you were almost certain to 
 have trouble with the police and get fined or 
 something. 
 
 I stayed at the cafe quite a long time; and I 
 only left because I was offered a partnership 
 by a customer in vaudeville, which had always 
 interested me. 
 
 i68 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A Son of the Empire 
 
 THE educational value of the public- 
 house is seldom recognised by social 
 reformers. In actual fact it has all 
 the advantages of that academy to which the 
 elder Mr. Weller sent his son Samuel, with 
 none of its drawbacks. Personally, I learned 
 more in Mr. Macgregor's cafe than I have ever 
 learned outside it — and not of matters con- 
 nected with the liquor trade only. For one 
 thing, I learned to understand English. 
 
 When I first went to New York I got a job 
 on a newspaper, I am ashamed to say how 
 short a time I held it, and I cannot fairly quar- 
 rel with the reason for my dismissal, which 
 was that my English was very much too pro- 
 vincial for a really high-toned metropolitan 
 journal. More urgent matters prevented my 
 
 169 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 giving any appreciable time to the study of the 
 language until I became a bar-tender, and then 
 I realised how thoroughly justified had been my 
 expulsion from that first newspaper office. But 
 I did not despair. I set to work to master the 
 subject, and by the time I had learned the four 
 chief secrets I felt emboldened to try my 
 prentice hand at journalism once more. I do 
 not mean that I tried after actual journalistic 
 employment — I knew my own limitations too 
 well for that, — but I began to send round little 
 articles and one or two of them were accepted 
 and I can't tell you how proud I was. Proud, 
 I mean, to see that I was still capable of learn- 
 ing and that within a year or two I might expect 
 to be able to speak President's English quite 
 passably. It is something, after all, to be able 
 to write In two languages and all the more so 
 when they have so many queer surface resem- 
 blances. The Germans are very capable lin- 
 guists; yet you will never find a German who 
 can speak Dutch; It Is too much like his own 
 language. 
 
 There are several shibboleths by which the 
 
 170 
 
A Son of the Empire 
 
 true New Yorker may recognise the provincial 
 young man from England. Here follow four 
 of the most important, by a careful observance 
 of which the Englishman may for a long time 
 escape conviction, even in the Anglo-Saxon 
 metropolis itself. Imprimis, he has a fatal 
 habit of using such phrases as " You must," 
 " You should," " It Is essential that you — " 
 and so forth, when there is only one safe way 
 of expressing the same Idea, " You gotta." 
 Again, he will say, or write — which Is even 
 worse — " A quarter to ten." He should say, 
 " A quarter of ten." He will talk of being 
 " called after So-and-so." It should be 
 " named for So-and-so." Finally, he will say 
 " Yes " or " No " — words perfectly unfamiliar 
 to the cultured Anglo-Saxon, who has no real 
 words expressing such Ideas. Occasionally, the 
 glosses " Yup " and " Nop " are heard, it is 
 true, though seldom In really cultured circles. 
 I pass over such minor errors as " biscuit " for 
 " crackers " and " 111 " for " sick," because even 
 in England the best people are beginning to 
 realise the folly of such insularities. 
 
 171 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 If you go farther and wish to be accepted 
 not only as American, but as one of the rarest 
 creatures on God's green earth, a native-born 
 New Yorker, you must remember yet one thing 
 more, always to pronounce " th " as " d." If 
 you wish to say that you were looking for three 
 thousand Thespian thieves in Third Avenue, 
 you must say that you were watching out for 
 dree dousand Despian dieves — only you would 
 not say thieves at all, but politicians or State 
 Senators, or smart business men, or something 
 like that. You would say " on Third Avenue," 
 by the way, and never " in." I suppose this 
 curious treatment of the " th " comes from the 
 enormous number of German immigrants in 
 New York, just as does the word " boob," 
 meaning — well, all sorts of things. " He is 
 some boob," for instance, means that he fancies 
 himself quite considerably. There is nothing 
 guttural about the "th"; It is a pure, clean 
 " d," and very characteristic. 
 
 To become a graduate In American slang Is 
 of the simplest. I think I may say without 
 boasting that I was for a time emeritus pro- 
 
 172 
 
A Son of the Empire 
 
 fessor in the Macgregor University of Eighth 
 Avenue. I picked up an old copy — I think 
 it was in the Bohn edition — of the Vision of 
 Piers Plowman — at a second-hand book-store 
 on Forty-second Street and quoted at random. 
 You will also find much useful information in 
 Roger Occam, while I understand, though I can 
 speak only from hearsay, that the Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle Is a very mine of up-to-the-hour 
 Americanisms. 
 
 I fear that I am wandering somewhat from 
 the path of my vagabondage, but so I actually 
 did in real life when I tended bar for Mr. Mac- 
 gregor. I occupied, so to put It, a place of 
 profit under Government, a hillock of ease 
 whereon to rest and look back over the devious 
 wanderings of the past few months. Mine 
 again was a position analogous to that of a po- 
 liceman on point duty outside Charing Cross 
 Station, In that at least a very large section of 
 New York passed daily under my survey. Es- 
 pecially, of course, I was Interested In the Eng- 
 glishmen among our patrons. The number of 
 Englishmen in New York Is really surprising. 
 
 173 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 It is pathetic, too, when you come to realise how 
 many of them have drifted there, after failing 
 elsewhere, with some vague hope that it is an 
 Eldorado where they can repair their damaged 
 fortunes. We have been told, ad nauseam, 
 that the Americans hate, despise, envy, con- 
 temn the English. This and similar statements 
 are absolutely untrue, so far at least as my 
 experience goes, but if it were so it would 
 scarcely be surprising so far as New York is 
 concerned, seeing how large a proportion of the 
 Englishmen seen there are " unemployables " — - 
 at either end of the social scale. The capable 
 Englishman goes West; if he stays in New 
 York, where there is really no room for him, 
 he is not capable. I stayed in New York, my- 
 self, so I know. 
 
 If the New Yorker — and especially the 
 lower class New Yorker — does not hate Eng- 
 land and the English, it is not for want of en- 
 couragement. The reason is curious enough 
 and has very little to do with Irish Nationalist 
 sentiment, though that of course helps. But it 
 is chiefly a matter of business. 
 
 174 
 
A Son of the Empire 
 
 New York has notoriously its gutter press — 
 not more guttery though than is its counterpart 
 in England. It devotes itself to supplying 
 strong meats for the baser part of the populace. 
 They are for the most part Finns, Wallachs, 
 Lithuanians, and a hundred other weird peoples 
 whose very names are scarcely known to us ex- 
 cept in fits of depression. The papers who 
 pander to them are forced to attack England, 
 if they would gain their pennies, for two rea- 
 sons, both unexpected. In the first place 
 patriotism pays, in America as elsewhere, 
 perhaps even a little more; and it is the patriotic 
 duty of every American paper to uphold the 
 banner of America against all comers — as one 
 can only wish were also the case in England. 
 Now, a very good way of praising your own 
 country is to compare it favourably with its 
 foreign sisters. You could not gain any 
 national kudos by pointing out American su- 
 periority over Moldo-Wallachia or Crim Tar- 
 tary; you would only be insulting America by 
 condescending to such a comparison. You must 
 select a more or less worthy rival to give your 
 
 175 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 words some weight. England is the one coun- 
 try in the world which America regards as a 
 worthy rival. Therefore, when the gutter press 
 upholds America at the expense of the outer 
 world, England has to bear the brunt of It. 
 Thus the foreign-born American Is gradually 
 being educated to believe that England com- 
 prises within herself every national quality 
 which compares unfavourably with her trans- 
 atlantic daughter. The native-born American 
 does not think so for a moment; with very few 
 exceptions he admires England and likes the 
 English, but he has other things to do than to 
 spend his time protesting that liking. 
 
