The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  “I have made a discovery in one of these concert halls,” said the stranger, as we retraced our way. “It is an old gray-haired woman, who occupies proudly the position of chief pianist. I like to go and sit and wonder by what mighty process of fighting and drinking she achieved her position. To see her, you would think she was leading an orchestra of seventy pieces, although she alone composes it. It is great reflection to watch that gray head. At those moments I am willing to concede that I must be relatively happy, and that is a great admission from a philosopher of my attainments.

  “How seriously all these men out in front of the dens take their vocations. They regard people with a voracious air, as if they contemplated any moment making a rush and a grab and mercilessly compelling a great expenditure. This scant and feeble crowd must madden them. When I first came to this part of the town I was astonished and delighted, for it was the nearest approach to a den of wolves that I had encountered since leaving the West. Oh, no, of course the Coney Island of today is not the Coney Island of the ancient days. I believe you were about to impale me upon that sentence, were you not?”

  We walked along for some time in silence until the stranger went to buy a frankfurter. As he returned, he said: “When a man is respectable he is fettered to certain wheels, and when the chariot of fashion moves, he is dragged along at the rear. For his agony, he can console himself with the law that if a certain thing has not yet been respectable, he need only wait a sufficient time and it will eventually be so. The only disadvantage is that he is obliged to wait until other people wish to do it, and he is likely to lose his own craving. Now I have a great passion for eating frankfurters on the street, and if I were respectable I would be obliged to wait until the year 3365 when men will be able to hold their positions in society only by consuming immense quantities of frankfurters on the street. And by that time I would have undoubtedly developed some new pastime. But I am not respectable. I am a philosopher. I eat frankfurters on the street with the same equanimity that you might employ toward a cigarette.

  “See those three young men enjoying themselves. With what rakish, daredevil airs they smoke those cigars. Do you know, the spectacle of three modern young men enjoying themselves is something that I find vastly interesting and instructive. I see revealed more clearly the purpose of the inexorable universe which plans to amuse us occasionally to keep us from the rebellion of suicide. And I see how simply and drolly it accomplishes its end. The insertion of a mild quantity of the egotism of sin into the minds of these young men causes them to wildly enjoy themselves. It is necessary to encourage them, you see, at this early day. After all, it is only great philosophers who have the wisdom to be utterly miserable.”

  As we walked toward the station the stranger stopped often to observe types which interested him. He did it with an unconscious calm insolence as if the people were bugs. Once a bug threatened to beat him. “What ’cher lookin’ at?” he asked of him. “My friend,” said the stranger. “If any one displays real interest in you in this world, you should take it as an occasion for serious study and reflection. You should be supremely amazed to find that a man can be interested in anybody but himself!” The belligerent seemed quite abashed. He explained to a friend: “He ain’t right! What? I dunno. Something ’bout ‘study’ er something. He’s got wheels in his head!”

  On the train the cold night wind blew transversely across the reeling cars, and in the dim light of the lamps one could see the close rows of heads swaying and jolting with the motion. From directly in front of us peanut shells fell to the floor amid a regular and interminable crackling. A stout man, who slept with his head forward upon his breast, crunched them often beneath his uneasy feet. From some unknown place a drunken voice was raised in song.

  “This return of the people to their battles always has a stupendous effect upon me,” said the stranger. “The gayety which arises upon these Sunday night occasions is different from all other gayeties. There is an unspeakable air of recklessness and bravado and grief about it. This train-load is going toward that inevitable, overhanging, devastating Monday. That singer there tomorrow will be a truckman, perhaps, and swearing ingeniously at his horses and other truckmen. He feels the approach of this implacable Monday. Two hours ago he was engulfed in whirligigs and beer and had forgotten that there were Mondays. Now he is confronting it, and as he can’t battle it, he scorns it. You can hear the undercurrent of it in that song, which is really as grievous as the cry of a child, If he had no vanity—well, it is fortunate for the world that we are not all great thinkers.”

  We sat on the lower deck of the Bay Ridge boat and watched the marvelous lights of New York looming through the purple mist. The little Italian band situated up one stairway, through two doors and around three corners from us, sounded in beautiful, faint and slumberous rhythm. The breeze fluttered again in the stranger’s locks. We could hear the splash of the waves against the bow. The sleepy lights looked at us with hue of red and green and orange. Overhead some dust-colored clouds scudded across the deep indigo sky. “Thunderation,” said the stranger, “if I did not know of so many yesterdays and have such full knowledge of tomorrows, I should be perfectly happy at this moment, and that would create a sensation among philosophers all over the world.”

  October 14, 1894

  [New York Press, part 5, p. 2.]

  IN A PARK ROW RESTAURANT

  “Whenever I come into a place of this sort, I am reminded of the battle of Gettysburg,” remarked the stranger. To make me hear him he had to raise his voice considerably, for we were seated in one of the Park Row restaurants during the noon hour rush. “I think that if a squadron of Napoleon’s dragoons charged into this place they would be trampled under foot before they could get a biscuit. They were great soldiers, no doubt, but they would at once perceive that there were many things about sweep and dash and fire of war of which they were totally ignorant.

