Читать книгу The Color of a Great City онлайн

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On one occasion I remember standing on the forward end of a ferry boat that once plied between New York and Jersey City, the terminal of one of the great railways entering the city, when one of these peculiar creatures took occasion to make his very individual point of view clear. It was late afternoon, and the forerunners of the homeward evening rush of commuters were already beginning to appear. He was dirty and unkempt and materially degraded as may be, but not at all cast down or distrait. On the contrary. Having been ushered to the dock by a stalwart New York policeman and put on board and told never to return on pain of arrest, he was still in an excellent mood in regard to it all. Heigh-ho! The world was not nearly so bad as many made out. His toes sticking out, the ragged ends of his coat flapping about him, a wretched excuse for a hat on his head, he still trotted here and there, a genial and knowing gleam in his eye, to say nothing of a Mona Liza-like leer about his mouth. He surveyed us all, kempt and worthy exemplars of the proprieties, with the air of one who says: “Well, well! Such decent and such silly people. All sheep who know only the conventional ways and limitations of the city and nothing else, creatures who look on me as a wastrel, a failure and a ne’er-do-well. Nevertheless, I am not as hopeless or as hapless as they think, the sillies.” And to make this clear he strode defiantly to and fro, smirking now on one and now on another, and coming near to one and again to another, thereby causing each and every one to retreat for the very simple reason that the odor of him was as unconventional as himself.