 Another reason which tends towards gutter- 
 abuse of England is the race- war, which has al- 
 ready broken out In the United States and 
 which in a very few years, unless wisely dealt 
 with, may produce serious results. Perhaps 
 less in New York than elsewhere, but very per- 
 ceptible there also, Is the striking fact that 
 all the men of action have English, or more 
 strictly British, names. The financier or the 
 capitalist is very often, though not Invariably, 
 
 176 
 
A Son of the Empire 
 
 German or Jewish. But the director, the fore- 
 man, the manager, the supervisor who comes 
 into personal contact with the working-class, Is 
 in the vast majority of cases of British descent. 
 The working-class, which Is largely recruited 
 from the weird under-nations already referred 
 to, does not consider Itself well-treated. Per- 
 sonally I quite agree with It, though I need not 
 go Into that. Whether or no, the man upon 
 whose shoulders It places the responsibility for 
 Its sufferings Is that representative of the ruling 
 caste with whom it is brought into personal con- 
 tact — the man of British descent. Ex pede 
 Herculem. 
 
 At the upper end of the social scale there is 
 certainly little anti-British prejudice. On the 
 contrary, the one Indispensable condition of so- 
 cial success Is to have a British name. Armed 
 with that you have always the chance of being 
 recognised as an F.F.V., which Is to say, the 
 scion of one of the first families of Virginia, 
 which Is to say, a descendant of Cavaliers and 
 an acceptable candidate for membership in the 
 Thames Valley Legitimist League or the White 
 
 177 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 Rose Society or other combination of Die-Hard 
 Jacobites. Failing that, your ancestors came 
 over in the May/lower, which, as has now been 
 proved by the researches of the Smithsonian In- 
 stitute, was a vessel of about double the size of 
 the Imperator, and crowded at that. If you 
 are unlucky enough not to have an English name 
 — but your son always has, so we need not go 
 into that. For some curious reason, it is better 
 to have had an English great-grandfather than 
 an English father. If, I mean, your father 
 was born in Putney, you conceal it, or pretend 
 that it was not Putney, England, but Putney, 
 Massachusetts. If it was your grandfather, 
 you regard Massachusetts or Surrey with equal 
 equanimity. But if it was your great-grand- 
 father — then there is no holding you ; you 
 subscribe on the slightest encouragement, or 
 none at all, to funds for the restoration of Put- 
 ney Parish Church, and if you have not had 
 eighteen generations of crusading ancestors 
 buried there before your fiftieth birthday you 
 are no true American. 
 
 178 
 
A Son of the Empire 
 
 My coloured cousin Euphemia was a suffi- 
 ciently good example of the spiritual empire 
 wielded by England in another direction. I 
 came across one still more suggestive in the 
 days when I was trying to be a journalist. He 
 was an Englishman named Ah Wong LI. 
 
 I had been sent to Chinatown, which is the 
 place where the Chinese live, to get up, if I 
 could, a picturesque story concerning a shooting 
 affair which had just taken place there. One 
 of the best assets of the New York paper is the 
 Tong. No New York paper ever gives any 
 more news than It can help about anything that 
 happens outside New York. If the German 
 Emperor, the Tsar, and the French President 
 murdered each other after a drinking bout, the 
 most enterprising New York dally would give 
 the affair three lines, tucked away under an ac- 
 count of how little Flossie Yammerheim, of 
 Avenue A, had won a cooking prize at school, 
 developed Into three columns by the help of 
 Interviews with her teacher, the local Rabbi, 
 and the delicatessen storekeeper who provided 
 
 179 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 the materials. The next most enterprising 
 journal would give the Yuropian holocaust one 
 line ; the rest would not refer to it at all. The 
 New York public cares only for what happens 
 in New York, and, of course, In Mayfair, which 
 is, however, no more than a suburb of Manhat- 
 tan. Now the Tong — which is a Chinese 
 Secret Society — is New Yorkian and Oriental 
 and picturesque all at the same time. And It 
 Is always killing itself or its rivals, which ren- 
 ders it even more eligible. So I was sent to 
 Mott Street to get the details of an affair In 
 which seven Chinamen shot each other dead In 
 a laundry, and five were wounded. And there 
 I met Ah Wong LI. He was the secretary of 
 a flourishing co-operative murder society, and 
 he was very English Indeed. He had been 
 educated in Berkshire — he was born In Hong 
 Kong — and he had a contempt for any one not 
 born under the British flag that was quite colos- 
 sal. The thing that interested him most, apart 
 from the restaurant which he owned, was Im- 
 perial Federation. I shall never forget the 
 
 i8o 
 
I was sent to Alott Street to get the details uf an affair. 
 
A Son of the Empire 
 
 contempt with which he spoke to another 
 EngHshman of Chinese descent, who, however, 
 was only brought to Hong Kong at the age of 
 two, having been born, by an oversight, some- 
 where in Mongolia. 
 
 i$i 
 
CHAPTER XFII 
 
 Under the Red Light 
 
 THERE are only three people In New 
 York who do not profess them- 
 selves able to give you full and 
 authentic Inside knowledge of the genesis of 
 all police scandals, present, past, and to come. 
 They are all high police officials, and I am not 
 one of them. I really did get some little in- 
 sight Into the " Red Light " system at first hand 
 when, for a time, I acted as assistant door- 
 keeper at a gambling-hell In the West Forties. 
 That was after I had left Macgregor's saloon, 
 when my vaudeville venture had failed lamen- 
 tably, and while I was still trying to be a jour- 
 nalist. 
 
 It was a regular customer at the cafe who 
 first induced me to tempt fortune in vaudeville. 
 He was an American — one of the few I ever 
 
 182 
 
Under the Bed Light 
 
 saw in New York — which meant, of course, 
 that he had a scheme for cornering the whole 
 vaudeville business in the United States, Great 
 Britain being regarded as one of the minor ter- 
 ritories. He worked it out down to its smallest 
 details at late sittings in the Family Depart- 
 ment, and I have no doubt that it would have 
 turned out a marvellous success if he had been 
 able to raise the five dollars necessary for pro- 
 curing properly stamped notepaper — an essen- 
 tial preliminary to commercial success in 
 America. I did not regret my temporary con- 
 nection with him, because it threw me into 
 fortuitous contact with a man who really did 
 manage one of the minor halls on the East Side, 
 and under his auspices I made my first appear- 
 ance in vaudeville. It only lasted for a week, 
 and I cannot say that it had any very pronounced 
 success, but it was quite good fun while it lasted. 
 I worked the turn with Miss Lamartine, whose 
 name you may remember. She is extremely 
 small; I have been called stout by my enemies, 
 and am rather on the tall side. I was dressed 
 as a baby in long clothes, and Miss Lamartine, 
 
 183 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 attired as the vaudevillists' idea of a nursemaid, 
 pushed me on to the stage in the American 
 apology for a perambulator, and we sang songs 
 and spouted patter and that sort of thing. I 
 think we enjoyed it more than the audience did, 
 because, being mostly Greeks and Italians and 
 Russian Jews, I doubt if they understood what 
 we said; but they were very nice about it, and 
 there were no riots or anything unpleasant. 
 We were not able to get any re-engagements, 
 though, so the speculation came to an end. I 
 can't say that I learned very much about the 
 American music-hall stage in the time; the only 
 difference I could see was that, while In England 
 you do not call your fellow-artists by their Chris- 
 tian names until you have exchanged at least 
 three words, in America you address even your 
 business letters to people you have never seen 
 with some endearing diminutive, and close with 
 love and innumerable kisses. 
 