  “I come in here for the excitement. You know, when I was Sheriff, long ago, of one of the gayest counties of Nevada, I lived a life that was full of thrills, for the citizens could not quite comprehend the uses of a sheriff, and did not like to see him busy himself in other people’s affairs continually. One man originated a popular philosophy, in which he asserted that if a man required pastime, it was really better to shoot the sheriff than any other person, for then it would be quite impossible for the sheriff to organize a posse and pursue the assassin. The period which followed the promulgation of this theory gave me habits which I fear I can never outwear. I require fever and exhilaration in life, and when I come in here it carries me back to the old days.”

  I was obliged to put my head far forward, or I could never have heard the stranger’s remarks. Crowds of men were swarming in from streets and invading the comfort of seated men in order that they might hang their hats and overcoats upon the long rows of hooks that lined the sides of the room. The finding of vacant chairs became a serious business. Men dashed to and fro in swift searches. Some of those already seated were eating with terrible speed, or else casting impatient or tempestuous glances at the waiters.

  Meanwhile the waiters dashed about the room as if a monster pursued them, and they sought escape wildly through the walls. It was like the scattering and scampering of a lot of water bugs, when one splashes the surface of the brook with a pebble. Withal, they carried incredible masses of dishes and threaded their swift ways with rare skill. Perspiration stood upon their foreheads, and their breaths came strainedly. They served customers with such speed and violence that it often resembled a personal assault. The crumbs from the previous diner were swept off with one fierce motion of a napkin. A waiter struck two blows at the table and left there a knife and a fork. And then came the viands in a volley, thumped down in haste, causing men to look sharp to see if their trousers were safe.

  There was in the air an endless clatter of dishes, loud and bewilderingly rapid, like the gallop of a thousand horses. From afar back, at the places of communication to the kitchen, th
ere came the sound of a continual roaring altercation, hoarse and vehement, like the cries of the officers of a regiment under attack. A mist of steam fluttered where the waiters crowded and jostled about the huge copper coffee urns. Over in one corner a man who toiled there like a foundryman was continually assailed by sharp cries. “Brown th’ wheat!” An endless string of men were already filing past the cashier, and, even in these moments, this latter was a marvel of self-possession and deftness. As the spring doors clashed to and fro, one heard the interminable thunder of the street, and through the window, partially obscured by displayed vegetables and roasts and pies, could be seen the great avenue, a picture in gray tones, save where a bit of green park gleamed, the foreground occupied by this great typical turmoil of car and cab, truck and mail van, wedging their way through an opposing army of the same kind and surrounded on all sides by the mobs of hurrying people.

  “A man might come in here with a very creditable stomach and lose his head and get indigestion,” resumed the stranger, thoughtfully. “It is astonishing how fast a man can eat when he tries. This air is surcharged with appetites. I have seen very orderly, slow-moving men become possessed with the spirit of this rush, lose control of themselves and all at once begin to dine like madmen. It is impossible not to feel the effect of this impetuous atmosphere.

  “When consommé grows popular in these places all breweries will have to begin turning out soups. I am reminded of the introduction of canned soup into my town in the West. When the boys found that they could not get full on it they wanted to lynch the proprietor of the supply store for selling an inferior article, but a drummer who happened to be in town explained to them that it was a temperance drink.

  “It is plain that if the waiters here could only be put upon a raised platform and provided with repeating rifles that would shoot corn muffins, butter cakes, Irish stews or any delicacy of the season, the strain of this strife would be greatly lessened. As long as the waiters were competent marksmen the meals here would be conducted with great expedition. The only difficulty would be when, for instance, a waiter made an error and gave an Irish stew to the wrong man. The latter would have considerable difficulty in passing it along to the right one. Of course the system would cause awkward blunders for a time. You can imagine an important gentleman in a white waistcoat getting up to procure the bill of fare from an adjacent table and by chance intercepting a hamburger steak bound for a man down by the door. The man down by the door would refuse to pay for a steak that had never come into his possession.

  “In some such manner thousands of people could be accommodated in restaurants that at present during the noon hour can feed only a few hundred. Of course eloquent pickets would have to be stationed in the distance to intercept any unsuspecting gentlemen from the West who might consider the gunnery of the waiters in a personal way and resent what would look to them like an assault. I remember that my old friend Jim Wilkinson, the ex-sheriff of Tin Can, Nevada, got very drunk one night and wandered into the business end of the bowling alley there. Of course he thought that they were shooting at him, and in reply he killed three of the best bowlers in Tin Can.”

  October 28, 1894

  [New York Press, part 5, p. 3.]

  STORIES TOLD BY AN ARTIST

  A TALE ABOUT HOW “GREAT GRIEF” GOT HIS HOLIDAY DINNER

  [Great Grief’s Holiday Dinner]

  Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a cupboard.

  “There are only two eggs and a half of a loaf of bread left,” he announced brutally.

