by Jack Finney
The Ladies' Mile was great, the sidewalks and entrances of the block after block of big glittering ladies' stores crowded with women—the kind of women we'd seen at the square, their carriages waiting for them at the curbs now, and every other kind and age of woman. The display windows were low, down to within a foot or so of the walk, a lot of them guarded by waist-high polished brass bars, and the protection was needed. Women stood shoulder to shoulder at some of them, staring at the displays, and when one turned away another was usually waiting behind her to slip into her place. I tagged along with Julia and looked at a few of the displays, and actually they weren't much: mostly ribbons and yard goods unfolded from bolts onto supporting stands. It took me a few stores to realize that we hadn't seen any dresses in the windows, and when I said so to Julia she looked puzzled. "But dresses are made at home," she said.
Hats seemed to be in separate stores, and so did gloves. I stood with Julia looking at a window full of them, some lying in flat shallow boxes, others on plaster display arms. One group of them on display arms were for evening wear, buttoning from wrist to elbow, and some even higher. I nudged Julia and pointed at one pair dyed purple. "Eighteen buttons," I said. She nodded, then stood, lips moving very slightly as she counted; then she pointed to a black pair. "Twenty." I looked the row over, picked a lavender pair, began counting, but Julia interrupted, pointing to another black pair. "Twenty-one." I nodded, began counting the lavender buttons again, and there were twenty-two buttons from wrist to biceps, and we both laughed when I announced this, turning away. "I'm the champ," I said, and Julia said, "Of course."
The street life as we walked, slowly—the only way you could move on those thronged walks—was fantastic: Boys, working against the flow of pedestrian traffic like fish fighting their way upstream, shoved advertising throwaways into every hand that would accept one; and men and women, walking, or standing in doorways, sold everything you could think of, and a lot you never would. I made a few sketches along the way, later on working them up a little. I've included some of them here:
This girl of about sixteen stood in a doorway holding a wooden board on which boutonnieres of artificial flowers were fastened. She must have seen me looking at her, because when I glanced up from her board to her face she was waiting to meet my eyes; she smiled hopefully, and then of course I had to buy one. They were ten cents, and when I handed it to Julia she thanked me, looking as though she were wondering what to do with it; she tucked it into her muff.
In the same block a man stood at a doorway, a basket at his feet, holding out something in his palm for anyone's inspection. When I looked I saw it was a tiny spitz puppy no more than five inches long. There were six more in his basket, whimpering and squirming, and he was offering them for sale. I turned from him, and two men were walking toward us in the crowd, one passing out leaflets, both of them wearing identical sandwich boards and very high-crowned peaked hats. Each of the two hats and sandwich boards was identically lettered 2 ORPHANS, and though I reached for a leaflet I didn't get one, and never did find out what that pair was all about.
At Broadway and Twentieth, passing Lord & Taylor's, we had to stop abruptly to let a procession of two sail past us toward the curb, a really magnificent dowager in a little flat hat tied on with a ribbon in a big bow under her chin, and a long fur-trimmed coat, and followed by a bareheaded man—store manager, floorwalker?—in a morning coat, wing collar, striped pants, and obsequious smile, carrying her packages, the footman of the waiting carriage leaping down to take them.
At Nineteenth we passed a magnificent store of white marble, and I glanced at a brass sign—one was set into the lower edge of each of the long row of display windows—and it said ARNOLD CONSTABLE & CO. Beside the store, a middle-aged woman selling toys from a basket sat on a tiny folding campstool next to a flight of stairs. We passed a man in a dark-blue army overcoat, wearing a blue forage cap—the flat Civil War kind—and he was working his way upstream of the traffic flow with a wooden trayful of apples hung from a leather sling round his neck. We passed an elderly woman selling pressed ferns from a basket; I have no idea what they were for. We passed a one-armed middle-aged man, also wearing a blue forage cap; he had a grind organ hanging from his neck by a strap and supported by a single leg; he was turning the handle with his one arm, cranking out—I listened to be sure, and yes, it was—"Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!"
