USA > New York > New York City > History of New York city from the discovery to the present day, V. 2 > Part 26
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In the rear of the eastern corner of the basement of the Exchange was located the celebrated lunch-room of Charley King. How his restaurant would compare with the more pretentious ones of modern date we will not assert; but for hearty good-will, substantial fare, high respectability, and unquestioned manners, the proprietors of this now almost forgotten lunch- room have not, since its destruction, been surpassed. In the basement corner of Wall and Hanover Streets James Buchanan, British consul, and David Hale. printed a paper with the happily selected name of Journal of Commerce. It was at the commencement an unpretending sheet, and from the fact that it was semi-religious in its tone, and refused advertisements for the sale of liquors. was assumed to be a "temperance sheet." Among the well-known characters then living in New York was one "Jolinny Edwards, scale-beam maker." He lived " up town," in the vicinity of what is now known as Fourth Street and Second Avenue. He was a man of the most harinless eccentricity, dressing . himself in a Quaker garb, and riding about in a rickety old gig. He used
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APPENDIX IV.
sometimes to come down to Wall Street in business hours, and, taking advan- tage of the crowd in front of the Exchange, would proceed to harangue the "thoughtless generation" on the virtues of his patent scale beams, and the necessities of temperance. As he clinched his argument regarding temperance with the distribution of tracts, he took great umbrage at the assumptions of the Journal of Commerce, pronouncing it a rival sheet on the great subject of temperance. The crowd enjoyed these interruptions of the usual routine of the street, to the great annoyance of David Hale, who considered the whole thing an undignified travesty on his gravely attempted efforts to bring about a moral reform.
Even at this dawning era the spirit of New York was unambitious, and the people, with few exceptions, were evidently unconscious of the changes in its character which were impending. One mail delivery a day was all the mer- chants demanded. The newspapers were rarely excited about the receipt of their exchanges. The hurry and bustle and anxiety which now pervades Wall Street were totally unknown. Groups were constantly in and about the Exchange conversing upon trivial matters; the merry, hearty laugh was heard time and again through the day, expressing admiration of harmless jokes uttered by persons at the time enjoying the hospitality of Charley King's lunch ; while the clerks, less able to pay, made merry at Billy Niblo's, or Clark and Brown's, where for a sixpence they commanded a plentiful dish of Fulton Market beef, and trimmings to match ; and, if extravagantly in- clined, they would pay another sixpence for a cup of coffee and a cruller, to make the equal of which has ceased to be possible outside of the "kitchen- houses " belonging to our old population.
The Exchange had a narrow front on the street, and ran through to Gar- den. The entrance to the basement was under a circular opening, which was made of the arch which supported the steps that led up to the rotunda. The post-office was established in the rear eastern half of the basement, where it had ample room and much to spare. Two delivery windows were established, and three thousand boxes for the accommodation of the merchants; and so seemingly enormous had now become the business that twenty-two clerks were employed, and twenty-two letter-carriers, whose routes now reached up as high as Houston and Ninth, now Fourth Street. Now for the first time was found a demand for the assignment of a clerk wholly to a special duty, and " little Sam Gouverneur" was appointed to the exclusive care of the money department, and dignified with the title of " cashier."
To facilitate the arrival and departure of the mails, and give light to that part of the basement occupied by the post-office, what is now known as Hanover Street (which had, thirty years previously, been used by foot passen- gers as a short-cut to Hanover Square) was cleared out and made a street, and a small court on this side of the Exchange conveniently opened itself for the accommodation of the wagons and other vehicles employed by the post-office.
General Bailey, who had been an acceptable and honored postmaster almost s . aarter of a century, full of years and honors, on the 4th of September, 1828, passed away. The veterans of the Revolution, as they now began to be called, State and city soldiery, the various civic societies, and representatives of the army and navy, vied with each other in paying to his memory every possible respect. General Jackson, in compliment to ex-President Monroe, who was
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then living, appointed his son-in-law, Samuel L. Gouverneur, to succeed General Bailey. With this event the old-times' history of the post-office of New York may be said to have passed away. * * * * * * *
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The windows of the post-office for the distribution of letters and the sellia .. of stamps " in sums less than one dollar," are interesting places to study the cosmopolitan character of our busy population. It is not uncommon to witness people of every nationality " in line," waiting for their turn to inquire for cor. respondence. The ladies' window is especially a center of observation ; and the appearance of the sex dressed in gay colors and wreathed in smiles lightens up the otherwise care-worn, pell-mell, rushing, and sombre-looking crowd. Here the " young lady of the period" contrasts with the old crone whose undutiful son is " off' at sea." The widow in her weeds throws sly glances at the dashing clerk ; her hopefulness of the future contrasting strongly with the face of the suffering wife, who, sad and discontented, turns abruptly away because her absent spouse " had failed to write."
