New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-07-31
JOHNNY BOUQUETS WALKS.


SUMMER RAMBLES AND REFLECTIONS.
GLIMPsEs OF THE METROPOLIS IN INSTRUMENTATION
TRADEsPEoPLE AND SERVANTS PASS THE DULL
SEASON IN THE CITY-HIBERNIAN AND TEuToN-
&c COMPLIMENTS CoMPARED-THE TALE OF A
CITY wAIF AT THE sEAsIDE-EFFECTs OF IRON
PIERS AT SUMMER REsoRTs-soCIAL AND FINAN-
CIAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF
COMFY ISLAND HoTELs-AMERICAN AND EURO
PEAN PRICES-A POSSIBLE OPENING FOR
"NEw DEPARTURE IN HOTEL KEEPING
Midsummer in New-York invites observation.
Ones Broadway friends-the rope-walkers the
Blondins of life-have gone from the gaze The
poor and the enforced and the steady-going alone
remain in town. They claim Broadway for
their own and they walk along it in an unfamiliar
gait, not with gain-seeking, nervous stride and
eyes set straight ahead, during the rest of the
year, but almost melancholy or quito neighborly,
like villagers where the rush of enterprise
came.
PEEPS ROUND THE BLOCK.
Your butcher barber talks with you like
fellow-man, nor hastens his labor as il pressed by
the next customer He finds out something about
you, and you discover cool, bowery in him.
1t surprises you to find that he has q wife, and
pet baby, and that he keeps up with the news and
has thought little on government and philosophy.
If he be your green grocer, you observe for the
first time that he his horse and it occurs you
to ask what he makes of the horse in duh mid
summer. "Oh" he says, al shut up the shop now
ut noon, except on Saturdays, and after that hour
drive the family out in the Park. We go over
McComb's Dam Bridge, Harlem Bridge and pen
citrate the country. Sometimes we cross at Hunters
Point, and see the green parts of Long Island; go
to old Newtown, Flushing Jamaica, and eat
clans somewhere and come home in the cool of
night. The horse enjoys it as much as one of the
children
All this conversation sounds very queer from this
usually impersonal and meat-like man. and perhaps,
we find him to have been a being of imagination
and schooling once,-Quite like ourseves,-til want
OF specific trade tact or mechanism led him into
the broad road of green groceries, the easiest way
in and the hardest to quit. requiring little capital,
turning it rapidly giving good plain susten-
ance. unless by special impudence or address, one
"rases himself" out of small huckstering to be the
steward of some certain rich families which pay
attention to the prices, so there be no excuse to
complain of the quality Then the profits mount
up rapidly; one careless customer introduces
other and everything goes lovely till-hard times.
Then the head of the family begins to growl:
"What do we pay for these steaks Forty cents
Why, who is this fend of butcher, that is not pro-
ceeded agalnstY Madame, is it this way you SUPER
intend the domestic part of my establishment
Discharge your butcher ask him If he does not
want to buy out our dwelling~
Then the green grocer says he bows to the breeze,
OF, speaking as becomes his avocation, tempers the
shorn lamb to the wind. Again he waits old
boarding house ladies with polteness who pay but
shilling for steaks, and deal largely in liver beefs
heart and bacon. growing meantime at the prices
and the meat. He viii cut OFF with deep outward
respect half pound of corned beef for hash and
make the change eXactly-he who but of late cut
his " chateaubriands" two inches thick and never
took out the suet before weighing.
CONTINUATION.
Your barber, that empty-natured man who never
before was heard to say more than: "Does this
razor hurt you y now develops in easy midsummer
to be man of literature and music. You find he
plays the trombone in band after the latherIg of
the day is done, and talks on Weber and Schiller
and Wagner that his family reside in two rooms
on the East Side. He discourses with you on
razors, and shows how for ages mankind labored
under the conviction that nothing smaller than q
scythe was fit to shave with till rising science and
the daring mind reduced the ponderous blade to a
mere lance, and shaved the people as with little
pen-knife. He argues against any gentleman
shaving himself as both an envious and dangerous
experiment. Civilization, he says, brought forth
the artist barber, and before his time barbarians
went numbering around the earth with long
boards, using the blade to disembowel statesmen
and husbandmen, till Christianity beat the sword
into pruning hook to do no more harm than scrape
the skin. The violent Turk, who swore by the
Prophets beard that he would never cut his own
beard till he had exterrninated every unbeliever
got around his bad oath by having another man
shave him, and hence arose the glorious barber the
most perfect production of times, who, with
every advantage so cut throat, is afraid to split
pimple Consider, he says. the number Of persons
named Barber, Barbour, Barbee etc. all descended
from tho barber who was also surgeon, and in
past days the medical attendants on rulers like
President Garfield, were urgeon~Barbers. Then
why should the individual shave himself and bring
TO poverty pure and ancient profession9 We pay
our 10 cents for the shave and shake the common
tator by the hand like midsummer comfort.
FROM OVER THE WATER.
Your servant girl is now mistress of your mansion
all the family gone and she her beans at all
hours and at leisure, and of them she has many
The kindling wood man III one whose comprehensive
avocaton is to buy cord is wood and pass it over
saw worked by little power lent from q carpen-
ter OF cabinet-maker from blind horse walking
round a circle. Reducing it to kindling he makes
the rounds with it at dollar a barrel or so many
bundles for dime. He has no positive griefs
unless his old horse should die in the shafts and
subject him to the expense of $40 for another. He
ducks his head under your stoop makes conceted
and undertaking rap on the basement window, by
which he is known from beggars and milkmen, and
appears before Budget with fresh compliment no
man of any ether could ever make: " MAY the
top OF the afternoon rest the whitest skin and
the most lovin pair o. eyes that liver was the mis-
tress av the whole av an iligant mansion and 80
becomin of 1T too! Did they give it to You now :
Sure it's too little for your vartues and here is a
beautiful posy am after buyin' from that worst of
sarpints, Johnny Bouquet, for that same lovely
cratur, Bridget the darn'l"
Suppose you Irish girl brought up to that
style of compliments from your own poor country
men, would you think lit misplaced or extravagant
in strange lands Would it not rather touch
heart with itz me odv md oinis