The bicycle has attained an economic position of vast importance. The
roof garden ought to attain such a position, and it doubtless will
soon--as we give it the opportunity it desires.
The Arab or the Moor probably invented the roof garden in some long-gone
centuries, and they are at this day inveterate roof gardeners. The
American, surprisingly belated--for him, has but recently seized upon
the idea, and its development here has been only partial. The
possibilities of the roof garden are still unknown.
Here is a vast city in which thousands of people in summer half stifle,
cry out continually for air, fresher air. Just above their heads is what
might be called a county of unoccupied land. It is not ridiculously
small when compared with the area of New York county itself. But it is
as lonely as a desert, this region of roofs. It is as untrodden as the
corners of Arizona. Unless a man be a roof gardener, he knows
practically nothing of this land.
Down in the slums necessity forces a solution of problems. It drives the
people to the roofs. An evening upon a tenement roof with the great
golden march of the stars across the sky, and Johnnie gone for a pail of
beer, is not so bad if you have never seen the mountains nor heard, to
your heart, the slow, sad song of the pines.
IN THE BROADWAY CARS.
PANORAMA OF A DAY FROM THE DOWN-TOWN RUSH OF THE MORNING TO THE
UNINTERRUPTED WHIRR OF THE CABLE AT NIGHT--THE MAN, AND THE WOMAN, AND
THE CONDUCTOR.
The cable cars come down Broadway as the waters come down at Lodore.
Years ago Father Knickerbocker had convulsions when it was proposed to
lay impious rails on his sacred thoroughfare. At the present day the
cars, by force of column and numbers, almost dominate the great street,
and the eye of even an old New Yorker is held by these long yellow
monsters which prowl intently up and down, up and down, in a mystic
search.
In the grey of the morning they come out of the up-town, bearing
janitors, porters, all that class which carries the keys to set alive
the great down-town. Later, they shower clerks. Later still, they shower
more clerks. And the thermometer which is attached to a conductor's
temper is steadily rising, rising, and the blissful time arrives when
everybody hangs to a strap and stands on his neighbour's toes. Ten
o'clock comes, and the Broadway cars, as well as elevated cars, horse
cars, and ferryboats innumerable, heave sighs of relief. They have
filled lower New York with a vast army of men who will chase to and fro
and amuse themselves until almost nightfall.
The cable car's pulse drops to normal. But the conductor's pulse begins
now to beat in split seconds. He has come to the crisis in his day's
agony. He is now to be overwhelmed with feminine shoppers. They all are
going to give him two-dollar bills to change. They all are going to
threaten to report him. He passes his hand across his brow and curses
his beard from black to grey and from grey to black.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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