第96章

Should it not, she passes on unmolested--but not, as she herself will wrongly think, unheeded. But as to her of whom I am speaking, we may say that every twist of her body and every tone of her voice is an unsuccessful falsehood. She looks square at you in the face, and you rise to give her your seat. You rise from a deference to your own old convictions, and from that courtesy which you have ever paid to a woman's dress, let it be worn with ever such hideous deformities. She takes the place from which you have moved without a word or a bow. She twists herself round, banging your shins with her wires, while her chin is still raised, and her face is still flattened, and she directs her friend's attention to another seated man, as though that place were also vacant, and necessarily at her disposure. Perhaps the man opposite has his own ideas about chivalry. I have seen such a thing, and have rejoiced to see it.

You will meet these women daily, hourly, everywhere in the streets.

Now and again you will find them in society, making themselves even more odious there than elsewhere. Who they are, whence they come, and why they are so unlike that other race of women of which I have spoken, you will settle for yourself. Do we not all say of our chance acquaintances, after half an hour's conversation, nay, after half an hour spent in the same room without conversation, that this woman is a lady, and that that other woman is not? They jostle each other even among us, but never seem to mix. They are closely allied; but neither imbues the other with her attributes. Both shall be equally well born, or both shall be equally ill born; but still it is so. The contrast exists in England; but in America it is much stronger. In England women become ladylike or vulgar. In the States they are either charming or odious.

See that female walking down Broadway. She is not exactly such a one as her I have attempted to describe on her entrance into the street car; for this lady is well dressed, if fine clothes will make well dressing. The machinery of her hoops is not battered, and altogether she is a personage much more distinguished in all her expenditures. But yet she is a copy of the other woman. Look at the train which she drags behind her over the dirty pavement, where dogs have been, and chewers of tobacco, and everything concerned with filth except a scavenger. At every hundred yards some unhappy man treads upon the silken swab which she trails behind her--loosening it dreadfully at the girth one would say; and then see the style of face and the expression of features with which she accepts the sinner's half muttered apology. The world, she supposes, owes her everything because of her silken train, even room enough in a crowded thoroughfare to drag it along unmolested.

But, according to her theory, she owes the world nothing in return.

She is a woman with perhaps a hundred dollars on her back, and having done the world the honor of wearing them in the world's presence, expects to be repaid by the world's homage and chivalry.

But chivalry owes her nothing--nothing, though she walk about beneath a hundred times a hundred dollars--nothing, even though she be a woman. Let every woman learn this, that chivalry owes her nothing unless she also acknowledges her debt to chivalry. She must acknowledge it and pay it; and then chivalry will not be backward in making good her claims upon it.

All this has come of the street cars. But as it was necessary that I should say it somewhere, it is as well said on that subject as on any other. And now to continue with the street cars. They run, as I have said, the length of the town, taking parallel lines. They will take you from the Astor House, near the bottom of the town, for miles and miles northward--half way up the Hudson River--for, Ibelieve, five pence. They are very slow, averaging about five miles an hour; but they are very sure. For regular inhabitants, who have to travel five or six miles perhaps to their daily work, they are excellent. I have nothing really to say against the street cars. But they do not fill the place of cabs.

There are, however, public carriages--roomy vehicles, dragged by two horses, clean and nice, and very well suited to ladies visiting the city. But they have none of the attributes of the cab. As a rule, they are not to be found standing about. They are very slow.

They are very dear. A dollar an hour is the regular charge; but one cannot regulate one's motion by the hour. Going out to dinner and back costs two dollars, over a distance which in London would cost two shillings. As a rule, the cost is four times that of a cab, and the rapidity half that of a cab. Under these circumstances, I think I am justified in saying that there is no mode of getting about in New York to see anything.

And now as to the other charge against New York, of there being nothing to see. How should there be anything there to see of general interest? In other large cities--cities as large in name as New York--there are works of art, fine buildings, ruins, ancient churches, picturesque costumes, and the tombs of celebrated men.