FullReads

A beneficent Providence, sir, has caused it to be that the finest shows in this world are free of all men. Nature charges no admission fee. The dawn and the evening are gratis. In the matter of art, the performances of the little men of the passing hour are to be seen in Bond Street, on the Avenue, and at the academies and societies, for a price; but those treasure houses of the enduring masterpieces, the great museums of the world, demand naught from him that hath nothing. A collector of customs sitteth at the golden door of the movies; but the far more delightful and far more human shows shown in the show windows are quite free for all to see. And to those blessed ones whose eyes have not lost their innocence and whose hearts remain sweet and simple the costly spectacles of the world are but tawdry vanity as compared with the feasts of entertainment enacted daily in show windows.

One of the very best theatres in this country for entertainments of this nature is lower Sixth Avenue, though the Bowery is not to be overlooked, and the passionate lover of pleasure should not neglect any business thoroughfare which presents a particularly shabby appearance. The actors and actresses in these fascinating histrionic presentations are not called comedians and tragedians, comediennes and tragediennes–but “demonstrators.” The effect of their performances thus is twofold: they gratify the spectator’s sense of the humorous or the curious, and they demonstrate to his intelligence the value of something with whose merits possibly he is not acquainted.

There are not many things in life, I think, which you find pleasanter than this: You are slightly obstructed in your perambulations on a fine afternoon by a small knot of loiterers pausing before a shop window in which an active young man of admirably mobile countenance is holding forth in dumb show. Your progress is slackened as you edge about the throng with the intention of proceeding on your way. As it were, you poise on the wing. Then, like a warming liquor stealing through the veins, the awakening of your interest in the artful antics of this young man makes fainter and fainter your will to proceed on your course, until it dies softly away. What is this ridiculous thing he is doing? By its magnetism it has, at any rate, become for you the supreme interest, for the moment, of the universe.

With a horrible grimace the young man yanks fiercely at his cravat. It does not budge, or at least only very slightly. With still further display of energetic effort, accompanied by a ferocious expression of pained and enraged exasperation, he yanks again. No, the cravat is stuck fast behind within the collar. With a gesture of hopeless despair and a face of pitiful woe the young man abandons his struggle with the ordinary kind of cravat which loops around the neck, and which, foolishly enough, is so universally worn. You see, so his eloquent flinging out of the hands saith, it is of no use. He shakes his fist. Then, registering the extremity of disgust, he rips the loathesome, cravat-clogged collar from his neck and flings it from him.

What will he do now? is the thought that holds his audience bound in a spell. Ah! His face breaks into light. He snatches up his collar and industriously adjusts it without a cravat. He picks up a small object which he holds aloft between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that. It is the ready-made bow of a bow tie, the bow and nothing more. Yes, there are patent prongs to it, which he deftly slips beneath the wings of his collar. So! No trouble whatever. Instantaneous. A smile of luxurious blandness spreads over the face of the young man. Thus he stands for a moment. Then stoops and places in a corner of the window a large card inscribed “Ten Cents.” With a pleasing sense of curiosity satisfied, the current of your own life as distinct from show-window shows flows back again into your consciousness. You turn, and the great movement of the city takes you, although some souls of spacious leisure and of apparently insatiable curiosity linger on to drink in the happiness of witnessing a repetition of the fascinating exhibition.