 I had been wise enough not to drop my small 
 journalistic connection In the meantime, but all 
 the same I began looking for another job at 
 once. The free-lance has, if possible, a worse 
 
 184 
 
Under the Red Light 
 
 time in New York than in London, so far as 
 getting paid goes. In London, of course, they 
 often make you wait six weeks for your money, 
 putting the responsibility for your meals in the 
 meantime on the broad shoulders of the C.O.S. 
 In New York it frequently runs to three months 
 — or did in my case — and the better class the 
 paper the longer you have to wait. I did some 
 articles for what is generally considered the best 
 daily in New York. After nine weeks I asked 
 for the money. The man I asked was quite 
 annoyed about it, and said I ought to know 
 better than to worry them about such little 
 things. I tried hard for another three weeks, 
 and then was told they could not trace the trans- 
 action at all. In the end I got the money by 
 going up to the proprietor's room on the 
 twenty-third floor, sitting on the threshold and 
 moaning through the keyhole. He said it got 
 on his nerves, after two hours, and gave me an 
 order on the cashier. I have never had to do 
 that, even in Carteret — I mean in London. 
 
 It was through my journalism that I became 
 a gambling-hell official. I wanted to make my- 
 
 185 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 self favourably known in other ways than by 
 emulating Lazarus. I went to my old patron 
 Officer Dempsey and asked for suggestions, 
 and he got me the job. It was in a plain 
 brown freestone house in one of the semi-resi- 
 dential streets between Sixth Avenue and 
 Broadway. Most of the gaming places and 
 disorderly houses and all-night sing-songs are 
 clustered about there, along with theatrical 
 lodging houses and cheap restaurants — a sort 
 of New York Shaftesbury Avenue, in fact. 
 Ours was a very discreet establishment with 
 lace curtains in the windows, and a high flight 
 of steps running up to the front door. It was 
 owned by an alderman, and the upper part was 
 let out in lodgings to theatre people. We oc- 
 cupied only the basement and the ground floor. 
 Like other lawless places in New York it was 
 run on lines of almost monastic respectability, 
 voices scarcely raised above a whisper until 
 pretty early in the morning, drunken men put 
 comfortably to bed on sofas in an ante-room, 
 and that sort of thing. We had a higher-class 
 connection than most of our rivals, and for 
 
 1 86 
 
Under the Red Light 
 
 rather a curious reason; the police on duty 
 never directed any chance customers our way, 
 everything was done by introduction. In the 
 ordinary way, when you feel like gambling or 
 otherwise amusing yourself disreputably in 
 New York you make for that section of Broad- 
 way between the corner of Central Park — 
 Fifty-ninth Street If I remember aright — and 
 Macey's — popularly known as the " Great 
 White Way," because of Its electric flashlight 
 advertisements — and ask the first policeman 
 you come across where to go, and he gives you 
 a list of addresses. You can ask a taxi-driver, 
 If you prefer it, but the establishments he rec- 
 ommends are not usually of the first-class. 
 
 Now the reason that my particular hell was 
 not recommended by the police was that It was 
 not officially a gambling house at all. The al- 
 derman and other highly placed gentlemen who 
 own the Vice Trust have, of course, reduced It 
 to a very exact business, of which each branch 
 keeps strictly to its own affairs. Thus an 
 alderman who runs gambling-hells Is not sup- 
 posed to dabble In disorderly houses; if he does, 
 
 187 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 it must be secretly and at the risk of being 
 raided by the police, as not paying the appro- 
 priate rates of blackmail. Our proprietor nomi- 
 nally confined his activities to the White Slave 
 side of the business, in which he was what you 
 might call the managing director. But he was 
 of a Napoleonic turn of mind, and yearned also 
 after the profits — reported to be higher — of 
 the gambling side. Hence we were nominally 
 a disorderly house and as such described in the 
 official records — and only paid that scale of 
 blackmail, the lower of the two. Consequently 
 we were extremely discreet and well-managed. 
 In that particular block you might, every night 
 regularly, Sundays included, hear the strains of 
 " Everybody's Doing It " wafted to heaven 
 from innumerable gramophones, from mid- 
 night to nine or ten next morning; you might 
 hear drunken choruses, feminine screams of 
 " Murder," and other sounds of gaiety, at all 
 hours. But never from our house. We 
 might have been a community of bishops for 
 any sign to the contrary. 
 
 We were not raided while I was there, and 
 
 i88 
 
Ufider the Red Light 
 
 there were no disturbances of any kind. The 
 life, in fact, was deadly dull, although the pay 
 was good; and I learnt how to play quite a 
 number of games hitherto unknown to me. 
 But the champagne was execrable — some 
 abominable Californian brand put up in Perrler 
 Jouet bottles — and I was afraid of diabetes 
 and left. 
 
 189 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 In the Matter of Manners 
 
 THERE are many Englishmen — 
 some of whom have been there — 
 who quite conscientiously maintain 
 that the street-manners of New York are the 
 worst prevailing in any great city. There are 
 a number of New Yorkers who will tell you, 
 equally conscientiously, the same of London. 
 So Paris sneers at Berlin and Berlin at Paris, 
 and I suppose Pekin at Tokio and vice-versa. 
 What is more they are all perfectly correct ac- 
 cording to their lights. London points with 
 pride to the theatre-queue; Berlin rejoices in the 
 feline smile with which its inhabitants remove 
 their hats on entering a shop; Paris will say 
 and truly that its most uncultured Apache takes 
 off a victim with a grace unknown in brutaller 
 climes; New York might claim, if It liked — 
 
 190 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 though it is too busy abusing him for things that 
 he can't help — that the manner of Officer 
 Dempsey towards a harassed foreigner is the 
 kindliest form of courtesy anywhere to be 
 found. The Parisian does not barge his way 
 into a tram-car on a wet day — because a 
 kindly administration provides him with a duly 
 numbered ticket — but watch him on the out- 
 skirts of a crowd when he wants to see the 
 centre of Interest. The Englishman will cold- 
 shoulder his railway companion, boorishly, be- 
 cause he is shy and self-conscious; the American 
 will lean across the aisle and speculate upon the 
 price you have paid for your overcoat, be- 
 cause he really takes a friendly interest in you. 
 Each of them will think the other appallingly 
 rude, and each will be quite right and very 
 wrong. 
 
