The record-union., 1897-12-29
BRUNETIERE IN NEW YORK.
How He Was Impressed by the
Great Metropolis.

U1eat NACCAOPO~AS"
NY greatest surprise is to be sur
prised so little; and in the mild at
mosphare. under a brilliant sun, 1t does
not seem to me that / have changed
climates.
Nevertheless 1 am in America.
But what can you expect? My eyes
and my mind are 50 fashioned that
wherever / have journeyed l have found
men more like each other than their
vanity might be willing to admit; ana
doubtless that is not favorable tenn
per for observing" but who KNOWS
whether it be not an excellent one Tor
seeing better? How many travellers
there are whose accounts have aroused
in me nothing but a great astonishment
at their ingenuity! They discover dill
ferances everywhere, and to my eyes
these differences do not exist. Euro
peanS or Americans, yellow men or
white, Anglo-Saxons or Latins. we all
have specimens at home of all the vices;
let us add that the same is true of all
the qualities and virtues, and repeat
with the poet:
Hunani generis mores ubi nosse voienti'
Sui;icit una domus
[ am walking along Fifth
avenue making these reflections, ana
beginning to fear lest spice OF VeXa-
ton at not possessing more Travelled
soul may creep into them, when 1t sud
denly occurs to me that this avenue
is very long. I also perceive that all
the streets cross each other at right
angles, and that. motley as the crowd
may be which fills them with commo-
ton, numerous as are the car lines
by which they are furrowed, unlike and
sumptuCus as are the shops which line
them, the impression they produce is,
after all a trifle monotonous. t'ortu-
nately, some tall houses come to dispel
this at he very nick of time-very tall
houses of from twelve to fourteen sto-
ries; oubical houses with flat roofs;
pierced with innumerable windows;
stone houses whose crude whiteness
enlivans at last this decoration which
hitherto has been all in brick. / take
pains TO note, then that in New YORK
there are houses of fourteen stories,
and--rnust it be said-they are not ug-
her than if they had only five. Where
is it that / have seen uglier ones, not
50 tail but in the same style, or the
same taste, which proceeded less from
the art of Bramante or Palladio than
from the science of Eiffel the engineer?
Was it not, perchance, at Rome, in
the new quarters? What astonishes me
most, however, and what I can scarce
ly account for to myself, is that posi-
lively these enormous houses do not
seem to be imbedded in the ground;
one would say they were placed upon
it's surface.
go en- to the right, and the aspect
of the scene has suddenly changed. The
flooring of an aerial railway. supported
by enormous cast-iron pillars, has rob-
bed me of sunlight, and the trains
which momentarily succeed each other
make deafening racket over my head.
Now the streets are lined with popular
shops, saloons, oyster houses, and also
| with bootblacks. PeddlerS Of Italian
aspect cffer me bananas, oranges, ap-
pies and sticks of marshmallow. These
are no longer the smells of Paris, but
I! those of Marseilles and Genoa; in fact,
they make me remember that I am in
a maritime city. Did l say in mari
| time city? / should have said in an
/ island, where I ought to have found
| il nuite natural that the manners and
institutions should be floating" Git is
the remark of an ancient who had not
| seen Afnerica) and that the very houses
| should not yet succeed in fixing them
| selves" A great maritime city always
| has a little the air of having been born
| yesterday; it's monuments can be
| counted; and how often l have been
| surprised that of all our French cities
| the most ancient. the one that existed
| before there was France, and even
before Gaul had a name-I mean Mar
seil!es-should also be one of the most
modern. where one finds least of the
| historical and detects the least of what
| is past.
| There are from 10000 to $4,000 Ital-
! ians at Marseilles. and formerly there
were many Greeks and Levantines; this
| doubtless gave il the cosmopolitan as
pect. Here at New York there are
| from 400 600 to 100000 Germans, and
how many Irish? To say nothing of
Italians French, Greeks, Chinese, Jap
anese. etc. I am not surprised that
/ all this makes a mixture, medley, in
which one would be troubled to find
! anything very American" The busi-
ness streets Twenty third, Fourteenth,
! Broadway are filed with crowd,
neither very noisy nor very busting;
/ numerous lofterers are seated on the
benches in the squares-a great COS
mopolitan' city; a very large city:
gigantic city; where | seem TO recognize
some traits of Paris and Marseilles, of
Genoa, Antwerp and Amsterdam;
where certain slight differences, sus-
pected rather than felt, fancied rather
than experienced, indefnable for the
moment. melt and are effaced in the
multiplicity of resemblances and anal
ogies, such did New York appear to
me at first And also as an amusing"
city, since I have been walking in it
for four hours without either my GU
riosity or my legs having grown weary
of .t.--Brunetiere in McClure's Maga-
zine.