“Forget about airplanes,” I told Twain. “Just market paper sewing patterns all over the country.”
“Do I look prize fool enough to try ‘n’ get any two females to make the same thing?” He snorted. “It’d never work.”
With some surprise I saw women among the clerks at Stewart’s. Until then I’d seen only men employed in stores. Hiring women, Twain said, began during the war, when manpower was short. Girls also worked among Stewart’s two hundred cash children. They were very young and looked poor and tired. No wonder. They worked fourteen hours a day.
“Aren’t there any child-labor laws?” I asked Twain.
“Not to speak of,” he said. “That a fault?”
“Of course,” I said.
“But if there were, how’d I’ve learned my printing trade? My father died when I was ten. I left school and went to work—and then my true education commenced. How would you have it different?”
I didn’t know. Without social legislation, few choices existed.
We lunched in a basement saloon off Printing House Square. Thick pork loin sandwiches, wedges of cheese, fried oysters—tasty and absolutely free, but so salty that a number of nickel beers were required to wash it all down; no fools, the pub owners.
Afterward we strolled through City Hall Park, where the Tribune and Times buildings stood side by side. Excavation was under way at the southern end for an enormous new post office. We sat on a bench and enjoyed the scene. Birds sang in the trees. Squirrels chattered. Children laughed and screamed. Strolling couples bought balloons, checked their weight on scales, peered through telescopes, and blew into a strange-looking contraption that measured lung strength.
“Hokey pokey, penny a lump!” cried a vendor.
“What’s he selling?” I said. “Coal?”
Twain looked at me sidelong. “Ice cream, you saphead.”
I bought two cups of sherbet. “Hey,” I said to the vendor, a stick-thin boy, “You know ‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!’?”
“Oh, ain’t you the trump,” he said, giving me a withering look. “That’s precious old, mister.” At least the sherbet was good.
The foot of Broadway resounded with a welter of languages. Peddlers abounded. Knife grinders rang bells and pushed their carts. Barefoot children stood beside steaming pots shouting “Here’s sweet hot corn!” Others shouted, “Roasted peanuts!” and “Strawberries, fine, ripe, and red!” Still others hawked apples, flowers, pencils; one even had french fries—“Saratoga potatoes”—and I bought some eagerly, the first I’d encountered. Everywhere we were besieged with cries of “Blackin’, sir? Shine, sir?”
“Every street arab buys a brush and foot box,” Twain grumbled, “and sets up boot-blacking.”
Over the sidewalks hung meat and poultry crawling with flies. We skirted cut-rate furniture and dry goods piled on the walks. Rank odors came from tables of smoked meats and fish, decaying fruit and vegetables. Twain said most of it had likely been picked off the ground at the Fulton and Washington markets. Pointing to ragpickers trudging behind small dog-drawn carts, he informed me that they had to pay license fees, yet some made as much as seven dollars a week and bought farms out West. I didn’t believe it.
“‘Ere you, mister!” An urchin girl poked matches at me. I bought a penny parcel—and threw them down when I saw lice crawling on my fingers. In the Alger novels of this time, I remembered, ragged kids got ahead through luck and pluck—saving a rich child from drowning or returning a fat wallet—but these sniveling, rot-toothed waifs looked too malnourished to save anyone, especially themselves. And a wallet dropped here would vanish in microseconds.
“Something’s got to be done about these kids,” I said to Twain as we moved on.
He snorted. “There’s a mortal confusion now of workhouses, jails, charity asylums, hospitals—all for the unfortunate.”
“Shouldn’t the government take responsibility for people’s welfare?”
“You’ll never make that old cat fight,” he retorted. “The people are responsible for their own welfare.”
“But those kids are living on pennies!”
“How’s the government at fault? Look, Sam, here they got a chance to make their mark. Sure, some’ll end up as ragged bummers, some as flash girls. But they all had a chance. That’s it. Why you think so many come pouring in here from all over creation?”
I shut up. What struck me as basically harsh struck him as basically fair—at least as fair as anything else.
Bumping back up Broadway in a coach, we halted behind a crew paving over the cobblestones with asphalt. My eye was caught by a theater marquee across the street. Niblo’s Garden proclaimed the presence of LYDIA THOMPSON’S BRITISH BLONDES! I asked Twain about it.
“They put clipper-built girls up on the stage, prancing with barely clothes enough on to be tantalizing.” He confessed that he’d seen the first of the leg shows, The Black Crook, at Niblo’s three years before. “Since then, imported blondes have become all the rage. But it’s still the scenery and tights that’re everything—except for one new blonde who’s supposed to be a genuine dazzler.”
“Elise Holt?”
“That’s the one. How’d you know?”
I explained where I’d seen her. He drew me out with questions, and I found myself telling him about Morrissey, McDermott, Le Caron, the money, the shooting—everything.
“Whew,” he said. “Morrissey’s not to trifle with, and them others don’t brace me up either. You carrying that gun?”
I patted my coat pocket.
“I had no thought of being teamed with such a desperate character,” he said, stoking his pipe. “Feels like Virginia City all over.”
We started moving. Near Fifth Street, Twain suddenly pointed at the facade of a small building beside the Metropolitan Hotel.
*** WAVERLY THEATRE ***
*** THREE DAYS ONLY ***
*** PARIS or THE JUDGEMENT ***
*** ELISE HOLT BURLESQUE TROUPE ***
“Jesus, that’s her,” I said excitedly. “Think we can get tickets?” “Pretty late for a Friday,” he said. “I’ll see to it tomorrow. Strikes me that a dedicated journalist should make every effort to stay abreast of things. So to speak.” He shot me a look from under his eyebrows.
“Bear in mind that by no stretch would this ever be a
