New York. I HAVE often had occasion in the course
of this correspondence to correct misapprehension, and to contradict and disprove mis- statement in regard to this country by those to whom the British public look for information. Sometimes these corrections have been upon subjects of importance, at others upon those of the most trivial nature, my object having been quite as much to show my readers what a strange propensity there is to misre- present us, even in the most simple, obvious, and every-day matters, as to rectify the errors in question themselves. Of two statements recently made to you which I am about to notice, one refers to a very insignificant matter, the other to a subject of grave political importance, and one which has recently received no little attention from writers and public men throughout the United Kingdom. The burglaries which not long ago took place in London induced the editor of The Leisure Hour to send to The Times, as of interest to City men, the following paragraph from an article on Wall Street, New York, contributed to the former publication " by an American editor" :—
"Burglars and midnight robbers shun Wall Street, for it is securely guarded by a simple expedient, which has proved more efficacious than would have been a host of watchmen. It is lighted at night more brilliantly than at any hour on the brightest summer day. From every window, from the upper storeys to the basements, streams forth a glare of gaslight which illumines the street to that degree that one might see to pick up a pin on the darkest night. You may stand on the pavement and peer into every nook and corner of the basements beneath, all filled with treasure."
Here is a distinct statement about a very plain but very striking matter of fact, a matter as to which a man with eyes could not fall into unconscious error. If the statement were true it would certainly present a noteworthy and interesting feature in the appearance of New York. Well, there is not even the semblance of truth in this story. Wall Street, instead of being " lighted at night more brilliantly than at any hour on the brightest summer's day," so that " one might see to pick up a pin on the darkest night," is as dark as any other street in this or in any other city which is lighted by the usual street lamps. It is absolutely deserted at night except by two lines of omnibuses, which dash through it until twelve o'clock to a ferry at the river end, which goes to the finest part of Brooklyn. Broadway and the avenues on which there is retail traffic are very bright until quite late in the evening, but Wall Street is one of the , darkest among the principal streets in the city. So far from light streaming "from every window from the upper storeys to the basements," the only light besides that of the street lanterns struggles feebly from the windows of a few bullion brokers and insurance companies in the basement, where the gas is left burning from one or perhaps two burners half open. These basements, which are half underground, so far from being "all filled with treasure," do not contain at night ten dollars each in notes or coin. After banking hours all the money-brokers put their cash into boxes, and send it to the vaults of the banks w:iere they keep accounts, paying for this privilege a fee of 50 dollars, which is the perquisite of the bank porter. Only yesterday the broker who occasionally does business for me, and who has been in the street twenty years, told me that he would not think of leaving five dollars in money iu his safe, although it is built into the wall. Who the American editor eau be who made such a blazing misstatement about this little mat- ter I of course do not know, but I am inclined to the opinion that, like many "American editors," he was born and bred across the water. The temptation to the telling of his story I see at once. It was to satisfy that craving to hear something extraordinary, astonishing, or at least peculiar, about this country, which is at the bottom of a great deal of the misrepresentation on the one side and the misapprehension on the other which is so common among Europeans upon this subject. A country so monotonous and so common-place in the material as well as the moral aspect of society as this is does not exist, and I believe never did exist, and yet because Europe will have it that the "Americans" are a very extraordinary and incomprehensible people, clever tourists, able editors and smart correspondents lay themselves out to find, or at least to tell, something which will satisfy expectant and credulous Europe's appetite for the wonderful concerning "America." Poendes cult decipi et deciptatur.
You have discussed the question of vote by ballot lately in England. Mr. Sala therefore very naturally devotes some pages to the subject of the ballot in this country, in the course of which he favours you with the following paragraph :—
" Vote by ballot there is the merest of shams. Everybody knows how his neighbour votes. Voters buy their tickets at the booths kept by the agents of their favourite candidates, stick the tickets in their button-holes or in their hats, and march to the polling-places to vote 'secretly.' They place their tickets on the top of the urn. The polling clerk opens them before he deposits them in the receptive aperture, (be."