We were never out of sight of one or another of the great clocks set high above the crowds on elaborate iron pedestals; only the well-off carried watches, I remembered Martin's saying; they were expensive, to be passed on to sons and grandsons after them; no Timexes here.
I noticed at least half a dozen women in mourning, and I mean complete mourning, everything a solid black; two of them wore heavy black veils besides. And I saw many more lame and crippled people, and people on crutches, and people with pockmarked and birth-marked faces, than I'd ever seen on the streets before.
We walked under a huge wooden pair of pince-nez glasses hanging out over the sidewalk to identify the upstairs office of an optometrist; it must have been six feet long, gilded, and with enormous blue eyes painted behind the lenses.
A man stood at a portable table with a sign tacked to its edge. The sign was a bird drawn with incredibly ornate and involved pen flourishes and holding a wide curling ribbon in its beak. The words of the sign were written on the ribbon, so fancifully you could hardly read them, and they said the man behind the table would write your name in the same fancy script on a dozen calling cards while you waited, for ten cents.
And there were jewelers, confectioners, drugstores, and we passed a restaurant called Purcell's and another called Maillard's. There were quite a few cigar stores, and we must have passed five or six hotels between Madison Square and Union Square, each with cigar-smoking, top-hatted, important-looking men endlessly passing in and out. There were still other signs hanging over the walk; gilded wooden watches from the jewelers, a wooden boot from a shoe store, and before every cigar store stood a life-size wooden figure holding a bunch of cigars. A couple of the figures were Indians, but one was a beautifully carved and painted Scotch Highlander, and I saw a baseball player, Uncle Sam, and a terrific goateed, broad-brim-hatted figure that I took to be Buffalo Bill. Two of the hotels had below-street-level barbershops, and at the curb before each stood ten-foot-high wooden barber poles striped red-and-white and surmounted by great gilt balls.
At the north end of Union Square, as we crossed the street toward it, what Julia called "a German band" stood playing: five men playing a clarinet, a trumpet, and three brass horns including a slide trombone. They played well, really well, and just as we passed all but the trumpeter paused while he played a series of rising and falling trills that were great. I dropped several coins into the felt hat that lay bottom up at the feet of one of them.
Up ahead I saw a horse edge in to the curb out of the Broadway traffic and begin to drink from a stone? horse-trough. At Broadway and Fifteenth on the square we passed Brentano's Literary Emporium, and I'm not certain of this but I thought a far-off sign read TIFFANY'S. I turned to ask Julia, but she was looking at me curiously, and spoke first.
She said, "How did you know what it was?"
"Know what what was?"
"The Statue of Liberty's arm."
I had no answer for a moment; how could I have known? "I saw a photograph of it."
She didn't doubt me. "Oh? Where?"
Well, where might I have seen it? "In Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. I just didn't realize it was here in New York."
She nodded, then frowned. "A photograph?"
"Yes, of course. I'm certain the woodcut was made directly from a photograph." She nodded, satisfied, and I said, "Look!" not quite sure at what, but changing the subject. Then I saw a little cluster of people standing before a shopwindow and nodded toward them. We walked over; it was a photographer's shop, Sarony's, and they were looking at a display of sepia photographs: actors and actresses in cos
tume, including tights; long-haired, mustached and bearded politicians, writers, poets, Civil War generals. But the little knot of people—some leaving it, others joining it—was staring in at the most prominent part of the display, a long enlarged photograph mounted on a display easel, a vase of daisies standing before it.
It was a familiar face, I was certain I knew it: a bareheaded young man with shoulder-length hair and the beginning of a smile, wearing a long black winter coat with a huge shawllike fur collar and foot-long fur cuffs, holding a pair of white gloves. "Oscar Wilde!" I said, and Julia and one or two other people looked at me pityingly. As we turned away Julia said smugly, "I heard his lecture, you know."
"What lecture?"
"You are a goose; I thought everyone knew. His lecture at Chickering Hall a couple of weeks ago."