 I am acknowledged, in England, to have 
 really charming manners. I say this, not in 
 any spirit of petty pride, but because It Illus- 
 trates my point. A New York acquaintance, 
 long since become a friend, has assured me 
 that when I was first introduced to him, at his 
 
 191 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 club, he disliked me cordially, setting me down 
 as prig, oaf, boor and I know not what beside. 
 When I asked him upon what he had based this 
 unfavourable verdict he replied: "Because, 
 from your manner, I thought you must be 
 God's first cousin." Passing over the fact that 
 such a Personage would probably have excel- 
 lent manners, that I laid no claim to such re- 
 lationship and that I never met an Englishman 
 who did, except he imply it in the well-founded 
 belief that English is the only language spoken 
 in heaven, I will only say that at the time 
 I was doing my very best to make a favourable 
 Impression. I am not, of course, by a very 
 long way, the only Englishman who has unwit- 
 tingly gained for himself a similar reputation 
 in New York. In my case, as it fortunately or 
 unfortunately happened, the Fates busied them- 
 selves to impress upon me that so far from 
 being a demigod I was no more than the 
 humblest vagabond that creeps the earth. 
 Many Englishmen never have this brought to 
 their notice and they go through the world, 
 quite unaware of the claim they appear to be 
 
 192 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 making to divine honours — and so create for 
 all their countrymen an uncomplimentary 
 legend that sticks. 
 
 The Englishman usually considers New 
 York a home of incivility because he is socially 
 and psychologically out of his element. He 
 expects, from those whom at home he is ac- 
 customed to consider his inferiors, a degree of 
 deference to which no American — however 
 humble his status — would admit his right. If 
 he would only regard the policeman, the tram- 
 conductor, the railway guard as a man and a 
 brother, he would find them individually charm- 
 ing. But he judges them by their uniforms 
 and expects from them the deference paid by 
 a private in parade kit to a subaltern in mufti. 
 Contrariwise, the American in England dis- 
 covers in people of those same occupations a 
 manner which strikes him as subservient, 
 servile, even cringing. It is not so in reality, 
 because it is only a uniform, put on for the 
 moment in deference to custom, but acknowl- 
 edged by all parties to be no more than a uni- 
 form. The footman in livery who should find 
 
 193 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 himself treated as a man and a brother by some 
 American guest at his master's house would 
 consider himself, and very properly, insulted. 
 One does not speak to the man at the wheel; 
 and he is for the time at the wheel, guiding the 
 social ship along its appointed track. Once In 
 plain clothes and the case is altered; he will 
 hob-nob with you and treat you well as a free 
 Englishman should and does treat the stranger 
 within his gates — and uncommonly good com- 
 pany you will find him. 
 
 Broadly speaking you will never decide 
 whether the American or the Englishman, the 
 Parisian or the Berliner or the Cypriote or the 
 Tibetan, Is the best-mannered until you can 
 establish a fixed basis of absolute value which 
 will cover soap and beer and creamcheese and 
 moonlight and poetry and prose. But it Is 
 possible to establish an Internal standard In 
 each and all. So far as it is possible for an 
 outsider to gauge the matter the New Yorker 
 would have no reputation for bad manners 
 anywhere In the world, for his scale, being 
 based upon the common humanity of human 
 
 194 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 beings, Is a high one, were it not that he re- 
 joices — really rejoices — in one particular 
 sect or creed or religion who make it their 
 business in life to cultivate bad manners to 
 their logical conclusion. I refer, of course, as 
 anyone who has ever lived in New York will 
 know already — to the men who work the ele- 
 vators in the big public buildings. 
 
 As I was, after abandoning my employment 
 in the gambling world, for a time a member of 
 that profession I can speak with some au- 
 thority. I do not think any other trade or pro- 
 fession in the world could seriously challenge 
 the supremacy of the New York elevator- 
 attendant. I know, of course, that the young 
 duchesses employed in those " lunch " estab- 
 lishments which correspond to our tea-shops 
 deserve honourable mention. They are very 
 rude indeed and haughty — a shade more so I 
 think than the staff of a temperance hotel in 
 England — but they are, after all, young 
 women, and of a class from which one expects 
 little courtesy, unless one is a nut, dude, or 
 buck. Also they may be put to shame; which 
 
 195 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 certainly can be said of no liftman anywhere in 
 the Union. I saw a neat rout of this kind in 
 one of Child's lunch places — popularly known 
 as the "Cafe des Enfants " — near Times 
 Square. A Frenchman, obviously a new im- 
 portation, was paying his bill at the cash desk. 
 The girl flung him a nickel change, so care- 
 lessly that it rolled back, through the little 
 grille to a place under her elbow where it was 
 almost impossible to retrieve it from without. 
 The Frenchman waited for her to hand it back 
 to him, but she only regarded him with the air 
 of bovine oft'ensiveness which is the trade-mark 
 of her sex and class throughout the world. I 
 have often wondered why this should be so, 
 why, I mean, the young woman employed in a 
 post-office or a telephone exchange or a tea- 
 shop, or a temperance hotel — though not in a 
 public-house, where I suppose the softening in- 
 fluence of alcoholic association makes her more 
 genial — should be so ubiquitously offensive to 
 everyone who is not her personal friend of the 
 other sex. Is it that she believes it " lady- 
 like?" Or that she knows herself for the 
 
 196 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 poor defenceless little creature that she is and 
 like a gecko lizard assumes for defence the 
 guise of a ravaging dragon. Is it — but I am 
 wandering from the point. 
 
 The Frenchman, then, waited for a while 
 and at last, removing his hat, bowed and smiled 
 affably. *' You may keep it, my good girl," 
 he said, " as the reward of your politeness." 
 I was next to him in the queue of filled cus- 
 tomers waiting to pay, and it pleased me greatly 
 to watch the young woman grow purple to the 
 ears and hand across the nickel without a word. 
 An elevator-man would not have been con- 
 fused. He would have pocketed the coin and 
 cursed the Frenchman because it was not more. 
 I am Inclined to think that, by some secret 
 Trade Union regulation, elevator-attendants 
 always marry young ladies employed in tea- 
 shops, and that the daughters always follow the 
 mother's profession, while the sons become 
 either liftmen or hotel bell-boys. T do not 
 know whether this is actually the case, because 
 while I was an elevator attendant I never hap- 
 pened to be on Intimate terms with a " lunch " 
 
 197 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 waitress, nor do I know if it is peculiar to New 
 York or also in operation in London. I shall 
 find out in time. It is such speculations as 
 these that make the vagabond's life interesting 
 if not lucrative. 
 
 If, as I suppose, hotel bell-boys, promoted on 
 attaining maturity to hotel-clerkships, are ac- 
 tually the offspring of liftmen — (It is curious 
 by the way how " hustling " America always 
 prefers the longer of two words while lazy, 
 effete England selects the shorter) — and of 
 tea-shop girls, they are in some degree an ex- 
 ample of atavism. Bell-boy, hotel-clerk and, 
 to a lesser degree, waiter, are all alike tainted 
 with the un-American vice of servility and must, 
 therefore, granted the correctness of my sug- 
 gested pedigree, throw back to some remote 
 European forebear — perhaps the warder of a 
 feudal castle. They are insolent only inter- 
 mittently; before the guest of proven wealth 
 they grovel with a subservience elsewhere un- 
 known. The elevator-man, on the other hand, 
 is insolent to rich and poor alike, to the million- 
 aire as to the clerk, to the pretty girl as to the 
 
 198 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 faded female with six parcels and a string bag. 
 It is with him a cult, a duty, a religion. I be- 
 lieve — I do not know, for I was never ad- 
 mitted to the inner mysteries of the profession 
 — that there is some hidden God of Insolence 
 to whom he offers incense before going on duty, 
 as did the devotees of Thuggism to the red god- 
 dess Kali. There is something very admirable 
 in this fidelity to an ideal — seen from a dis- 
 tance of seven thousand miles or so. Unfortu- 
 nately, here and there is to be found a traitor. 
 Four several times in my experience have I come 
 across an elevator-attendant approximating in 
 manners and deportments to the ordinary hu- 
 man being outside the Mysteries. It is true 
 that, without exception, they were only coloured 
 men. 
 