The italic emphasis in the last sentence is Mr. Sala's. Now here, again, is a direct statement about a simple, but in this case a most important, matter of fact, —a matter as to which knowledge is as common here as air or light,—and again the statement is directly the reverse of the truth. A polling clerk would no more dare to open a ballot given to him to deposit in the "receptive aperture" than he would dare to burn it. Every man here knows this as well as every one of my readers knows that two and two are four. But as people sometimes like to have high authority for the sim- plest truths, I addressed an inquiry as to this one to the United States District Attorney. His reply was that " an inspector of election who should open a ballot would be removed and punished for a misdemeanour." All the rest of the paragraph in question gives an impression hardly less incorrect than that which I have noticed. Everybody does not know here how his neighbour votes, unless his neighbour proclaims it, which indeed he often does. I have not the least notion how any one of my neighbours, who go to the same polling-place that I go to have voted. On the night before an election the agents of both or all the political parties send round their ballots to every house, so that the voter can make his choice in entire privacy. There are the ticket booths besides, but no man ever " buys " his ballot there. The occupants are only too glad to furnish him with as many as he will take "free gratis for nothing." Voters frequently make up their tale of ballots by selections from those of both parties. In all my life I never saw a voter going to a poll with his ballots in his bat or his button-hole. The ballots are carried in the baud, or in the pocket, and you cannot tell a man who is going to vote from one who is going to market. What, then, you may ask, can we believe that is told us about the United States? You may well put the ques- tion. For all that has been told thus far, you are almost as ignorant of us as you were fifty years ago. Those who know how to read our newspapers, that is, what allowances to make for the manner in which they are necessarily conducted, may trust all of them but one, The New York Herald, as fair representatives of the mental condition and the character of the most moderately culti vated and the entirely uncultivated of our people ; and as to facts not stated in telegrams, they are generally trustworthy. But it is safe to distrust whatever is written especially for European readers, except of course (for there is nothing like leather) these letters ; and especially is it well to doubt when the European tourist is very amusing, or when he tells you something that is very strange and striking. I think that my readers have found that they may believe what is told them in this correspondence, but so even is our ordinary life here, and so little do we differ from each other except in a greater or less degree of social and intellectual culture or of wealth, that I often fear that it is beyond my power to interest the readers of The Spectator in subjects so dull, though sometimes so important, as those I have to handle.
In forming a judgment upon the effect of what are called
our institutions—a common, but I venture to say a very vague term —it is well, too, to know whether those upon whose acts or whose condition judgment is to be passed can properly be regarded as "Americans"—another term, it seems to me, of very vague significance. Thus, for instance, the London 7'inies in commenting upon the great enlistment frauds which were recently brought to light here remarks :—" We cannot say, indeed, that the prac- tices disclosed are of American invention, for something of the kind was detected in our own establishments during the demand occasioned by the Russian war, but the Anzericaral have reduced the trick to such a system, and played it on so extensive a scale, that our precedent is left behind." These frauds have been almost exclusively perpetrated in this city, the least "American " of all places in the country, and in a previous letter I have given you the names of the men then arrested for these practices not of American invention." I add now the names of seventeen others who have since been sent to Fort Lafayette for playing this trick : —P. J. Kienan, \V. McAnnally, Michael Dillon, James Thompson, Michael McNamara, Michael Fay, Pat Bradley, Adam filer, John Goodman, John Kelly, Andrew Higgins, Stephen Boyle, John F. Pike, John Nugent, Dennis Sullivan, John Caulan, and William Howard. How many of these men you may regard as "Americans" I cannot conjecture, but I will venture to say that not thirteen of the seventeen even did us the honour of being born or bred in the country.
It is not foreign to the purpose of this desultory letter to tell you of two little characteristic incidents of two recent celebrations here. One that of the great Union victories, the other of St. Patrick's Day. In the former the New York firemen paraded, and their line was more than a mile long. These firemen come now from the roughest part of our native population, and although there are doubtless many respectable men among them, it must be confessed that they are a very rough set. But they are, with rare exceptions, born in this country. As they marched, the women in the crowd, who were particularly interested in them, waved their handkerchiefs and smiled, and even spoke to them ; and the men would sometimes step from their line and snatch these handkerchiefs and bear them off in triumph. It was a piece of rough gallantry, and was so received. Well, yesterday some of the younger men in the St. Patrick's procession, which was of such enormous length as to stop the running of many lines of street cars and omnibuses, attempted the same rude compliment. But the bereaved ladies pursued them with blows and objurga- tions, and, recovering their cambric, sent off their admirers dis- comfited and crest-fallen. Now no Yankee girl, however humble her position, would have done this for the only handkerchief she had in the world. She might have secretly felt the loss, but she would have been too proud and too good-natured not to submit to it
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