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A Little Local Colour
O Henry
I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York scenes and
incidents -- some- thing typical, I told him, without necessarily having to spell the first
syllable with an "i."
"Oh, for your writing business," said Rivington; "you couldn't have applied to a better
shop. What I don't know about little old New York wouldn't make a sonnet to a
sunbonnet. I'll put you right in the middle of so much local colour that you won't know
whether you are a magazine cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to
begin?"
Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth, preference and
incommutability.
I told him that I would be glad to accept his escort and guardianship so that I might take
notes of Manhattan's grand, gloomy and peculiar idiosyncrasies, and that the time of so
doing would be at his own convenience.
"We'll begin this very evening," said Rivington, him- self interested, like a good fellow.
"Dine with me at seven, and then I'll steer 'you up against metropolitan phases so thick
you'll have to have a kinetoscope to record 'em."
So I dined with Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh street, and then we
set forth in pursuit of the elusive tincture of affairs.
As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near the steps in
earnest conversation.
"And by what process of ratiocination," said one of them, "do you arrive at the
conclusion that the division of society into producing and non-possessing classes
predicates failure when compared with competitive systems that are monopolizing in
tendency and result inimically to industrial evolution?"
"Oh, come off your perch!" said the other man, who wore glasses. "Your premises won't
come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete
categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal
ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx
and Hyndman and Kautsky - what are they? -- shines! Tolstoi? -- his garret is full of
rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the idea of a cooperative commonwealth
and an abolishment of competitive systems simply takes the rag off the bush and gives
me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The skoo- kum house for yours!
I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.
"Oh, come ahead," said Rivington, somewhat ner- vously; "you don't want to listen to
that."
"Why man," I whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are
among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must
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hear more of it."
"If I follow you," said the man who had spoken flrst, "you do not believe it possible to
reorganize society on the basis of common interest?"
"Shinny on your own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never heard any such music
from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe it practicable just now. The
guys with wads are not in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man
with the portable tin banqueting canister isn't exactly ready to join the Bible class. You
can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up from the Battery to
breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully old bloke like Cobden or some wise
guy like old Ben Frank- lin to sashay up to the front and biff the nigger's head with the
baseball. Do you catch my smoke? What?"
Rivington pulled me by the arm impatiently.
"Please come on," he said. "Let's go see something. This isn't what you want."
"Indeed, it is," I said resisting. "This tough talk is the very stuff that counts. There is a
picturesqueness about the speech of the lower order of people that is quite unique. Did
you say that this is the Bowery variety of slang?"
"Oh, well," said Rivington, giving it up, "I'll tell you straight. That's one of our college
professors talking. He ran down for a day or two at the club. It's a sort of fad with him
lately to use slang in his conversation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is
talking to is one of New York's famous social economists. Now will you come on. You
can't use that, you know."
"No," I agreed; "I can't use that. Would you call that typical of New York?"
"Of course not," said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. "I'm glad you see the difference.
But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery slang I'll take you down where you'll
get your fill of it."
"I would like it," I said; "that is, if it's the real thing. I've often read it in books, but I
never heard it. Do you think it will be dangerous to go unprotected among those
characters ?
"Oh, no," said Rivington; "not at this time of night. To tell the truth, I haven't been along
the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as well as I do Broadway. We'll look up some
of the typical Bowery boys and get them to talk. It'll be worth your while. They talk a
peculiar dialect that you won't hear any-where else on earth."
Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second street car and then south on the Third
avenue line.
At Houston street we got off and walked.
"We are now on the famous Bowery," said Rivington; "the Bowery celebrated in song
and story."
We passed block after block of "gents'" furnishing stores -- the windows full of shirts
with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows were neckties and no shirts.
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People walked up and down the sidewalks.
"In some ways," said I, "this reminds me of Koko- mono, Ind., during the peach-crating
season."
Rivington was nettled.
"Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows," said he, "with a large roll of
money, and see how quickly the Bowery will sustain its reputation."
"You make impossible conditions," said I, coldly.
By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart of the Bowery. There was a
policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew.
"Hallo, Donahue!" said my guide. "How goes it? My friend and I are down this way
looking up a bit of local colour. He's anxious to meet one of the Bowery types. Can't you
put us on to something genuine in that line -- something that's got the colour, you
know?"
