Evening star., 1922-07-16

incentive and food for thought to-
gcther with immunity from a certain
grinding. importunate routine Of life
which other cities do not afford. But
these toilers bring home the bacon"
Many of them do this month after
month. saving and putting by. until
some fine day they up and away by
second-cabin passage-having come
over in the steerage-for the old
home in Europe, where they find
leisure and comfort which is luxury
by comparison. together with a stoup
of wine or seidel of beer, and think
they are as well off as the king him
self. They do say that since prohibi-
tion has set in here that this class is
working more feverishly and saving
more stringently to expedite depar-
ture from the land of liberty. And
yet Ellis Island. the immigration sta
ton at New York, can hardly hold
the throngs which are as eagerly
seeking these shores, volstead act to
the contrary Notwithstanding. And
loud and long are the lamentations
which arise from the immigrant ships
which dock too late to get their pas
sengers within the monthly quota
allowed by the law. Thus they go
and come, all actuated, as Philander
Johnson's Uncle Eben says by the
desire "to be somewhere where they
amt"
Let's take the Hudson tunnel tube
and back to a scene the antithesis of
this. and, indeed, the REVERSE of the
picture presented across the narrow
stretch of water by which the East
river divides the lower end of Man
haitian and Brooklyn heights. Why
the section is called heights" is hard
to discern. since it is only few score
feet above sea level, with the Atlantic
tide making in and out. Wonder II
any statistics bug" has ever figured
how much time the Newarkites. Man
hattanites and Brooklynites spend
burrowing in their tunnels below the
earth's surface and the bed of the two
rivers?
1t is a study to watch the faces Of
the majority Of these tunnel travellers
once they get sardined into seat in
the subway car or hitched to a strap.
Resignation and endurance are the
predominating expressions stamped
upon the physiognomy-reali of
they must go through with
and something they intend to go
through with until the end without
In all the years l have
travelled the subways and tunnels
/ have never heard good,
ulI-throated. from the bottom-of
the boots protest from any subwayite.
Out at Clark street, Brooklyn. five
minutes from the teeming, odorifer-
Gus East Side of Manhattan. you enter
a new world, you go back into an
other generation.
Around you rise stately, dignified
mansions. relics of another age. The
streets are wide. and but for the alb
sence Of trees would remind Of WASH |
ington. This Is Brooklyn Heights.
Stroll west few blocks and you ap-
proach the East river. The hoarse
siren of a tugboat negotiating a
string of railway car floats around
the Battery warns of the vicinity of
the waterway, where the rushing tide
of the upper bay comes pell-mell to
meet the flow from Long Island
sound. The sun hangs low over the
Jersey shore, and across the wake of
tinted water which dimples narrowly
moves the black hulk of the tow. The
Fall River boat. swinging gracefully
around, swashes the float scornfully
with the swell from her paddle !
wheels, her cabins all agleam with
lights. II the wind is from the west.
vow can smell broiled lamb chops, for !
the passengers are at supper.
X * |
Turning around, Brooklyn Heights
streets run this way and that. emil
nently respectable, highly ,conven- |
tional the houses. Wherein you pic |
ture everything done according to !
Hoyle, with fauxpas by the butler !
equivalent to a high crime and mis-
demeanor; that is. some of them. |
Other structures contain apartments !
housing just everyday people, wor-
rying along as best they can. 4
And turning again westward. II |
YOU know your New YoSk, you pick |
out the lights in the crowded tene- !
ments of the East Side Of Manhattan.
where again 1t Is life in the raw
and the rawest of the raw, at that.
But 1t is life, which, Of course. |
means extremes and contrasts. Isn't |
that the summing OF it. after all?