 It was by the merest chance that I became 
 a deputy-elevator man. After I left my 
 Tenderloin job I wandered down to Mac- 
 gregor's saloon to see if there was anything 
 going, and there I met with Mr. Mooney. It 
 is a curious detail, by the way, that I never 
 met an elevator-man who was not of pure 
 
 199 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 British descent, except of course the coloured 
 men, and even they were Barbadians. Upon 
 the events, simple as they were, of that one 
 evening, I might base a whole essay upon the 
 advantages of America over any European 
 country you care to mention as a place of resi- 
 dence when you are out of work and honestly 
 looking for it. I was not inside the saloon for 
 more than half-an-hour, yet within that time I 
 had two spontaneous offers of employment, 
 both offering at least a living wage. I wonder 
 how many public-houses you might enter, say 
 in Southwark, before you received even one. 
 Yet New York is generally said by the rest, and 
 especially the West of the continent, to be the 
 grave of hopes, so far as making a living is 
 concerned and a poor man in question. 
 
 The first offer came from a " boy " employed 
 by the Western Union Telegraph Company. 
 I call him a boy, because so he called himself, 
 though he was at least sixty-five, very grizzled 
 and inextricably wrinkled. I foregathered 
 with him several times previously and we found 
 a common interest in, of all things in the world, 
 
 200 
 
In the Matter of M miners 
 
 superstition and the history of witchcraft. I 
 once wrote a very clever book about it — it Is 
 still on sale, I have no doubt, if anyone cares to 
 buy It. Denier, as my boyish friend was 
 called, had thought about it — more deeply, I 
 fear, than ever I did — and so we became 
 friends. That Is another unexpected side to 
 New York. Imagine dropping into the public 
 bar of the " King's Arms " in Lower Sloane 
 Street and meeting there a casual labourer In- 
 terested in the Cabbala and the Rosy Cross. 
 
 Denier's offer was that of dog-leader. A 
 wealthy lady of Madison Avenue had four 
 dogs who suffered from indigestion through 
 lack of exercise. Their former attendant had 
 been dismissed at short notice, having con- 
 tracted a cold in the head and a habit of snif- 
 fing, which was bad for the nerves of his 
 charges. The hours were few, the occupation 
 light — no more than strolling in Central Park, 
 — and the pay good. I was not starving at the 
 moment, though, and so I declined and two 
 minutes later I was Introduced to Mr. Mooney. 
 
 Mr. Mooney was what I may describe as the 
 
 201 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General of the ele- 
 vator service in a huge Broadway building that 
 had eight sets of lifts running at once. He 
 was a small person, with a game leg and an ex- 
 pression of determined malevolence that was 
 purely professional. Naturally he was very 
 amiable, as I found when he gave up at least 
 an hour to explaining to me the details of my 
 duty, though it was not at all his own to do so. 
 One of his subordinates was laid up with a sud- 
 den chill, and he was watching out for a sub- 
 stitute; and I happened to come along at the 
 right moment, and Mr. Macgregor vouched for 
 me and I was engaged on the spot. 
 
 I had no idea at first of my own good for- 
 tune. There is, the poet has told us, no greater 
 happiness than is provided by satisfied hatred. 
 I was to experience It. The building over 
 whose lifts Mr. Mooney reigned, with a 
 crooked ash-stick for sceptre (about which he 
 had a marvellous tale to tell, including two 
 murders and an heroic rescue) — housed the 
 ofl'ices of a great daily paper with which I had 
 been connected at the time of my first arrival 
 
 202 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 in America and against whose money editor, 
 city editor and editor-in-chief I had three 
 separate and distinct grudges. Let me here 
 remark upon one peculiarity of newspaper life 
 in America. A newspaper staff consists en- 
 tirely of editors. From the smallest boy .who 
 carries messages, up through all the grades 
 which we should know as compositors and 
 proof-readers and reporters and sub-editors 
 and managers, in America there are none but 
 editors. They start at the top with about 
 twelve editors-in-chief and work down to a reg- 
 iment of editresses corresponding to char- 
 women in London, but transatlantically known 
 as scrub-lady editresses. When I was working 
 express elevator No. 6 I became, without 
 knowing it, an editor — assistant-express-ele- 
 vator-editor I think it was officially called — 
 from the fifteenth to the twenty-third floors, on 
 which the newspaper offices were situated. 
 Below them I lapsed, as It were, into private 
 life again. 
 
 If satisfied revenge Is the highest human hap- 
 piness I certainly attained It In that editorial 
 
 203 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 post. Being the express, which was to say the 
 fastest running of the elevators, It was that 
 most used by my fellow-editors. On the very 
 first day I carried upwards, in one load, my 
 three old-time enemies. By a still more re- 
 markable coincidence that elevator broke down 
 between the sixth and seventh floors and stuck 
 there. It stuck for something like twenty min- 
 utes, and all that time I was in the happy posi- 
 tion of an Early Christian lion surrounded by 
 martyrs. I had them all on their knees, and 
 two of them in tears, before I let them out. 
 
 I did not keep that post very long — having 
 been appointed only as a stop-gap — but I 
 think I can honestly say that I did nothing to 
 lower the high standard of the profession in 
 the way of ill-manners. It was curious how 
 natural they became and how soon. On my 
 first day I several times as nearly as possible 
 disgraced myself for good and all. An old 
 gentleman, I remember, who was carrying a 
 number of parcels, dropped one, and I picked 
 It up and handed It to him. Fortunately none 
 of my colleagues saw me — It happened on the 
 
 204 
 
In the Matter of Manners 
 
 entrance floor; but I still remember the flush 
 of shame that came over me at the thought of 
 how I had betrayed them. Twenty-four hours 
 later an old lady slipped as she entered and 
 nearly fell. I felt the Impulse to go to her as- 
 sistance, but mastered It In time. By the third 
 day if all the old ladles In Manhattan had 
 fallen round me In sheafs and been in Imminent 
 danger I should have jeered at them with abso- 
 lute spontaneity. 
 
 Why this should be I have never been able 
 to decide — the inevitable rudeness of the New 
 York liftman, I mean, A policeman has as 
 much power — yet he is always amiable ; a 
 bar-tender is as much respected — yet he is the 
 essence of politeness. I believed for a time 
 that electricity might have something to do 
 with it, yet the hydraulic liftman is as rude as 
 any of his fellows. Only one clue I have dis- 
 covered. Those in charge of express eleva- 
 tors are, speaking generally, ruder than their 
 " calling at every floor " brethren. Possibly 
 the rush of blood to the head — and feet — 
 consequent upon continual careering up and 
 
 205 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 down at great speed may have something to do 
 with it. Some day I am going to study the 
 English liftman and his manners, and perhaps, 
 with his help, evolve a theory. 
 
 As I say, my experience was but short, yet It 
 will always be a satisfaction to remember that 
 I was for a time a member of a caste quite su- 
 perior to the ordinary decencies of life, and 
 one which, rightly or wrongly, has been en- 
 abled to erect its personal and trade idiosyn- 
 crasy into an international legend. 
 