"Oscar Wilde lectured here? You heard him? You were actually there? What did he say?"
"Oh, his subject was the English Renaissance. I don't suppose I paid attention as closely as I should have; Jake was annoyed. But I was annoyed at him; nearly everyone laughed when Mr. Wilde appeared, Jake as loudly as any."
"At what?"
"The way he was dressed: a clawhammer coat, knee breeches, bows on his shoes. And he wore white kid gloves. He has a very large face."
"But what did he say? You must remember something."
"Well... he was speaking of Byron, Keats, Shelley, the pre-Raphaelites. And he said, 'To know nothing about these great men is one of the necessary elements of English education,' and everyone laughed. I believe he liked that, because then he said, 'They had three things which the English public never forgive: youth, power, and enthusiasm,' and there was loud applause. Then he said, 'Satire paid them the homage which mediocrity pays to genius.' "
"You heard him say that?" I grinned, and shook my head. "You actually heard Oscar Wilde say that?"
"Of course," she said absently, without interest; she was staring at an old man standing beside a glass case set on a barrel at the curb.
He had a stubby white beard, a wooden leg, and wore a short-billed officer's cap, the braid turned green. Walking toward him, we could see a ship model behind the glass under full sail in a sea of cloth waves. On top of the case a hand-lettered sign said ALL THE WORK OF A POOR OLD SAILOR.
We stopped to look, and the old man turned to the case, began working a wooden knob in its side, and the ship started to toss, and the waves moved, alternate layers in opposite directions. He stared patiently ahead so as not to seem to beg, but there was a wooden box with a slot beside the sign, and I dropped a quarter into it and felt Julia's arm under mine tug hard. As we turned to walk on, she whispered fiercely, "He is said to own an entire block of fine houses in Brooklyn!"
As though she owned it, Julia showed off to me an enormous block-long store between Ninth and Tenth on Broadway, called A.T. Stewart's, and we stopped so that I could stare. I knew about this store; I knew it was going to survive on into the 1950's as Wanamaker's, but I hadn't realized it was white marble. Stepping closer, I saw that it wasn't marble but cast-iron painted white. In the same block was something called Bunnel's Museum, thick with hand-painted signs: FAT WOMEN, SKELETON, MIDGET! ZULUS! DR. LYNN, THE VIVISECTIONIST! HE CUTS MEN UP! HE MAKES PEOPLE LAUGH! And opposite Stewart's, Jackson's Mourning Store, its windows filled with black clothing, men's, women's, and children's, and including silk hats banded with black crepe that hung down at the backs. A sign in the window said they were OFFERING REDUCED PRICES PREPARATORY TO TAKING STOCK, and I made a small joke about this being a good economical time to die, and Julia looked startled, then laughed as though it were a brand-new kind of joke to her, as maybe it was.
A shabby-looking man walking toward us had a cigar box full of little pellets of some kind, and he started to speak but Julia said no so sharply she cut him off, and we left him standing. He was selling "grease erasers," Julia said, to take spots out of clothes, and they didn't work; she'd bought one for a dime once and tried it. Another man was walking slowly toward us, the fingers of both hands flying. Up closer I saw that he had a little contraption in his hand, a needle threader, and he was threading and rethreading the same needle in endless demonstration. Pinned to both lapels were dozens more of them, and as he walked he said, "Ten cents, ten cents, ten cents," over and again. Not far behind him a Turk in red fez, red gold-trimmed vest, white knee breeches, and curled-up red slippers was selling tonka beans from a tray. Before he reached us, I'd turned suddenly aside, pulling Julia along; in a window before which half a dozen people stood staring, sat a baby—it couldn't have been more than two—suspended in some sort of PATENTED BABY-SWING, according to the signs pasted on the window and on placards behind it. It sat there apathetically, holding a rattle, a living window-display, and it occurred to me that it might be doped up with one of the laudanum preparations I'd seen advertised in Harper's.
