The White Pine news. [volume] (Ely, Nev.) 1906-1910, 1907-08-07
NEW YORK CLASSED WITH
GREAT CITIES OF PAST

In his department in Harper's
Monthly, Mr.. Howells classes New
York with the great cities of the past,
with Babylon and Rome, with Venice
and imperial Paris as a minister to
the lust of the eyes and the pride of
life, purveyor of thoughtless, heed
less pleasure.
1t is after nightfall," he says,
that the sense of New York gaiety
most possesses the beholder; and IL
he is young and ignorant, as We hope
he is, fills him with the longing to
abide among its splendors life long.
He Is then strong enough on his legs
to walk from the Columbus Circle all
that length of Broadway which blazes
with electric light; but il he is an
elderly innocent, he can do fairly well
/ by taking an open trolley. In either
case he will not realize at once how
purely mercenary the magnificent dis
plays are, but only after several
nights of enjoyment will become
/ aware that the immense gaiety is not
/ the expression of some inward and
/ spontaneous joyousness in the dwell
/ Ter on the shining avenue, but is the
| calculated appeal of people who want
| his money for something or other.
/ Yet no beholder of those glories is
/ obliged to buy any of the brands of
whiskey or brews of beer which they
mainly advertise; he is master to
4 choose whether or not he will supply
| himself with this autocar or that, or
none; he is not forced into the the
aters which blazon forth their at
/ fractions against the night; he need
not SINCE his wings at the fires in
which the actresses names burn
aloft in constantly shifting colors,
emulous of the fanny flowers that
emblossom the legends of Wurz-
burger or Budweiser. If the appeal
is finally and essentially to the peck
ct, and is as hollow piece of COM
mercialism as any, still its CONNER
cialism does not detract from its
loneliness.
''Commercialism is not the pecu-
liar reproach of our age, and as to
gaiety, we may gravely doubt whether
there was not always something hol.
low in it. We have a belief, never
impaired before, that perhaps Baby
lon was not wholly a scene of unal
loyed and gratuitous delight
Venice herself, queen of all the joy.
of sense must have felt the
hollowness of her gaiety, as Pari!
! must have felt the hollowness of her:
before the dreadful time when thu
wine in her cup thickened to thu
blood she drank from it. The form
of gaiety changes, the spirit never
and the gaiety of those centers o
; pleasure was not less sordid than thu
commercial gaiety of New York.
hn cn1
does not change, and one who on ;
night of early summer looked int
the vast supper room of great New
York hotel might have seen in the ar
tificial moonlight under the yine-clad
grape-hung pergolas the image of tn
world-old, age-long revelry, whicl
, had been in Babylon, and in Rome
and in Venice, and in Paris. repeating
itself in terms that scarcely differed
, in their peculiar sameness.
ut seems always and everywher
= the same CHASTITY thing, that effort t
, escape from the seriousness of life
: and to substitute pleasure for peace
c But shall there be no cakes and ale
!, then? Shall the ginger never be no
: in the mouth? 1t is hard question
t and perhaps we had better put it b
: WIFI SoiHe ShCH dhoWcI do euaI ouS
things are not the good of life, an
1 warn people that they are not to b
. held before them, as the goal of thei
, longing. as their hearts desire.
e 1t is Tolstoy who teaches that an
such thing as personal happiness. tn
wish to be blessed in and for one
self, is forever impossible.
Perhaps it is the deep underlying con
IF hfc xuh driu
poor human race to the madness o
gaiety, the perdition of pleasure, ant
r has made New York one with Baby
e lon, and Rome, and Venice, and Paris
4 not to specify the Cities of the Plain.