 206 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 'Follow the Crowd" 
 
 WHILE I was in New York the 
 gentleman ubiquitously known — 
 and loved in some places — as 
 '* Boss Croker," happened to return from Eu- 
 rope where, for some reason best known to 
 himself, he now elects to live. He was, of 
 course, welcomed by many reporters and to 
 them he loosed one gem of thought, which I 
 have ever since remembered. It was that he 
 thanked God he had again returned to a city 
 conducted on modern and progressive lines. 
 
 Of course Mr. Croker is a better judge of 
 municipal management than I could ever hope 
 to be. I have been told that he has freely 
 expended his life and his intelligence and his 
 large private fortune on the furtherance of 
 purity and the stamping out of " graft " and 
 
 207 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 similar abuses in municipal life. I had in- 
 tended therefore to refer to him as a typical 
 American citizen, had not another American 
 citizen, who is my very good friend, practically 
 threatened me with personal violence if I did 
 anything of the sort. 
 
 As a mere outsider and looker-on I do not 
 profess to understand the rights of this. I 
 will therefore only say that, while I do not al- 
 together agree with the anti-European in- 
 nuendo contained in the Great Thought I have 
 quoted, I am thoroughly in agreement with 
 what Mr. Croker went on to say: That New 
 York beyond all other cities exemplifies the 
 progress of democracy. In so far as the aim 
 and end of democracy is to exalt the crowd 
 above the individual, New York can certainly 
 give points even to Glasgow, with Manchester 
 a bad third and London altogether out of the 
 running. 
 
 I am not, for my sins, a believer in demo- 
 cracy. My own little preference in the way of 
 government, if I had any voice in the matter, 
 which thank God I never had, would be for a 
 
 208 
 
'Follow the Crowd' 
 
 benevolent despotism tempered by assassina- 
 tion, I believe, I mean, that it is better for ten 
 thousand ciphers to die if thereby One M'an 
 may be brought to perfect fruition. But in 
 this I know that I am very silly, even impious, 
 and that when I get to the next world it will 
 be proved to me, painfully. Be that as it may, 
 New York is to me the most interesting of the 
 modern cities with which I have any personal 
 acquaintance because it does, more than any of 
 its sister-capitals, exemplify that side of 
 democracy which entails, not all for one, but 
 one for all. 
 
 We laugh, in London loudly, in New York 
 more discreetly — by "we" I mean the peo- 
 ple who make their living out of the public 
 by pandering to its preferences — at the 
 " rubberer," angl'ice the man whose neck, 
 through constant straining to see over the heads 
 of the crowd, has become elastic. Yet he typi- 
 fies the whole community, as, in the future, I 
 suppose, the whole democratic world. I can 
 speak with authority, because I was for a time 
 one of the objects of his most earnest regard. 
 
 209 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 That is to say that after I left my post as dep- 
 uty-assistant-express-elevator-editor, I sat for 
 three weeks in the window of a shop on Broad- 
 way illustrating the virtues of a razor strop. 
 It was really a very good razor strop, though 
 after a time I became prejudiced against it; 
 but I chiefly remember it now as connected 
 with innumerable round pink things, like 
 anemones in an aquarium, all pressing against 
 the outside of the glass, and innumerable 
 solemn eyes staring at me like cows. They 
 used to fascinate me so much that I forgot al- 
 together I was supposed to be cutting shavings 
 off blocks of wood with the razors I had sharp- 
 ened, and just stared back at them. Not that 
 that reduced the crowds; once started they 
 would have gone on staring just the same if a 
 black cloth had been drawn right across the 
 shop front. I won a dollar from a guileless 
 New Yorker over that once by a trick very, 
 very old in London, but of course new to New 
 York. I bet him that I could draw a crowd 
 of a thousand people in ten minutes by merely 
 standing still. I did it, with minutes to spare, 
 
 2IO 
 
'Follow tJw Crowd" 
 
 by staring at the corner of a tailor's window. 
 I forget whether three or four men were 
 clubbed to death before the police could clear 
 the sidewalk — four, I think. 
 
 If a London tailor wants to advertise the ex- 
 cellence of his wares he endeavours to Intimate 
 that they are Intended only for the select few. 
 If he Is In New York he sets about It like this: 
 ^^ Seven million smart young chaps are wearing 
 our Ten-Dollar, Ready-to-Wear, Tuxedo Suit- 
 ings. Follow the Crowd." They do, too. 
 No true New Yorker would think of putting 
 on a pair of trousers until he was quite sure 
 that at least a million others had preceded him 
 In them. In my window, just over my head, 
 was a large ticket, setting forth how many 
 millions of my razor strop had been sold. 
 One of my duties was to be handed a telegram 
 every half-hour, to open it with an expression 
 of wonder, and to add another half-million to 
 the total above me. We began with a mil- 
 lion and a-quarter, I remember, and I put my 
 foot in it rather badly. It was a new line, only 
 put on the market that morning, and I sug- 
 
 211 • 
 
A Vagabond in 'New York 
 
 gested that it would be just as well to start 
 with a really Impressive number — ten or 
 twenty million. The shop-manager was very 
 much annoyed. He said that the proprietor 
 was the head of I forget what religious com- 
 munity, and had all his life long set his face 
 against business trickery and exaggerations, 
 and that if I wanted to deceive the public I had 
 better go elsewhere to do it. I did after a bit, 
 because there was another store, two blocks 
 down, where they wanted a man to recline in 
 a newly invented chair and do nothing except 
 read a novel, with a little nigger boy to change 
 the totals for him, and that struck me as bet- 
 ter suited to my capacities. I had to wait, 
 though, for a time, because there was a lot of 
 competition for the post, and meanwhile I got 
 corns all over my palms from the razor han- 
 dles. All the same, I was sorry I had changed 
 afterwards, when I found I was expected to 
 read the same novel over and over again, to 
 save wear and tear. It was by Mrs. Hum- 
 phrey Ward, and I learned it by heart and 
 used to recite it to myself at night, and I think 
 
 212 
 
'Follow the Crowd' 
 
 I should have gone mad if I had not been 
 struck by a bright idea. I suggested to the 
 manager that it would go down well with the 
 religious public if I were to read something of 
 an improving tendency, and he thought well of 
 It and got a second-hand Old Testament cheap 
 — which would appeal, he said, to Jews and 
 Christians alike — and I learned that by heart, 
 too, which proved extremely useful later on, 
 when I received a call to the ministry — but 
 that is a purely private matter. 
 
 I was first struck by the sameness of the demo- 
 cratic crowd on noticing one day that all the 
 men who were staring at me were wearing 
 coats of exactly the same cut and colour, and 
 had their lips pursed into exactly the same lines, 
 and their hair shaved away behind their ears 
 to exactly the same width, and wore their hats 
 at exactly the same angle and bent their heads 
 over their left shoulders — never the right — 
 in exactly the same way. After that I studied 
 the matter more closely, and It never varied. 
 If one man wore an overcoat they all did, and 
 if one man was smoking a particular kind of 
 
 213 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 cigar they all did — and it was just the same 
 with the women. It puzzled me for a time, 
 because I did not realise how they were able to 
 time the changes so exactly. I found out at 
 last that it was through reading the news- 
 papers. There was one really terrible spring 
 day when half the men I saw were wearing 
 straw hats and the other half black billycocks. 
 There was a dreadful look of uncertainty on 
 their faces, too, and from the side-long way 
 they kept looking at each other instead of at 
 me, I was afraid there was going to be a revo- 
 lution or something. What had really hap- 
 pened was that the Evening Journal and the 
 Telegram had fallen out over whether Straw- 
 Hat day ought to fall on the Wednesday or the 
 Thursday. It had something to do with the 
 Gregorian Calendar, I think, and the Equinoxes, 
 but the result was quite dreadful. I forget 
 how many suicides were attributed to that dis- 
 pute, owing to the prevalent uncertainty, but 
 on the Thursday, when both authorities were 
 united in saying that the day had really come 
 when straw hats were de rigueur the sigh of 
 
 214 
 
"Follow the Crowd'' 
 
 relief that went up throughout the City — and 
 the State, too, I expect — made Broadway 
 sound like the inside of a volcano. 
 