During the rebellion the post-office clerks, by virtue of their duties, were often made unwilling participants in many sad scenes and associations. There was a terrible significance in the hymn or prayer-book returned "from the front," often saturated with blood or marred by the bullet. Then there were the packets of unclaimed letters, dictated by loving, patriotic hearts, returned to the mother, wife, or sweetheart of the soldier, bearing the formal but terri- ble indorsement of the adjutant of the regiment, of " William Brown, killed in battle." It was often almost like stabbing the recipients to the heart to hand them such a fatal gift, and the look of unutterable anguish that sometimes fol- lowed haunted the day musings and midnight dreams of the sympathizing official. But there sometimes, nay, often, came a letter that conveyed to wife and family a respite to agonizing suspense, and then the old post-office was for the moment bright, and the dangers of war for an instant were forgotten. Les- sons of human nature are taught at the delivery window of a post-office in the classified peculiarities of the universal patrons of the " republic of letters." among which are developed the common facts, that "clergymen, as a class, and women, universally, are the most difficult to please !" Certainly they seem to complain the most.
Romantic incidents are not unusual in the history of specific mails. When the Japanese empire was opened to the outside world, the first mail from that legendary country was sent to New York in a sailing vessel via San Francisco, Panama, and Aspinwall. By a coincidence a mail from China cie England arrived at the post-office simultaneously, and the written ideas and wishes of these two Oriental nations for the moment reposed side by side. In their route of destination they separated, and made the circuit of the world, to meet again in our great Western city of " mushroom barbarians." But speculation is brief in the post-office when work is to be done; the words, " Who separates ?" are heard, the " travelers " are " broken up," and, piecemeal, sent to their various destinations. Some years since a steamer running between Liverpool and Que- bec was involved in a terrible storm that swept over the mouth of the St. Law- rence. The stanch ship was lost, and all living creatures on board perished. Two months afterward the divers, among other things, recovered from the . wreck the New York city mail, and it was promptly forwarded to its place of
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APPENDIX IV.
destination. When opened the contents were found comparatively safe ; the letters were carefully dried and duly distributed; and these frail, delicate, paper memorials of thought remained intact, while the iron-ribbed ship and the brave men who commanded her still repose in their ocean grave. * *
The discipline and efficiency of the city post is shown in the reminiscence that, twenty years ago, before there was a postal treaty with England, people in that country, according to their caprice, indorsed on the outside of their letters by what line of steamers they desired them to be sent. By some acci- dent neither of the two composing the American line crossed from England in six months! The consequence was an extraordinary accumulation of letters indorsed " by American steamer ;" and when the Washington did reach this port, having " broken her shaft, and been frozen up in the harbor of Bremen," she liad a six months' mail on board. This enormous collection of letters was taken to the post-office, and the clerks, without neglecting their daily routine duties and working "overtime," distributed this accumulation in ten days ! The same number of letters, without interfering with the daily business of the office, would now be distributed in one hour ! Instead of there being as formerly only a few straggling letters, two hundred and fifty thousand postage stamps are, on an average, daily canceled, and that is a representation of the number of domestic letters delivered at the post-office every twenty-four hours. It costs the government sixty thousand dollars annually for cartage to haul this vast amount of mail matter to the stations and railway lines .* One
* As a post-office and a railroad depot are naturally connected-the one distributing the mails and the other conveying them-the following account of the GRAND CENTRAL DEPOT, which was referred to in Chapter XIV., Part III., as having been opened to the public in 1871, is in point. The Grand Central Depot on Forty-second Street and Fourth Avenue serves as a central depot for the Hudson River. Harlem, and New Haven Railroads. Without much pretension to architectural elegance. it is commodious and well adapted to the pur- poses for which it was designed, and perhaps we ought not to ask much more from & rail- road depot.