Policeman Donahue turned himself about ponder- ously, his florid face full of good-
nature. He pointed with his club down the street.
"Sure!" he said huskily. "Here comes a lad now that was born on the Bowery and knows
every inch of it. If he's ever been above Bleecker street he's kept it to himself."
A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was sauntering toward us
with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman Donahue stopped him with a courteous
wave of his club.
"Evening, Kerry," he said. "Here's a couple of gents, friends of mine, that want to hear
you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel 'em off a few yards?"
"Certainly, Donahue," said the young man, pleas- antly. "Good evening, gentlemen," he
said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked off on his beat.
"This is the goods," whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow. "Look at his
jaw!"
"Say, cull," said Rivington, pushing back his hat, wot's doin'? Me and my friend's taking
a look down de old line -- see? De copper tipped us off dat you was wise to de bowery.
Is dat right?"
I could not help admiring Rivington's power of adapt- ing himself to his surroundings.
"Donahue was right," said the young man, frankly; "I was brought up on the Bowery. I
have been news- boy, teamster, pugilist, member of an organized band of 'toughs,'
bartender, and a 'sport' in various mean- ings of the word. The experience certainly
warrants the supposition that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of
Bowery life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the
service of my friend Donahue's friends."
Rivington seemed ill at ease.
"I say," he said -- somewhat entreatingly, "I thought -- you're not stringing us, are you? It
isn't just the kind of talk we expected. You haven't even said 'Hully gee!' once. Do you
really belong on the Bowery?"
"I am afraid," said the Bowery boy, smilingly, "that at some time you have been enticed
into one of the dives of literature and had the counterfeit coin of the Bowery passed
upon you. The 'argot' to which you doubtless refer was the invention of certain of your
literary 'dis- coverers' who invaded the unknown wilds below Third avenue and put
strange sounds into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes far to the north
and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by this new 'dialect' perused and
believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo Park -- pioneers indeed, but ambitious souls who
could not draw the line of demarcation between dis- covery and invention -- the literary
bones of these explorers are dotting the trackless wastes of the sub- way. While it is true
that after the publication of the mythical language attributed to the dwellers along the
Bowery certain of its pat phrases and apt metaphors were adopted and, to a limited
extent, used in this locality, it was because our people are prompt in assimilating
whatever is to their commercial advantage. To the tourists who visited our newly
discovered clime, and who expected a realization of their literary guide books, they
supplied the demands of the market.
"But perhaps I am wandering from the question. In what way can I assist you,
gentlemen? I beg you will believe that the hospitality of the street is extended to all.
There are, I regret to say, many catchpenny places of entertainment, but I cannot
conceive that they would entice you."
I felt Rivington lean somewhat heavily against me. "Say!" he remarked, with uncertain
utterance; "come and have a drink with us."
"Thank you, but I never drink. I find that alcohol, even in the smallest quantities, alters
the perspective. And I must preserve my perspective, for I am studyinc, the Bowery. I
have lived in it nearly thirty years, and I am just beginning to understand its heartbeats.
It is like a great river fed by a hundred alien streams. Each influx brings strange seeds on
its flood, strange silt and weeds, and now and then a flower of rare promise. To construe
this river requires a man who can build dykes against the overflow, who is a naturalist, a
geologist, a humanitarian, a diver and a strong swimmer. I love my Bowery. It was my
cradle and is my inspiration. I have published one book. The critics have been kind. I
put my heart in it. I am writing another, into which I hope to put both heart and brain.
Consider me your guide, gentlemen. Is there arything I can take you to see, any place to
which I can conduct you?"
I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye.
"Thanks," said Rivington. "We were looking up . . . that is . . . my friend . . . confound
it; it's against all precedent, you know . . . awfully obliged . . . just the same."
"In case," said our friend, "you would like to meet some of our Bowery young men I
would be pleased to have you visit the quarters of our East Side Kappa Delta Phi
Society, only two blocks east of here."
"Awfully sorry," said Rivington, "but my friend's got me on the jump to-nioht. He's a
terror when he's out after local colour. Now, there's nothing I would like better than to
drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi, but -- some other time!"
We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit on upper
Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner.
"Well, anyhow," said he, braced and recovered, "it couldn't have happened anywhere but
in little old New York."
Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington.
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