 The real reason for all this is the fierce de- 
 sire to be American. If you remember that of 
 the whole population of New York only three 
 individuals are officially recorded to have been 
 born in America at all, that two of them died 
 in infancy and the third was electrocuted, you 
 will realise that this ideal Is not so easy of 
 achievement as it looks, or would not be but 
 for the newspapers and the advertising tailors. 
 Thanks to them, though, every native-born 
 New Yorker as soon as he arrives from Cra- 
 cow, Odessa, or Lozengrad, as the case may be, 
 no sooner lands than he is seized upon by his 
 relatives — or if he have none, by the Immi- 
 gration officers — and inducted into the regu- 
 lation suit, hat, cut of hair, smile, or frown, 
 whichever is for the moment most American — 
 and so passes at once into the indistinguishable 
 ruck. Within three weeks he has learned to 
 think, within a month to speak, in precisely the 
 same way as do the rest of his fellow citizens, 
 
 215 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 and within a year he was born in Jersey City 
 and his great-great-grandfather came from 
 England. That is one reason why if you make 
 a hit in America it is such a very big hit indeed. 
 If one man admires a book, or a play, or a rag- 
 time melody, or a new brand of Frankfurters 
 or religion, the whole population does so unani- 
 mously — and contrariwise. It is the same in 
 politics and patriotism and morals generally. 
 " Follow the crowd," says the native-born New 
 Yorker, " and you can't go wrong." 
 
 As the loyal subject of a Monarch, with an 
 Established Church, for the moment at any 
 rate, a titled aristocracy and a catechism which 
 reminds me of my duty towards my betters, I 
 might be Inclined to sneer at this, were It not 
 that England also to-day exalts Demos to a 
 seat among the gods. If we are ready to ad- 
 mit — which I for one am not — that Jack Is 
 as good as his master and better, too — then 
 there can be no question that Mr. Croker has 
 the rights of It. We are all going the same 
 way and New York Is going a little faster than 
 London — and Pekin, If all accounts be true — 
 
 216 
 
"Follow the Crowd 
 
 >y 
 
 faster than either. Let us then, and all to- 
 gether, do our little best to hasten the day 
 when, throughout all the world, we shall all 
 change felt for straw upon Straw-Hat day. 
 Only let us, wherever we may be, see to It that 
 someone does not make handsome profit out 
 of our fidelity to an impossible Ideal — as It 
 may be Is the case to-day In New York and 
 nearer home. 
 
 217 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 'Eastward Ho! 
 
 EXPERIENCE is, I have no doubt, 
 very useful in the art of steam-ship 
 stoking if you propose to adopt it as 
 your permanent profession; which you do not, 
 except as an alternative to a life sentence or 
 the electric chair. If you approach it only as 
 an amateur, you can get along without any very 
 great skill. You need a lot of strength in your 
 arms, though, and a sound heart, lungs and 
 other Incidentals. If you are predisposed to 
 bad colds in the head, you will find it healthier 
 to commit a murder, after all. 
 
 Nevertheless, a stoker, so far as my per- 
 sonal experience goes, has many advantages. 
 For one thing, he does not have to wash. He 
 may If he wishes to, of course — I never heard 
 of any regulation against it — but as nothing 
 
 218 
 
Eastward Ho! 
 
 short of flaying would make any difference, he 
 does not usually worry about it. Similarly, 
 he does not have to think about clothes. He 
 generally wears an eyeglass and a smile, or 
 something like that, unless he Is very proud of 
 his figure, which I personally am not, but they 
 are at best a vanity. Lastly, he Is treated by 
 his superior officers, captains, pursers, engi- 
 neers and the like, as though he were a duke. 
 I know that such is not the popular impression, 
 but I speak from personal knowledge. It is 
 true that when I assisted to work a certain 
 Atlantic liner that shall be nameless eastward 
 from New York, I was one of a happy family 
 of what are known In American labour circles 
 as " scabs " or in England as blacklegs. 
 
 It was by accident rather than design that I 
 became a stoker and a scab. I was doing 
 fairly well in New York at the time, which is 
 to say that I quite frequently had enough to 
 eat. What is more I had excellent prospects. 
 More fortunate even than the proverbial ass 
 I had three distinct avenues of occupation open 
 before me. I had the chance — yes, really — 
 
 219 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 of entering the ministry. It came from Con- 
 necticut, through my old friend Mr. Wolff, 
 who wrote that he believed me to have hidden 
 somewhere deep within me the means of grace; 
 and that two of the bears were dead, and that 
 a third had got into trouble through trying to 
 embrace the wife of a leading member of the 
 flock. Then through a chance meeting with 
 Cap Lane, who was on his way to get married, 
 I heard that Helga's father had made a stand- 
 ing offer to give me employment in his business, 
 which had something to do with typewriting. 
 I learnt from Cap Lane, by the way, that Helga 
 herself had assured him that I was a Russian 
 Prince fleeing from the displeasure of my uncle 
 the Tsar, so it was clear to me that her health 
 had not suffered from immersion. My friend 
 Dempsey was back on his beat again and when 
 I told him how I had been mistaken for a de- 
 tective at Amicus, he suggested that, granted 
 a sufficient " pull," towards which he thought 
 he might himself assist me, I might enter the 
 police-force with good prospects of becoming 
 a "sleuth" in actual fact. 
 
 220 
 
Eastward Hot 
 
 My prospects were thus at their brightest at 
 the moment I left New York, though only as 
 I hope temporarily. Unable to decide between 
 the various dazzling prospects opening out be- 
 fore me, I temporised. They were expecting 
 a strike on at one of the big hotels Central 
 Park way. There usually is of course an hotel 
 strike on hand in New York, but I happened to 
 hear of this through a man I met at Mac- 
 gregor's. They expected to want temporary 
 waiters for a week or two and it occurred to me 
 that I wanted a dress suit. The strike was not 
 to be declared for a fortnight or so, and while 
 the New York tailors obstinately refused to 
 give me credit I knew there was one in London 
 upon whose infinite credulity I thought I could 
 still build. I calculated I should just have 
 time to see London again, get some clothes 
 and be back in time to report for work. 
 
 Just then, by some oversight, one of the 
 newspapers paid me some money it owed me, 
 which, with the eighty-five cents I had saved up, 
 made up enough for the return trip, steerage. 
 
 That decided me and I went off to book my 
 
 221 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 passage and just in time I heard of that heaven- 
 sent seamen's strike, and so I got my passage 
 and fifteen dollars as well. Glory be! Inci- 
 dentally I was fifty times better off as a stoker 
 than were the unhappy steerage passengers 
 who had paid about a pound a day each for the 
 privilege of being bullied. 
 