The building was projected by Commodore VANDERBILT, and constructed under the supervision of Mr. W. H. VANDERBILT. Ground was broken November 15th. 1869, and the depot was ready for occupation October 9th. 1871. The entire building is 695 feet long and 240 feet wide; the space for the accommodation of trains is 610 feet by 200, the rest of the building being devoted to offices, waiting-rooms, etc. The height of the main body of the depot, from the ground to the top of the roof. is 100 feet. while that of the central tower on Forty-second Street is 160 feet to the apex of the roof, and 200 feet to the top of the flag-staff. The roof of the main body of the structure-the car-house, as it is called-is supported by thirty-one immense and strong iron trusses, each weighing about forty tons. As it would have been extremely difficult to raise such huge masses at once, each truss was lifted to its position in sections by derricks mounted on a movable staging. Abont eight million pounds of iron were used in the construction of the depot. ten million bricks, and 20,000 barrels of cement. There are 80,000 feet of glass in the roof, by which the whole building is abundantly lighted during the daytime, while at night it is brilliantly illuminated by means of the electrical light.
That part of the building which fronts on Forty-second Street is to be occupied by the - N York and New Haven Railroad : that on Central Avenue by the Hudson River and .arlem roads. To accommodate the immense number of passengers arriving and departing by these roads there are thirty-one entrances to the building, and the waiting-rooms are all that could be desired for comfort and convenience. The building is heated by steam. Circulated through every part of it by about 75.000 feet of pipe. The union of the three depots, by which these railroads have a common terminus in this city, will be of great advan- tage to the traveling public .- Nute by the Author.
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APPENDIX IV.
comparative statement more: The city of New York is divided into twelve postal stations, each one having its distinct officer and clerks. Station .1, situated in the heart of New York, does a larger business than either of the cities of Buffalo, New Haven, Hartford, Hudson, or Troy. Such is the epitom- ized history, illustrated by the post-office, of the growth and prosperity of the city of New York.
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APPENDIX
REMINISCENCES OF McDONALD CLARKE,.
THE MAD POET.
" A WRITER in the New York Evening Post, for June 2d, 1868, says :
My reminiscences, going back some forty years, include that somewhat noted character McDonald Clarke, a poetic scintillator of somewhat odd fancies, who kept the town laughing while he sometimes was starving.
His poetic figure is before ine as I saw it in Broadway. There he stood near St. Paul's-his pedestal the curbstone, his pose and style the favorite attitude of the classic Napoleon, with arms folded. Yet his head rested not upon his bosom, but was lifted to the stars; on his feet were no two boots or shoes, but one boot and one shoe. This eccentricity, more than the character of his verses, caused his soubriquet of " The Mad Poet."
Now, why McDonald favored this oneness of articles generally duplex was quite the talk of the town, as much so as the curtailment of the tail of the cur of Alcibiades in the days of the ancient Greeks. Alcibiades gave a reason. McDonald never did, at least so far as I have heard. There were mystery. symbol, poetry, humanity, many social problems in that one boot and one shoe. The boys kicked all these to the winds, and said McDonald was "cracked." The boot might have been cracked and so might the shoe, but a more whole-souled fellow than McDonald I never knew.
I have some of his verses with which he bespangled the newspapers of the time. There have been some poets who wrote for the million, but I am con- fident McDonald never obtained half the sum. His topics covered all creation, and he was somewhat in the clothes-line. One of his invocations te a heroic purchaser to deal with a tailor proclaims that, when he is fitted :
" His royal Spanish cloak he'll fling In the face of the stormy weather."
Another much admired couplet a little hangs upon the clothes-line, but reaches the dignity of a majestic personification. He is walking on the Battery
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APPENDIX V.
and somewhat mixing up the stars with tailors, as poets are apt to do. He breaks out into this splendid conception :
"Twilight has drawn her mantle round, And pinned it with a silver star."
A Bohemian of the present day would run things into the ground, by rudely stating that Madame Demorest made the mantle and Tiffany sold the star, but McDonald delicately calls the poem "Evening," and leaves the rest to the sympathetic imagination.
Years had rolled on, and I had not seen McDonald. I heard incidentally that he had married an actress, who led him peculiarly to feel that all the world was her stage, and he only a supernumerary.
This did not alter his benevolent views of human nature, nor of the most sacred of all ordinances. In the lecturing era he came out with a lecture on " Love and Matrimony," which captivated the oyster-house wits and critics of Gotham, who attended with their "ladye-loves " and gave him overflowing audiences.
