The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1879-03-31
street os.truetiens-Publie Patience.

| OF the parts OF n commercial city the shops
and warehouses are for the traffic OF the
great merchant Or the small chapman. 1t is
there they buy and sell; the streets, be-
| tween the curbstones, are for the movement
to and fro Of wheeled vehicles, and that
part of the streets on either side known as
the sidewalk is for the convenience OF the
unprotected foot passenger, who is COM
monty not shod SO heavily as the horses
and is tenderer than the heavily tired
wheels. We do not refer to this division OF
uses in the way Of news, nor mention it as
information; for though it may often be
thought doubtful whether it is commonly
known what the streets are for, yet it would
perhaps be found upon analysis that these
conceptions of streets and shops are the
elements of everybody's idea OF n city.
But nobody expects to find the absolute
in ordinary life. AS in the pretty picture
of Theocritus the timidity or effrontery OF
the girls is said to constantly ''move the
landmarks of loves boundaries" so we
know that the demands of an exuberant
traffic, the stupendous dignity of the car
man who drives four horses, and the good
nature of the foot passenger, happy enough
if he can save his favorite corn from the
danger of the impending hoof-all these
make movable. variable and evanescent
the delicate lines that divide the rights,
privileges, immunities and franchises Of
shopkeepers, dry goods jobbers, four-horse
truckmen and the mere foot passenger with
his bundles and ''his sisters and his
cousins and his aunts," not to mention his
babies.
Within certain limits we believe the foot
passenger to be o reasonable creature and
not sorry to see those signs Of good times to
which he is so much called upon to sacrifice
his personal convenience. He, perhaps,
loves that hustle of the streets which seems
musical as the jingle of money rapidly NOV
ing from hand to hand, which fills the faces
of shopkeepers with glee and fills all the
manufactures with that returning industry
which will inspire strike in ten or fifteen
days. Nay. we have known the loot pas
senger to rejoice when, with Washington
street so jammed with great loads of mer-
chandise on its way to be shipped, and with
the jam immovable for q mile, the carmen
have had no other resource than to reflect
unpleasantiy on the character oftheir ances-
tors respectively and pound one anothers
heads with cart rungs.
Clearly, therefore, the foot passenger
loves busy times and loves to see the signs
of it in the street, and as to his own rights
and conveniences is disposed to make lib
eral allowances in favor of commerce, and
his patience in this city is and always has
been such that he permits the issue on his
rights TO 60 against him by prescription !;
he loses oil for the want of occasional vigor-
Gus assertion. He will stay away from the
neighborhood of market for five years
rather than incommode the energetic squat
tiers who have INSTRUCTED to the last pos.
sible limit all access to that scene of bois-
ferrous gayety; he will climb over
pyramids Of dry goods boxes three hundred
and thirteen days in the year, and never
once demand that the owner shall remove
them; he will wade out into the middle
of the street, with the mud knee deep,
rather than disturb the equanimity of the
row, are backed up across the sidewalk
and close against the houses for the con-
venience of loading and unloading, and he
will climb over miles of skids as if life were
all one continuous gymnasium. He will
do this; and often, we believe, he would not
hang these truckmen, all on one lamppost,
even if he had the power. Such is his
L:
commercial interests of the metropolis.
Certainly the skid nuisance is the great.
est single annoyance that the citizen en-
counters in the street. BY making q
doorway the merchant for his imm ediate
convenience deprives the whole public, for
hours together every day, of the use of the
sidewalk, which he has no right to do. He
constitutes himself the sole owner and &C.
cupant of the part of the city in which his
establishment happens to be situated. He
confiscates the sidewalk; he fences it in.
From his shop door the line of the skid
bars the way to the carttail, and the cart
and the horse fill out the line to the iron
grooves down which the horse car comes
laundering just at the critical moment
when q timid woman venturously endeavors
to round the perilous promontory of the
horses head. Has the average merchant
the right to this exclusive use of the whole
of the street in his neighborhood during
ten hours OF daylight? We do not believe
he has. And if he has not, in
s~hat indescribable spirit Of impudence
did this usage originate, and why should it
not be abated? One famous grocer in the
city, whose establishment fronts on three
streets, occupies the sidewalk all around
him, to the actual exclusion of any possible
foot passenger; yet he would be the first at
any time to head an indignation meeting of
the citizens for the forcible removal of all