The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four MillionHenry, O.
Philosophy
The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million
Henry, O.
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
"The Park Commissioner and the Commissioner of Polis and the Forestry
Commission gets together and agrees to let the people sleep in the
parks until the Weather Bureau gets the thermometer down again to
a living basis. So they draws up open-air resolutions and has them
O.K.'d by the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Comstock and the Village
Improvement Mosquito Exterminating Society of South Orange, N. J.
"When the proclamation was made opening up to the people by special
grant the public parks that belong to 'em, there was a general exodus
into Central Park by the communities existing along its borders.
In ten minutes after sundown you'd have thought that there was an
undress rehearsal of a potato famine in Ireland and a Kishineff
massacre. They come by families, gangs, clambake societies, clans,
clubs and tribes from all sides to enjoy a cool sleep on the grass.
Them that didn't have oil stoves brought along plenty of blankets,
so as not to be upset with the cold and discomforts of sleeping
outdoors. By building fires of the shade trees and huddling together
in the bridle paths, and burrowing under the grass where the ground
was soft enough, the likes of 5,000 head of people successfully
battled against the night air in Central Park alone.
"Ye know I live in the elegant furnished apartment house called the
Beersheba Flats, over against the elevated portion of the New York
Central Railroad.
"When the order come to the flats that all hands must turn out and
sleep in the park, according to the instructions of the consulting
committee of the City Club and the Murphy Draying, Returfing and
Sodding Company, there was a look of a couple of fires and an
eviction all over the place.
"The tenants began to pack up feather beds, rubber boots, strings of
garlic, hot-water bags, portable canoes and scuttles of coal to take
along for the sake of comfort. The sidewalk looked like a Russian
camp in Oyama's line of march. There was wailing and lamenting up
and down stairs from Danny Geoghegan's flat on the top floor to the
apartments of Missis Goldsteinupski on the first.
"'For why,' says Danny, coming down and raging in his blue yarn socks
to the janitor, 'should I be turned out of me comfortable apartments
to lay in the dirty grass like a rabbit? 'Tis like Jerome to stir up
trouble wid small matters like this instead of--'
"'Whist!' says Officer Reagan on the sidewalk, rapping with his club.
''Tis not Jerome. 'Tis by order of the Polis Commissioner. Turn out
every one of yez and hike yerselves to the park.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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