GREATER NEW YORK
CHAPTER XXII.
Greater New York.
On visiting all other cities I could draw a comparison, but New York is a city of itself. None other exists like it, with its steel structures looming skyward twenty and sometimes thirty stories high. As I looked from my room window in the hotel, it seemed but one vast sea of buildings, and in the evening it was rather amusing to see men, women and children coming up on the flat roofed houses, from little thatched doors, to get a breath of fresh air, and even the dogs, without a play-ground, would be on the roofs in the day-time. And to look at the electric lights in some of the office blocks at eventide was like looking at the stars.
I visited the stock exchange, the sub-treasury building, Wall street, that financial center controlling the world; and to and fro the entire length of busy Broadway, with its emporiums rivalling those of any city of the globe, and the Fifth avenue driveway, with its magnificent homes. One that surpassed them all was in course of construction, and was one that I took great interest in examining, on account of it belonging to our home citizen and United States senator from Montana, W. A. Clark.
To get a general idea of New York, take its "Seeing New York Automobiles and Coaches," visiting the historic section, in its Dutch, British and American periods; the Bowery, Chinatown, Brooklyn, Castle Garden, Central Park, the Grand Boulevards, the historic Hudson river, Columbia University, General Grant's tomb, statues of Christopher Columbus and William Shakespeare. And take the "Seeing Yacht," encircling the island of Manhatton, showing the statue of Liberty, Blackwell's island, Jersey City, Brooklyn, Harlem, Bronx, the navy yard, the ocean liners and the wharves, with their commerce and extensive shipping interests.
I must mention a few amusing incidents that came personally to my notice, during my three week's sojourn in New York, to show how many ignorant people this immense city contains and what little idea they have of the magnitude of the country beyond its borders. While out in company one evening a young gentleman asked me if we had any pianos in Montana. I had him repeat his question, thinking he surely could not mean what he was saying, but when I saw he really meant what he said, I looked at him for a moment then said, "YES, we have pianos in Montana, and people that can perform on them," for this same New Yorker had been trying to entertain us all the evening on a fine instrument, but the music would make anyone want to leave home.
At another time I happened in a friend's office. He was called to the telephone while I was there, and after he had finished his conversation, he turned to me and said, "Just think of it, I have been talking to a party nine miles away!" I suppose he thought I had never seen a telephone and would run when I heard the bell ring. I looked at him in amazement, for I had talked over the "phone" a distance of seven hundred miles, many times in my western home.
To get on a street car was perfectly disgusting, as I never before, in all my travels saw men—I cannot call them gentlemen—keep seated in a street car and allow ladies to stand for miles, holding onto the straps. I would say to these people that they need to travel some and broaden their narrow minded ideas. If one of those men were riding on our street cars in Butte, he would be made to feel so uncomfortable, that he would stand up or get off at the next corner. I will add further, that in a business way, it does seem pitiful to see old gray headed men, who have brought up their sons and even their grandsons in the same line, working along like machines, doing what someone else tells them to do. I found very few men who knew their own individuality; instead of stopping to think and using their own brains, they allow others to think for them, looking only to their present compensation, instead of accomplishing something for themselves.
After visiting the principal places of interest in New York and Brooklyn, I took "The Bay State Limited," for Boston, Massachusetts.