Читать книгу The Personality of American Cities - Edward Hungerford - Страница 15

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It has all quite dazed you. You turn toward Katherine as you ride home with her in the taxicab—space forbids a description of the horrors and the indignities of the taxicab trust.

"Is it like this—every night?" you feebly ask.

"Every night of the year," she replies. "And typical New Yorkers like it."

That puts a brand-new thought into your mind.

"What is a typical New Yorker?" you demand.

"We are all typical New Yorkers," she laughs.

It is a foolish answer—of course. But the strange part of the whole thing is that Katherine is right. Either there are no typical New Yorkers—as many sane folk solemnly aver—or else every one who tarries in the city through the passing of even a single night is a typical New Yorker. How can it be else in a city who is still growing like a girl in her teens, who adds to herself each year in permanent population 135,000 human beings, whose transient population is nightly estimated at over a hundred thousand? They are all typical New Yorkers.

Here is Solomon Strunsky who has just arrived through Ellis Island, scared and forlorn, with his scared and forlorn little family trailing on behind, Solomon Strunsky all but penniless, and the merciless home-sickness for the little faraway town in Polish hills tearing at his heart. Is Solomon Strunsky less a typical New Yorker than the scion of this fine old family which for sixty years lived and died in a red-brick mansion close by Washington square? For in four years Solomon Strunsky will be keeping his own little store in the East Side, in another year he will be moving his brood up to a fine new house in Harlem, an even dozen years from the entrance at Ellis Island and you may be reading the proud patronymic of Strunsky spelled along a signboard upon one of the great new commercial barracks, which, not content with remaining downtown, began the despoliation of Fifth avenue and its adjacent retail district. Can you keep Solomon Strunsky out of the family of typical New Yorkers? We think not.

We think that you cannot exclude the man who through some stroke of fortune has accumulated money in a smaller city, and who has come to New York to live and to spend it. There are many thousands of him dwelling upon the island of Manhattan; with his families they make a considerable community by itself. They are good spenders, good New Yorkers in that they never complain while the strings of their purses are never tightly tied. They live in smart apartments uptown, at tremendously high rentals, keep at least one car in service at all seasons of the year, dine luxuriously in luxurious eating-places, attend the opera once a week or a fortnight, see the new plays, keep abreast of the showy side of New York. They are typical New Yorkers. In an apartment a little further down the street—which rents at half the figure and comes dangerously near being called a flat—is another family. This family also attends the new plays, although it is far more apt to go a floor or even two aloft, than to meet the speculator's prices for orchestra seats. It also goes to the opera, and the young woman of the house is in deadly earnest when she says that she does not mind standing through the four or five long acts of a Wagnerian matinee, because the nice young ushers let you sit on the floor in the intermissions. But this family goes farther than the drama—spoken or sung. It is conversant with the new books and the new pictures. That same young woman swings the Phi Beta Kappa key of the most difficult institution of learning on this continent. And she knows more about the trend of modern art than half of the artists themselves. And yet she "goes to business"—is the capable secretary of a very capable man downtown.

These are typical New Yorkers. So are a family over in the next block—theirs is frankly a flat in every sense of that despised word. They have not been in the theater in a dozen years, never in one of the big modern restaurants or hotels. Yet the head of that family is a man whose name is known and spoken reverently through little homes all the way across America. He is a worker in the church, although not a clergyman, a militant friend of education, although not an educator, and he believes that New York is the most thoughtful and benevolent city in the world. And if you attempt to argue with him, he will prove easily and smilingly, that he is right and you—are just mistaken. He and his know their New York—a New York of high Christian force and precept—and they, too, are New Yorkers.

So, too, is Bliffkins and the little Bliffkins—although Bliffkins holds property in a bustling Ohio city and votes within its precincts. To tell the truth baldly, the Bliffkinses descend upon New York once each year and never remain more than a fortnight. But they stop at a great hotel and they are great spenders. Floor-walkers, head-waiters, head-ushers know them. Annually, and for a few golden days they are part of New York—typical New Yorkers, if you please. And when they are gone other Bliffkinses, from almost every town across the land, big and little, come to replace them. And all these are typical New Yorkers.

What is the typical New Yorker?

Are the sane folk right when they say that he does not exist? We do not think so. We think that Katherine in all her flippancy was right. They are all typical New Yorkers who sojourn, no matter for how little a time, within her boundaries. We will go farther still. You might almost say that all Americans are typical New Yorkers. For New York is, in no small sense, America. Other towns and cities may publicly scoff her, down in their hearts they slavishly imitate her, her store fronts, her fashions, her hotel and her theater customs, her policemen, even her white-winged street cleaners. They publicly laugh at her—down in their hearts they secretly adore her.