When New York was exhausted, he turned his attention to Brooklyn. He secured Classical Hall, then the fashionable place for such exercises, and pla- carded and advertised extensively. The evening came, bright and pleasant, and there were three persons in the house, all told-two editors and the janitor -- all " dead-heads." I shall never forget the amazed look with which he sur- veyed the long lines of empty benches. This soon gave way, however, to the accustomed sunburst of his cheerful aspect, and he mounted the rostrum and pronounced his whole performance, stretching over the space of an hour, with good manner and emphasis. He came down at the close, saluted his three auditors, said some jocose things, but nothing of discouragement, and vanished, promising to see me next day. Of this famous lecture I recollect but one point. . He is declaiming against common ideas and false taste in regard to female beauty. Hear McDonald :
1 " There are some people (says he) who admire delicate little girls with jimpy waists, and infinitesimal feet which run in and out beneath their fur- belows like mice, but (here the lecturer became the impassioned orator) give me the girl with a waist like a cotton bag and a foot like a flounder."
He called to see me the next day, and for what purpose do you suppose ? It was to propose a repetition of the lecture. His hopeful and ebullient nature had found special reasons for his ill-success, which would be overcome on a second experiment. Before settling this point he drifted off-" By-the-by, how did you like the lecture ?" I praised its general tenor and salient points, but ventured to remark that I detected in certain passages a sad and monotonous undertone.
" Aye!" said he, "there it is, there it is! I thought so, I felt so. Now, Colonel, look here. There is no use trying to conceal it. I am, you know, a perfect child of nature. I always was so. Now you must have understood my situation. Look at it. I had come to Brooklyn expecting to see the house crowded from pit to dome !. What did I encounter ? Ye gods! I thought I was in the wrong place ; had got into the school-house after it was dismissed. But there were yourself, and A-, and B -- (pardon me, all dead-heads), and
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APPENDIX V.
having my gun ready loaded, I thought I would fire it off. But all the while running through the lecture was 'room-hire,' 'janitor,' 'bill-sticker,' 'no money,' and such like things, which took from it all force and spirit. But you must hear me again under better circumstances. I must act as I feel. Oh, Colonel, sometimes I feel-I feel-I feel (here he was searching for a simile and got it) like the eternal lightning, and at other times I feel like a farthing candle." Give to this antithesis the roar of a bull of Bashan and the attitude of Jove clutching the thunderbolt, dwindled to the gentlest whisper and the .posture of- a poor devil boring a hole through the floor with his fore-finger, and you have his graphic delineation.
He was dissuaded from a second experiment.
I am inclined to think it. was before this that he upset Johnny Lang and several others by a happy retort. Lang, in his New York Gazette, had alluded to him as " McDonald Clarke, that fellow with zigzag brains." The insulted poet rushed into the sanctum of Colonel Stone, of the Commercial Advertiser, blazing with fury.
" Do you see, Colonel," said he, " what Johnny Lang says of me ? He calls me a fellow with zigzag brains."
" Well, you are," said the Colonel. "That's a happy description !"
" Oh! that's very well for you to say," replied McDonald. "I'll take a joke from you. But Johnny Lang shall not destroy my well-earned reputation. Zigzag brains, forsooth! Zigzag brains-think of it, Colonel! I must have a chance to reply to him in your paper."
" How much space would you want ?" said the Colonel.
" I think I could use him up in a column and a half," said McDonald.
" A column and a half!" said the Colonel. "Stuff! you shall have no such space. I'll give you just four lines, and if that will answer fire away, but not a line more."
The poet, driven thus into a narrow corner, sat down and instantly perpe- petrated the following neat epigram-quite enough to immortalize him :
" I can tell Johnny Lang, in the way of a laugh, In reply to his rude and unmannerly scrawl,
That in my humble sense it is better by half,
To have brains that are zigzag than to have none at all."
"There, Colonel," said he, "let Johnny Lang put that in his pipe and smoke it."
The last time I met him was two or three years before his death, on the familiar curb-tone of Broadway. His face was still sunny and genial, but he was rubbing his arms and chest. I ventured to suggest rheumatism. " Oh, no," said he ; " I am very well. I sleep in an attic room in an old and very pictur- esque building, through the roof of which, that has considerably tumbled in, I can see the stars. This is delightful, but for the exceptions of showers and easy rains. Last night I got to sleep, and when I woke up I was thoroughly dre. ched. I have since felt these pains over me; but the water couldn't have done the damage. I think it couldn't. Do you think it could ?"