  “Heavens!” said Warwickson, from where he lay smoking on the bed. He spoke in his usual dismal voice. By it he had earned his popular name of Great Grief.

  Wrinkles was a thrifty soul. A sight of an almost bare cupboard maddened him. Even when he was not hungry, the ghosts of his careful ancestors caused him to rebel against it. He sat down with a virtuous air. “Well, what are we going to do?” he demanded of the others. It is good to be the thrifty man in a crowd of unsuccessful artists, for then you can keep the others from starving peacefully. “What are we going to do?”

  “Oh, shut up, Wrinkles,” said Grief from the bed. “You make me think.”

  Little Pennoyer, with head bent afar down, had been busily scratching away at a pen and ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter his plaintive optimism.

  “The Monthly Amazement may pay me tomorrow. They ought to. I’ve waited over three months now. I’m going down there tomorrow, and perhaps I’ll get it.”

  His friends listened to him tolerantly, but at last Wrinkles could not omit a scornful giggle. He was such an old man, almost twenty-eight, and he had seen so many little boys be brave. “Oh, no doubt, Penny, old man.” Over on the bed, Grief croaked deep down in his throat Nothing was said for a long time thereafter.

  The crash of the New York streets came faintly. Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of this begrimed building that squatted, slumbering and aged, between two exalted commercial structures that would have had to bend afar down to perceive it. The light snow beat pattering into the window corners, and made vague and gray the vista of chimneys and roofs. Often, the wind scurried swiftly and raised a long cry.

  Great Grief leaned upon his elbow. “See to the fire, will you, Wrinkles?”

  Wrinkles pulled the coal box out from under the bed and threw open the stove door preparatory to shoveling some fuel. A red glare plunged at the first faint shadows of dusk. Little Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. “It’s too dark to work.” He lit his pipe and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose labor was valuable.

  When dusk came it saddened these youths. The solemnity of darkness always caused them to ponder. “Light the gas, Wrinkles,” said Grief.

  The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with scratches, the tousled bed in one corner, the mass of boxes and trunks in another, the little fierce stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover, there were some wine-colored draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf, high up, there was a plaster cast dark with dust in the creases. A long stovepipe wandered off in the wrong direction, and then twined impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some extensive cobwebs on the ceiling.

  “Well, let’s eat,” said Grief.

  Later, there came a sad knock at the door. Wrinkles, arranging a tin pail on the stove; little Pennoyer busy at slicing the bread; and Great Grief, affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled: “Come in!”

  The door opened and Corinson entered dejectedly. His overcoat was very new. Wrinkles flashed an envious glance at it, but almost immediately he cried: “Hello, Corrie, old boy!”

  Corinson sat down and felt around among the pipes until he found a good one. Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was balanced on a trunk, and then the gas stove was balanced on the chair. Coffee making was a feat.

  “Well,” said Grief, with his back turned, “how goes it, Corrie? How’s Art, hey?” He fastened a terrible emphasis upon the word.

  “Crayon portraits,” said Corinson.

  “What?” They turned towards him with one movement, as if from a lever connection. Little Pennoyer dropped his knife.

  “Crayon portraits,” repeated Corinson. He smoked away in profound cynicism. “Fifteen dollars a week or more, this time of year, you know.” He smiled at them like a man of courage.

  Little Pennoyer picked up his knife again. “Well, I’ll be blowed,” said Wrinkles. Feeling it incumbent upon him to think, he dropped into a chair and began to play serenades on his guitar and watch to see when the water for the eggs would boil. It was a habitual pose.

  Great Grief, however, seemed to observe something bitter in the affair. “When did you discover that you couldn’t draw?” he said stiffly.

  “I haven’t discovered
it yet,” replied Corinson, with a serene air. “I merely discovered that I would rather eat.”

  “Oh!” said Grief.

  “Hand me the eggs, Grief,” said Wrinkles. “The water’s boiling.”

  Little Pennoyer burst into the conversation. “We’d ask you to dinner, Corrie, but there’s only three of us and there’s two eggs. I dropped a piece of bread on the floor, too. I’m shy one.”

  “That’s all right, Penny,” said the other; “don’t trouble yourself. You artists should never be hospitable. I’m going, anyway. I’ve got to make a call. Well, good night, boys. I’ve got to make a call. Drop in and see me.”

  When the door closed upon him, Grief said: “The coffee’s done. I hate that fellow. That overcoat cost thirty dollars, if it cost a red. His egotism is so tranquil. It isn’t like yours, Wrinkles. He—”

  The door opened again and Corinson thrust in his head. “Say, you fellows, you know it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow.”

  “Well, what of it?” demanded Grief.

  Little Pennoyer said: “Yes, I know it is, Corrie, I thought of it this morning.”

  “Well, come out and have a table d’hote with me tomorrow night. I’ll blow you off in good style.”

  While Wrinkles played an exuberant air on his guitar, little Pennoyer did part of a ballet. They cried ecstatically: “Will we? Well, I guess yes!”