"TAKEA BRASS RING! SKIDDOO!'

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10659, 12 May 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

"TAXE A BRASS RING! SKIDDOO!'

:o: - NEWEST NEW YORK

(By Charles E. Hands.) NEW YORK, March 10.

New York again ! This is Life ! There used to be a- very funny fellow m a knockabout troupe m the London music-halls whoso role it was to be knocked about by the other members of the company. They used to throw buckets at 'him, strike matches on his chin, squirt syphons m his face, and subject him to all sorts of violences and indignities, which he - bore with meekness, and something of the calm, smiling attitude of a. philosophical inquirer m the presence of a new phenomenon. Finally, when he received a death-dealing blow with a hatchet, wliich struck him m the fore top. of his bald cranium, he used to say, "This is' Life ! lam enjoying myself !" Somehow, he reminds me of me. IN THE MIDST OF THE PANIC RUSH. j I am m New York. I am being hustled about m the traffic ; my heels are being trodden on as I walk along the street, and my toes as I stand holding by a strap m the bumping trolley cars. I am jostled and shoved m the endeavor to board an underground train, and am imperiously shouted at by the conductor to "step lively," which is burning insult added to grievous injury. It is like walking down Thragmorton street just after closing hours to try to pa6s along the corridor of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Tramway car bells are, ringing, a million people are talking all at once at the top of their voices,' and every door m New York is being slammed. I dare not stop for a moment in ' the streets to look np at the skyscrapers, for fear of being knocked down and trodden underfoot by the remainder of the procession. To enter one of these great office build, ings I make a dash for a vacant compartment m a revolving storm «door, and know how a dead porker feete m his passage through a sausage machine. I am shot up to the nineteenth floor m an express lift 'at such a rate that I can feel my heart getting mixed up with the pit of my stomach, and I come down again feeling like a, passenger's portmanteau going down a steamer's baggage slide. My eyes ache, my feet ache, my head and . back and ears ache. I pay three times as much for everything m cash as I should need to owe for it m London. It is a whirlpool, a Welsh rarebit nightmare, a * boiler-burst. I am caught m the panic rush, and I do not know what they are rushing after. I feel like a man m Tattersall's ring vho does not bet But this is Life.

I ache, but I am 'beginning to like it. The rush, the jostling, the movement are stimulating. The friction of myriads of human particles generates electricity, and the bright, clear air is charged with it. I find myself beginning to rush and push and talk at the top of my voice. Tomorrow I am going to elbow my way through the crowd m the hotel corridor, and unless I am very much disappointed I shall jostle lots of people off the side-walk. I find soft speech is not heard, and politeness does- not pay; it is mistaken, even by waiters and barbers, for feebleness of intellect. You shall hear me bluster and shout to-mor-row. "Take a brass ring ! Skiddoo !" I do not know what it means exactly, but it is a new 6lang expression which m some way asserts disregard ,for the opinions, feelings, and welfare of the person to whom it is addressed. Everybody has been saying it to me for days. Hear me say it to them to-morrow. "Take a brass ring ! Forget it ! Twenty -three ! Skiddoo!" They axe the jostling elbows of the street crowd m terms of aggressive con vensa tion. COMPARISONS IN NEW YORK. New York never loses its freshness because it is always changing. You come to it for the first time, and it is New York. You go away for a time, and then pay it a second visit, and it is a still Newer York. This time I find it Newest York. ' The centre of the life of the city has. shifted northward a couple of or more m a very few years. The "down under" business quarter which occupied the southern extremity of the long narrow island of Manhattan is always stretching northward, absorbing tho rest of the town before it, so that banks and skyscraper buildings stand where a year or two before were merchants' warehouses j and the merchants, driven north, have m their turn displac. Ed shops; and tlie shops, going still further north, have eaten up what used to be residential quarters ; and the residential quarters have covered with bricks and stone what were swamps and pastures. Less than ten, years ago I stayed at the Aster House.' which, although down town, was still a frequented hotel. Nowadays the Astor is a sort of city luncheon house, like the Ship and Turtle, and is so far forgotten as an hotel that a gigantic new hotel more than two miles north has taken its very name. And now I find the Waldorf itself is rapidly sliding down town as the northward march of things passes over its head. The skyscraper ha 6 ceased to be a, feature of New York because there are now dozens and dozens of skyscrapers, of which the least of the modern oneis a giant compared with the original monster- that first compelled the wonder of the ,world. The mammoth hotel lias ceased Kta_.bG a- lecture, because, so. many new ones have been run up into the skies m the psat few years, that half the New Yorkers have never heard of many of them. In little more than two years the centre of the town has moved a mile, the suburbs luive spread five miles, and the vernacular lias changed beyond recognition. The underground railway has relegated the street cars and the elevated railways to the antiquity shelf. HOW THE "HARD PUSHERS" TRAVEL.

I travelled this afternoon from Brooklyn bridge to the Grand Central Station —about the same thing as going from Mansion House to Earl's Court— by subway express m seven minutes. When I say travelled I mean that I was ponveyed. I was less conscious of the rapidity of the journey than, of the pajnfulness of it. I could not count the number of people m the carriage, but five trod on my toes during the seven minutes. The underground has only been opened a year or so. and already it is insufficient tor the traffic. It has two sets of double lines, one for express and the other for local trains. The hardest pushers travel express. The others have, to be contented with the local trains. But it is still tlie same New York, despite all the changes. 'Hie same m feverish activity, energy, enterprise. The eighteenth edition of the evening newspaper still comes out with the news of some magnificent new enterprise and some new exposure of gigantic rascality that goes One better- than the records of enterprise and corruption m • the seventeenth edition. A huge system of steamship docks is to be built at the cost of millions at the harbor entrance, and "Graft" on the Water Board has robbed the city of millions of dollars. A new skyscraper is to be built on Lower Broadway that will dwarf every occupied structure m the world, and the police, are levying blackmail on the de-,mi-mondaines up town. President Roosevelt calls upon the nation to be m for the defence of the country, and the heads of the insurance societies, have been sharing the funds. Real estate that ten years ago was bought for ten; dollars a. foot is now. sold for two hundred dollars a foot, and the railroad trust has corrupted the Senate. And so on and so on.

Amazing enterprise, activity, prosperity everywhere, amazing rascality and corruption everywhere.