Simple child of nature. I left him rubbing his arms and laughing at the top of his bent. The next I heard of him he was dead, and dead of an injury which was more a shock to his sensitive moral nature than the rude blow or thrust of the hind who gave it was to his physical frame.
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APPEN DIX V.
Why is it that if any man is known to be " cracked," or subject to any illu- sion or weakness, all the rest of the world, rejoicing in their pride of reason, deliglit to impose upon liim by manifold cruel deceptions ?
McDonald Clarke had really a handsome face and person, as the fine engrav- ing by Peter Maverick from a picture by Inman clearly shows, and beginning life as a poet and lover of the human race, fell into the delusion of believing that one portion of that race-the gentler sex-was always disposed to fall in love with him. His life, therefore, was a series of adventures, in which it is pretty certain that the course of true love never did run smooth with him.
The wicked wags, those false friends who availed themselves of his weak- ness, persuaded him by many wiles and false lures, to believe that a lovely young lady on Broadway had fallen in love with him. The cross-gartering of Malvolio was nothing to the pranks they made him perform to win the notice of the high-born and proud lady. The plot culminated in an invitation (forged of course), to visit the young lady at her mansion. McDonald proceeded thither, kid-gloved, and dressed in two boots. The damsel, annoyed and fore- warned, had given directions to the servants, if he ever appeared, to thrust him from the door, which it is said was done rudely and contumeliously.
Then came the breaking-up and a Greenwood funeral. For a time an unmarked grave stood on the border of the Sylvan Water. Over this was soon placed a tonib, surrounded by an iron railing, supplied by the gifts of friends. On one of the entablatures are the sentences : "Poor McDonald Clarke "- " Let silence gaze, but curse not his grave ;" while his fine face in bas relief, on another, makes love to his beautiful neighbor, the Indian Princess Do- humme, who occupies the adjoining mound. Another of his verses is also fitly carved on his tomb :
"For what are earthly honors now ? He never deemed them worth his care, And Death hath set upon his brow The wreath he was too proud to wear."
MUSINGS AT THE HOUSE OF A FRIEND
In the midst of my troubles and pain I welcome this fav'rite retreat, Unmolested I here can attain A solitude quiet and sweet. No troublesome visitor calls, No modest inquirers perplex, No insolent gazers appall, - No official civilities vex.
'Tis no place for repining or sighis, No murmurings fall on the ear, Duty teaches the blessing to prize, Shed for others' misfortune the tear ;
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APPENDIX V.
Love, peace, and benevolence meet In union delightful and rare ; While religion provides them a sweet To mix in the cup of their care.
You may call this a fanciful dream, And say it exists not in life, You may tell me mortality's stream Is ever with concord at strife. But God, as if willing to show His blessing can quiet the stream, Has here made it peacefully flow, And experience has proved it no dream.
To Mrs. Stone-by Percival.
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APPENDIX VI.
WILLIAM KIDD, THE PIRATE OF
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ONE of the most terrible names in the juvenile literature of England and English America, during the last century and a half, has been that of William Kidd, the pirate. In the nursery legend, in story, and in song, his name has stood forth as the boldest and bloodiest of buccaneers. The terror of the ocean when abroad, the story said that he returned from his successive voyages to line our coasts with silver and gold, and to renew with the devil a league, cemented with the blood of victims shot down, whenever fresh returns of the precious metals were to be hidden. According to the superstitions of Connecti- cut and Long Island, it was owing to these bloody charms that honest money diggers have ever experienced so much difficulty in removing the buried treas- ures. Often, indeed, have the lids of the iron chests rung beneath the mattock of the stealthy midnight searcher for gold ; but the flashes of sulphurous fires, ble and red, and the saucer eyes and chattering teeth of legions of demons, have uniformly interposed to frighten the delvers from their posts, and pre- serve the treasures from their greedy clutches. But notwithstanding the har- rowing sensations connected with the name of Kidd, and his renown as a pirate, . he was but one of the last and most inconsiderable of that race of sea-robbers, who, during a long series of years in the seventeenth century, were the admira- tion of the world for their prowess, and its terror for their crimes.
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