For about two miles up Broadway, the rattle of omnibuses, express-wagons, drays, furniture-cars, buggies, barouches, cabriolets, etc., was really bewildering. As I looked upon the busy streams of men that hurried along the sidewalks—their faces all strange to me, yet no two alike—and saw the rumbling carriages, all crowding forward as though life depended on their speed, I could not help thinking of this stanza in Byron’s Childe Harold:
“But ’midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel and to possess, And roam along the world’s tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendor, shrinking from distress! None that with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less, Of all that flattered, followed, sought or sued, This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!”
Every one who has had any experience in the matter, must have observed that a person is more lonely in a crowded city, where he is unacquainted, than in the depths of the forest where no human being is seen.
As I had no money to throw away, I stayed at a modest hotel in Park Row, where one could live on less than twenty-five dollars a day. I shall never forget a brief acquaintance I made there. The first evening I stayed in New York, I was seated in the hotel trying to make up my mind whether to go to the theater or not, when I observed, sitting near me, a sedate gentleman of prepossessing exterior, fifty or sixty years old, and dressed in plain clothes and a broad-brimmed silk hat, of a grave and dignified appearance. I could not help fancying that he was at least an ex-governor, or something of the sort; and I felt somewhat flattered when he moved his chair closer to mine, with the obvious intention of addressing me. He opened his mouth to speak, and I nerved myself to reply with respectful dignity, when he said, in a low tone:
The man was a “dead beat.” I resolved never to place much reliance on appearances again.
Having made up my mind to go to the theater and see John E. Owens play “Solon Shingle,” I walked out. At the door I met a solitary boot-black, who greeted me with, “black ’em?”
“You may black _it_,” I replied, “for you see I have only one to black.”