the first duty of the conscientious explorer is to study his own neighbourhood, so we set off to familiarize ourself with vesey street. this amiable byway (perhaps on account of the proximity of washington market) bases its culture on a solid appreciation of the virtue of good food, an admirable trait in any street. upon this firm foundation it erects a seemly interest in letters. the wanderer who passes up the short channel of our street, from the docks to st. paul's churchyard, must not be[pg 170] misled by the character of the books the bibliothecaries display in their windows. outwardly they lure the public by bob ingersoll's lectures, napoleon's dream book, efficiency encyclop?dias and those odd and highly coloured small brochures of smoking-car tales of the slow train through arkansaw type. but once you penetrate, you may find quarry of a more stimulating kind. for fifteen cents we eloped with a first edition of bunner's “love in old cloathes,” which we were glad to have in memory of the “old red box on vesey street” which banner immortalized in rhyme, and which still stands (is it the same box?) by the railing of st. paul's. also, even nobler treasure to our way of thinking, did we not just now find (for fifteen cents) hilaire belloc's “hills and the sea,” that enchanting little volume of essays, which we are almost afraid to read again. belloc, the rogue—the devil is in him. such a lusty beguilery moves in his nimble prose that after reading him it is hard not to fall into a clumsy imitation of his lively and frolic manner. there is at least one essayist in this city who fell subject to the hilarious hilaire years ago. it is an old jape but not such a bad one: our friend murray hill will never return to the status quo ante belloc.
but we were speaking of vesey street. it looks down to the water, and the soft music of steamship whistles comes tuning on a cold, gusty air. thoroughly mundane little street, yet not unmindful of[pg 171] matters spiritual, bounded as it is by divine providence at one end (st. paul's) and by providence, r. i. (the providence line pier) at the other. perhaps it is the presence of the graveyard that has startled vesey street into a curious reversal of custom. on most other streets, we think, the numbers of the houses run even on the south side, odd on the north. but just the opposite on vesey. you will find all even numbers on the north, odd on the south. still, wall street errs in the same way.
if marooned or quarantined on vesey street a man might lead a life of gayety and sound nourishment for a considerable while, without having recourse to more exalted thoroughfares. there are lodging houses in that row of old buildings down toward the docks; from the garret windows he could see masts moving on the river. for food he would live high indeed. where will one see such huge glossy blue-black grapes; such enormous indian river grapefruit; such noble display of fish—scallops, herrings, smelts, and the larger kind with their dead and desolate eyes? there are pathetic rows of rabbits, frozen stiff in the bitter cold wind; huge white hares hanging in rows; a tray of pigeons with their iridescent throat feathers catching gleams of the pale sunlight. there are great sacks of nuts, barrels of cranberries, kegs of olive oil, thick slabs of yellow cheese. on such a cold day it was pleasant to see a sign “peanut roasters and warmers[pg 172].”
passing the gloomy vista of greenwich street—under the “l” is one of those mysterious little vents in the floor of the street from which issues a continual spout of steam—our vesey grows more intellectual. the first thing one sees, going easterly, is a sign: the truth seeker, one flight up. the temptation is almost irresistible, but then truth is always one flight higher up, so one reflects, what's the use? in this block, while there is still much doing in the way of food—and even food in the live state, a window full of entertaining chicks and ducklings clustered round a colony brooder—another of vesey street's interests begins to show itself. tools. every kind of tool that gladdens the heart of man is displayed in various shops. one realizes more and more that this is a man's street, and indeed (except at the meat market) few of the gayer sex are to be seen along its pavements. one of the tool shops has open-air boxes with all manner of miscellaneous oddments, from mouse traps to oil cans, and you may see delighted enthusiasts poring over the assortment with the same professional delight that ladies show at a notion counter. one of the tool merchants, however, seems to have weakened in his love of city existence, for he has put up a placard:
wanted to rent
small farm
must have fruit and spring water
[pg 173]
how many years of repressed yearning may speak behind that modest ambition!
our own taste for amusement leads us (once luncheon dispatched; you should taste vesey street's lentil soup) to the second-hand bookshops. our imagined castaway, condemned to live on vesey street for a term of months, would never need to languish for mental stimulation. were he devout, there is always st. paul's, as we have said; and were he atheist, what a collection of bob ingersoll's essays greets the faring eye! there is the customary number of copies of “the pentecost of calamity”; it seems to the frequenter of second-hand bazaars as though almost everybody who bought that lively booklet in the early days of the war must have sold it again since the armistice. much rarer, we saw a copy of “hopkins's pond,” that little volume of agreeable sketches written so long ago by dr. robert t. morris, the well-known surgeon, and if we had not already a copy which the doctor inscribed for us we would certainly have rescued it from this strange exile.
there are only two of the really necessary delights of life that the vesey street maroon would miss. there is no movie, there are no doughnuts. we are wondering whether in any part of this city there has sprung up the great doughnut craze that has ravaged philadelphia in the past months. as soon as prohibition became a certainty, certain astute[pg 174] merchants of the quaker city devoted themselves to inoculating the public with a taste for these humble fritters, and now they bubble gayly in the windows of philadelphia's most aristocratic thoroughfare. it is really a startling sight to see philadelphia lining up for its noonday quota of doughnuts, and the merchants over there have devised an ingenious method of tempting the crowd. a funnel, erected over the frying sinkers, carries the fragrant fumes out through a transom and gushes it into the open air, so that the sniff of doughnuts is perceptible all down the block. there is a fortune waiting on vesey street for the man who will establish a doughnut foundry, and we solemnly pledge our own appetite and that of all our friends toward his success.[2]
at its upper end, perhaps in memory of the vanished astor house, vesey street stirs itself into a certain magnificence, devoting its window space to jewellery and silver-mounted books of prayer. at this window one may regulate his watch at a clock warranted by charles frodsham of 84, strand, to whose solid british accuracy we hereby pay decent tribute. over all this varied scene lifts the shining javelin-head of the woolworth building, seen now and then in an almost disbelieved glimpse of sublimity; and the golden lightning of the telephone and telegraph pinnacle, waving his zigzag brands in the sun.
[2] since this was written, the lack has been supplied—on park row, just above the top of vesey street; probably the most luxurious doughnut shop ever conceived.