But it was a fine and exciting Ladies' Mile, doped-up baby or not, and before we reached the end of it we passed several more old friends: I remember Revillon Frères just below Ninth Street, and W. & J. Sloane between Third and Bleecker. And we watched a lightning calculator with his blackboard, doing any kind of mathematical problem anyone called out to him, with really unbelievable speed. He was a marvel. A cigar box with a few coins in it was at his feet, and I dropped a quarter into it, wondering who he could possibly be—or had been.
At Bleecker Julia stepped to the curb beside a lamppost, out of the way of pedestrians, to point down past Houston to what she said was Prince Street, a couple of blocks off, and a new brick building on the northwest corner. That was Rogers Peet, she said; she'd leave me here to go on back and do her shopping. I wasn't sure whether to shake hands with her or not, but I did, and she gave me her hand. I said, "Julia, it's been one of the best times I ever had in my life."
She smiled at what seemed like an enormous exaggeration, and said she'd enjoyed it, too, smiling beautifully. Something about the moment, a deceptive intimacy, gave me a sudden courage and I said, "Julia, you can't possibly be seriously considering marrying Jake."
She stared. "And why not?"
She seemed genuinely puzzled, yet I couldn't believe in it. "Why ... he's far too old for you. And too fat, too homely. And just too all around ridiculous, Julia!"
After a long pause she said, "It is you who are ridiculous. He is a fine figure of a man. Far from too old. And he will be an excellent provider." She reached out, put a hand on my arm, and smiled. "A woman must consider these things, you goose. Better to be practical than a spinster." She turned quickly and walked off, up Broadway.
I stood watching her: Except for a goodbye later today with whatever excuse I invented, this was the last time I'd see her. Once I'd have thought a girl actually wearing a bustle would look foolish to me, but Julia didn't; she looked graceful, she looked absolutely fine, and I realized that the clothes of all the people passing steadily by, even the shiny silk hats, already looked natural to me.
Up ahead Julia was almost lost; there was a final flash of her purple skirt, then she was gone completely, beyond the intervening pedestrians, and I walked on.
It was a dozen blocks or so to City Hall Park, and I walked, but still I arrived much too early. A little wind had come up, and it was too cold to sit in the park and wait; I couldn't risk Pickering's seeing me waiting here anyway; I'd have to move on. But for a few moments I stood beside the little park looking across it at City Hall and at the Court House behind it, marveling at how very much they looked as I remembered them. As well as I could recall, the entire park looked just as it did in my own time, and I brought out my sketch pad, stepped into the park, and sketched it for reference: City Hall and the Court House, the paths, benches, and winter trees. I stood looking at my sketch for a moment, and it could have been done in the latter half of the twentieth century.
But now I sketched in a few hurrying pedestrians, and then some of the traffic: a carriage, a waiting hack-line of two-wheeled hansoms at the Broadway corner, an enormous green-an
d-yellow mail truck pulled by four horses on its way to the post office. I looked across the park at Centre Street, and stood remembering how it looked whenever it had been that I'd seen it last—how it was going to look, that is; how the traffic there now would be driven from the streets by the automobile that would follow it. And I sketched that into my scene, too: the automobiles, the enormous diesel buses, the huge trucks that were going to choke this and every other New York street; and I faced them all the same way as though they were not only following but driving the horse-drawn traffic off the scene.
I walked on; this was the business and office section of lower Broadway, the area Kate and I had been in, and I crossed the street and walked on along the west wall of the huge, absurd-looking main post office, remembering to look up at the enormous pennant reading POST OFFICE fluttering very stiffly, just now, from a cupola. Just ahead to the south on the other side of Ann Street, I noticed that everyone passing glanced into what looked like a seven-foot-high, extremely narrow sentry box with a gabled roof. It stood at the curb in front of a drugstore in the Herald Building called Hudnut's Pharmacy, and when I passed it I looked in, too. Inside it hung a tremendous thermometer, the biggest I've ever seen, sheltered in the hut from the wind. The temperature was 19 degrees, and I was pleased to know the exact temperature, a lot more interested in the weather somehow than I remembered ever being before.
