"Saturday
and Sunday: The City by Night As Seen by an Idle Spectator: A Tramp Around the
Town – Human Nature on a Street Crossing – Patent Medicine and Peanuts"
Spectator October 29, 1883
Where
do they all come from, and where do they all go to? From how many hundreds of
homes comes the madding crowd? The old man with his battered hat that once was
a handsome plug, and with a black and greasy clay pipe, with a broken stem
stuck independently in his mouth; his wife with her bonnet of twenty years ago,
a gaudy plaid shawl, a market basket, and a black stuff dress that has seen
hard service; the daughter with the latest thing in hats on her blonde hair,
with her Mother Hubbard dress, spreading hoops and high heel boots; the son in
a fly suit made of diagonal cloth, spring bottomed pants, pointed shoes and a
slouchy felt hat, which, like his plentifully oiled hair, is down low on his
forehead. This is one party. But there are hosts of others there. The swell,
with his cane, glass, dainty moustache and infinitesimal cigarette; the
brainless fop or “dude” with the latest agony in green coat and vest, and light
striped pants on; the grimy workman with his day’s toil still lingering on his
honest face; the small boy with a big cigar, looking ludicrously out of place,
stuck between his lips, giving him a sort of a “ I am tuff, I am” expression;
the sewing girls, in all their gorgeous Sunday’s finery, out on the mash; and
the thousand and one other representatives of every class and sort of humanity,
all marching, seeming aimlessly, up and down, up and down, and making up
the nondescript crowd that throngs
Hamilton’s principal streets every Saturday and Sunday evenings from 7:30 until
about 10 o’clock.
Saturday evening a Spectator reporter laid in a stock of
good cigars, put on a Piccadilly collar, grasped a substantial cane firmly in
his right hand and set out to “do the town.” It was seven o’clock when he
reached King Street, and the crowd had already commenced to gather. The air was
full of tobacco smoke, profanity and snatches of desultory conversation. Mostly
young men and boys out now. The girls have not made ready yet, but here and
there down the stone sidewalk a graceful female figure can be seen treading its
way along, flitting in and out amongst groups of two and three, that spread
themselves across the pave. The shop windows form an irresistible attraction to
the Saturday night promenaders. At every window, groups stand, taking in the
tastefully displayed wares, and making a running fire of comments on the merits
of the various windows inspected on the route. Here at the corner of King and
James streets, there is always a crowd. A surging, struggling mass of
promiscuous humanity, the girls invariably edging over to the inside, so that they
may have a fleeting glance at their features in the looking glass on the
corner, to see if their bangs are set right, and if any hair pins are peeping
out from the wealth of tresses that lay gracefully coiled into a snug knot on
the fair, white neck behind. A little push and you are through this crowd, and
down James street, where the same throng surges up and down, up and down in the
same unceasing manner as the wash of waves on the seas shore. Over on the
market square, a crowd has gathered around an itinerant pedlar of cheap
jewellery, who is shouting his wares so loudly that he can be heard a block
away. On his right a man with long hair is detailing the virtues of a certain
cure-all patent medicine, which Divine Providence has made him the special means
of best bestowing upon the world at large for the moderate sum of 25 cents a
bottle. A few steps from them sits a patient, cheerful, honest-looking man,
sole proprietor of a taffy store, fruit emporium and peanut stand on wheels.
Bad weather may bring a frown to his usually placid face, but never a word of
complaint comes from his lips, and he posses the exemplary and rare virtue of
contentment. The flaming flambeaux of these three falls on the face of a lady
in silk attire, the workingman’s wife and the shameless painted face, with the
wan smile and lustreless eye of the woman of the street. The ruddy glare falls
on the faces of men and women alike, on the beardless youth and the world-worn
man whose curiosity have attracted them to hear the words of wisdom fall from
the lips of the vendors of patent medicine, jewellery and fresh-roasted
peanuts. On the crossing that leads to the other side of the street, the Idle
Spectator encountered a man who has been vainly endeavouring for the past five
minutes to get a match going for a sufficient length of time to light a cigar.
The Idle one who has a fragrant weed in his mouth, at which he is lazily
puffing, courteously proffers a light, which the unsuccessful igniter accepts
with a grunt and returns presently without a word. “That’s human nature all
over,” the lounger says to himself philosophically, “ give a man a thing he
don’t ask for and in nine cases out of ten he won’t thank you for it, but when
he asks you! Dear! You have enough thanks to last a lifetime,” and the idler
strolls away until he is lost to sight in the shifting mob on the sidewalk.
Sunday night is merely a repetition of the other, only there is not so much
light, not so much noise, more fine dresses and very few papas and mammas to
break up the harmony of Mary Jane’s little sauntering with the overgrown small
boy who drives the delivery cart for the grocer on the corner below. There is
more “mashing” done on Sunday night than on the other nights of the week put
together, and that mysterious process is going on all along the line of march.
Sunday clothes everywhere. Girls in purple and fine linen with dowdy jewellery
and affected airs and graces, keep sharp look outs for presentable “fellows,”
who they are ashamed to take to the gate of their poverty-stricken home, where
their tawdry finery hangs in a bare, comfortless room, in bitter contrast to
what is around, while the mother sits below almost in rags. The darkness which
has settled over the city, and which the glimmer of the corner lamps only serve
to make more intense, hides a multitude of sins, and follies and faults: it
covers up many a shortcoming and hides many a bad breach in one’s moral
character; like a great cloak, it descends over all, and the poor puppets in
the farce of life walk to and fro under its sheltering gloom, forgetting the
lives of honesty, and virtue and manliness, that every true man and woman
should lead.
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