XXII

THE DUEL

The gods, lying beside their nectar on ’Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities.  Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so.  Studying the habits of ants from so great a height should be but a mild diversion when coupled with the soft drink that mythology tells us is their only solace.  But doubtless they have amused themselves by the comparison of villages and towns; and it will be no news to them (nor, perhaps, to many mortals), that in one particularity New York stands unique among the cities of the world.  This shall be the theme of a little story addressed to the man who sits smoking with his Sabbath-slippered feet on another chair, and to the woman who snatches the paper for a moment while boiling greens or a narcotized baby leaves her free.  With these I love to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings.

New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thus beating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine’s.  They came here in various ways and for many reasons—­Hendrik Hudson, the art schools, green goods, the stork, the annual dressmakers’ convention, the Pennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates, brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, freight trains—­all these have had a hand in making up the population.

But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan has got to fight.  He has got to fight at once until either he or his adversary wins.  There is no resting between rounds, for there are no rounds.  It is slugging from the first.  It is a fight to a finish.

Your opponent is the City.  You must do battle with it from the time the ferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or it has conquered you.  It is the same whether you have a million in your pocket or only the price of a week’s lodging.

The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or turn the rankest outlander and Philistine.  You must be one or the other.  You cannot remain neutral.  You must be for or against—­lover or enemy—­bosom friend or outcast.  And, oh, the city is a general in the ring.  Not only by blows does it seek to subdue you.  It woos you to its heart with the subtlety of a siren.  It is a combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse, Beethoven, chloral and John L. in his best days.

In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as long as you please.  You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, and be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, and without rebuke.  You may become a civic pillar in any other town but Knickerbocker’s, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings, comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair’s residence in Jackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon.  But in New York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism.  And this dreary preamble is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures of William and Jack.