 I suppose there never was such a mixed 
 crowd of stokers since the days of Noah. The 
 authorities of the line were very anxious to get 
 the boat over to England, where there was no 
 strike and they could count on getting a crew, 
 so they took anyone they could get. Many of 
 us had never been to sea before, and as the 
 passage was on the rough side, the scenes in 
 the stoke-hold the first and second days out 
 would require the pen of a lady novelist to do 
 them justice. We took eleven days on the 
 voyage instead of seven, and by the time we 
 reached port most of us were convalescent. I 
 was very popular with my superiors, because I 
 was fool enough not to tumble to the idea of 
 being sea-sick until it was too late, and really 
 did quite a lot of shovelling. It was quite hard 
 
 222 
 
Eastward Ho! 
 
 work, too, especially when, as frequently hap- 
 pened, the laws of gravity entailed that you 
 should stand on your head every few minutes 
 while the ship made up her mind which way 
 she would dodge a particularly truculent wave. 
 We had been everywhere and done everything 
 from driving a milk-cart to directing a coal 
 trust, everything except stoking, that is to 
 say. A number of us were coloured — nat- 
 urally — we drew no absurd colour line — and 
 by a curious coincidence the coloured men were 
 all near relations to Booker Washington — all 
 except one, who was in my watch and was of a 
 religious turn of mind. He was eighty-fourth 
 in direct descent from one of the Magi — 
 Balthazar, if I remember aright — and very 
 proud of it. 
 
 A " scab " does not expect to be popular, but 
 I am bound to say that never before or since 
 have so many people been anxious to make my 
 acquaintance. They used to hang about out- 
 side the company's wharf by fifties at a time, 
 beseeching us for interviews, and holding out 
 half-bricks and paving stones and clubs and 
 
 223 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 revolvers to tempt us with. We were not des- 
 tined to meet them personally; we were taken 
 aboard by tug, starting from an East River 
 wharf way up on the other side of the island 
 where they did not expect us, and when we got 
 on shipboard we stayed there. They were not 
 discouraged, and when the voyage started they 
 chartered a couple of tugs and accompanied 
 us down the harbour shouting farewells and 
 other things through megaphones. A pleasant 
 little rumour went round about then that we 
 should probably find dynamite bombs in the 
 coal-bunkers, find them after we had fed them 
 into the furnaces and departed skyward, that 
 is to say. 
 
 If it has its drawbacks, scabbing has its ad- 
 vantages as well. With the object-lesson of 
 their late employes before them, those In 
 authority bestir themselves to make you happy 
 and comfortable. They don't have to worry 
 about the passengers, because they can't strike, 
 or if they did, they would only be playing into 
 the Company's hands, who would put them In 
 irons or something, and feed them on bread and 
 
 224 
 
Eastward Ho! 
 
 water and save money. They couldn't do that 
 to us, unless they wanted to remain perma- 
 nently stranded In mid-Atlantic like the Flying 
 Dutchman. We did not waste time either in 
 letting them know exactly how matters stood: 
 those of us I mean who were not sea-sick. 
 
 The day after leaving New York the stal- 
 warts among us explained that we really could 
 not work if we were not better fed. We were 
 getting the same food as the steerage passen- 
 gers at that time, but afterwards we were given 
 second-cabin fare, and what we left was given 
 to the steerage. We got discontented again a 
 day or two later — there were more of us by 
 that time — and the captain, and the chief en- 
 gineer, and the purser all apologised to us one 
 after the other, and said we could have anything 
 we felt we fancied — and took it out of the 
 unhappy steerage passengers. I never realised 
 before the amazing patience, if that is the right 
 name for it, of the poor. They were mostly 
 Italians from the coal-mining districts of Penn- 
 sylvania, who were going back to Italy for a 
 holiday. There was a sprinkling of English, 
 
 225 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 and no Americans. It was an American ship, 
 and they knew better. They were paying very 
 much what they would have to pay at a de- 
 cent hotel in England, yet they were bullied, 
 and swindled, and abused by every one, from 
 the stewards down to the ship's boys. They 
 slept on mattresses stuffed with some kind of 
 mouldy seaweed. It was one of my jobs to 
 help empty those mattresses overboard after 
 we reached England, and I shall not forget it 
 in a hurry. They had three iron basins with- 
 out any water to wash themselves in — about 
 a hundred of them — with the result that they 
 didn't wash at all throughout the voyage; such 
 a thing as a bath was undreamt oi^^~^ except in 
 the advertisements of the line — and the lava- 
 tory accommodation would have insulted the 
 dirtiest hog that ever wallowed. Most of the 
 food they got was uneatable, the meat tainted, 
 and so forth. I am not exaggerating when I 
 say that we of the crew refused It. Fortu- 
 nately for them they were not over-crowded. 
 What it must be like on a West-bound trip, 
 when the boat is crammed from bow to stern, 
 
 226 
 
Eastward Ho! 
 
 is wonderful to think. This, as I say, was an 
 American boat, but I am told that the condi- 
 tions are just the same on the English lines; 
 that the French are rather better; and that the 
 Germans do actually treat their steerage pas- 
 sengers as though they were something mod- 
 erately human. I know that not a day passed 
 but I thanked the kindly Providence that had 
 saved me from such a fate, and made me a free 
 stoker and a gentleman. 
 
 It was a pleasant voyage in many ways. 
 For one thing, there was no attempt at discip- 
 line, so far as the crew was concerned. About 
 two-thirds of us — stokers, stewards, deck- 
 hands, or whatever our technical names might 
 be — had never been on board ship before. 
 The unhappy officers soon found it was useless 
 to try to teach us anything, so they did the 
 work themselves. The rest of us spent our 
 time grumbling and playing cards and tossing 
 for ha'pence when we were not flirting with 
 the young ladles of the steerage. When we 
 were off duty we spent most of our time with 
 the steerage passengers — which was, of course, 
 
 227 
 
A Vagabond in New York 
 
 strictly forbidden — and a very decent set of 
 people they were, with, as I have said, an in- 
 finite capacity of patience. I amused myself 
 trying to get up a conspiracy among them to 
 murder the dispensary steward, whose manners 
 annoyed me, in order to call attention to their 
 grievances, and I think that something might 
 have come of it if one of the men had not pos- 
 sessed a mandolin and another a guitar. Ac- 
 cordingly, instead of murdering and mutinying, 
 they spent their whole time dancing and singing 
 " Funiculi, Funicula." There was, of course, 
 a great preponderance of men, who thus had 
 to dance together, and most beautifully they 
 waltzed. Some of the Anglo-Saxons endeav- 
 oured to introduce the Turkey Trot and the 
 Grizzly Bear Hug, but they were frowned 
 upon, I am glad to say. 
 
 We reached port in safety at last, more 
 through luck than judgment, I for one believe, 
 and there I drew my money and got into the 
 funny little English toy-train, and raced up to 
 London through the pretty little countryside 
 that looks so neat and clean and sweet that you 
 
 228 
 
Eastward Ho! 
 
 are kept in agonies all the time lest somebody 
 shall drop a piece of paper out of the train on 
 it and spoil it. It was a weird voyage and I 
 don't know that I particularly want to play at 
 being a scab stoker again. But I did learn 
 one piece of wisdom which was more than 
 worth It. The next time I am very hard up 
 and want to go to America, I shall not go as 
 a steerage passenger; I shall save my money 
 and go as a stowaway. They are quite as well 
 fed and lodged and very much better treated. 
 
 a:H£ END 
 
 229 
 
I