The Street

There be those whosay that things and places have souls, and there be those
who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell ofthe Street.
Men of strength and honour fashioned that Street: good valiantmen of our
blood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. Atfirst it was but a
path trodden by bearers of water from the woodland spring to thecluster of
houses by the beach. Then, as more men came to the growingcluster of houses and
looked about for places to dwell, they built cabins along thenorth side, cabins
of stout oaken logs with masonry on the side toward the forest,for many Indians
lurked there with fire-arrows. And in a few years more, men builtcabins on the
south side of the Street.
Up and down the Street walked grave men in conical hats, who mostof the
time carried muskets or fowling pieces. And there were also theirbonneted wives
and sober children. In the evening these men with their wives andchildren would
sit about gigantic hearths and read and speak. Very simple werethe things of
which they read and spoke, yet things which gave them courage andgoodness and
helped them by day to subdue the forest and till the fields. Andthe children
would listen and learn of the laws and deeds of old, and of thatdear England
which they had never seen or could not remember.
There was war, and thereafter no more Indians troubled the Street.The men,
busy with labour, waxed prosperous and as happy as they knew howto be. And the
children grew up comfortable, and more families came from theMother Land to
dwell on the Street. And the children’s children, and thenewcomers’ children,
grew up. The town was now a city, and one by one the cabins gaveplace to
houses—simple, beautiful houses of brick and wood, withstone steps and iron
railings and fanlights over the doors. No flimsy creations werethese houses,
for they were made to serve many a generation. Within there werecarven mantels
and graceful stairs, and sensible, pleasing furniture, china, andsilver,
brought from the Mother Land.
So the Street drank in the dreams of a young people and rejoicedas its
dwellers became more graceful and happy. Where once had been onlystrength and
honour, taste and learning now abode as well. Books and paintingsand music came
to the houses, and the young men went to the university whichrose above the
plain to the north. In the place of conical hats and small-swords,of lace and
snowy periwigs, there were cobblestones over which clattered manya blooded
horse and rumbled many a gilded coach; and brick sidewalks withhorse blocks and
hitching-posts.
There were in that Street many trees: elms and oaks and maples ofdignity;
so that in the summer, the scene was all soft verdure andtwittering bird-song.
And behind the houses were walled rose-gardens with hedged pathsand sundials,
where at evening the moon and stars would shine bewitchinglywhile fragrant
blossoms glistened with dew.
So the Street dreamed on, past wars, calamities, and change.Once, most of
the young men went away, and some never came back. That was whenthey furled the
old flag and put up a new banner of stripes and stars. But thoughmen talked of
great changes, the Street felt them not, for its folk were stillthe same,
speaking of the old familiar things in the old familiar accounts.And the trees
still sheltered singing birds, and at evening the moon and starslooked down
upon dewy blossoms in the walled rose-gardens.
In time there were no more swords, three-cornered hats, orperiwigs in the
Street. How strange seemed the inhabitants with their walking-sticks,tall
beavers, and cropped heads! New sounds came from the distance—firststrange
puffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and then, manyyears later,
strange puffings and shrieks and rumblings from other directions.The air was
not quite so pure as before, but the spirit of the place had notchanged. The
blood and soul of their ancestors had fashioned the Street. Nordid the spirit
change when they tore open the earth to lay down strange pipes,or when they set
up tall posts bearing weird wires. There was so much ancient lorein that
Street, that the past could not easily be forgotten.
Then came days of evil, when many who had known the Street of oldknew it no
more, and many knew it who had not known it before, and wentaway, for their
accents were coarse and strident, and their mien and facesunpleasing. Their
thoughts, too, fought with the wise, just spirit of the Street,so that the
Street pined silently as its houses fell into decay, and itstrees died one by
one, and its rose-gardens grew rank with weeds and waste. But itfelt a stir of
pride one day when again marched forth young men, some of whomnever came back.
These young men were clad in blue.
With the years, worse fortune came to the Street. Its trees wereall gone
now, and its rose-gardens were displaced by the backs of cheap,ugly new
buildings on parallel streets. Yet the houses remained, despitethe ravages of
the years and the storms and worms, for they had been made toserve many a
generation. New kinds of faces appeared in the Street, swarthy,sinister faces
with furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners .spokeunfamiliar words and
placed signs in known and unknown characters upon most of themusty houses.
Push-carts crowded the gutters. A sordid, undefinable stenchsettled over the
place, and the ancient spirit slept.
Great excitement once came to the Street. War and revolution wereraging
across the seas; a dynasty had collapsed, and its degeneratesubjects were
flocking with dubious intent to the Western Land. Many of thesetook lodgings in
the battered houses that had once known the songs of birds andthe scent of
roses. Then the Western Land itself awoke and joined the MotherLand in her
titanic struggle for civilization. Over the cities once morefloated the old
flag, companioned by the new flag, and by a plainer, yet glorioustricolour. But
not many flags floated over the Street, for therein brooded onlyfear and hatred
and ignorance. Again young men went forth, but not quite as didthe young men of
those other days. Something was lacking. And the sons of thoseyoung men of
other days, who did indeed go forth in olive-drab with the truespirit of their
ancestors, went from distant places and knew not the Street andits ancient
spirit.
Over the seas there was a great victory, and in triumph most ofthe young
men returned. Those who had lacked something lacked it no longer,yet did fear
and hatred and ignorance still brood over the Street; for manyhad stayed
behind, and many strangers had come from distance places to theancient houses.
And the young men who had returned dwelt there no longer. Swarthyand sinister
were most of the strangers, yet among them one might find a fewfaces like those
who fashioned the Street and moulded its spirit. Like and yetunlike, for there
was in the eyes of all a weird, unhealthy glitter as of greed,ambition,
vindictiveness, or misguided zeal. Unrest and treason were abroadamongst an
evil few who plotted to strike the Western Land its death blow,that they might
mount to power over its ruins, even as assassins had mounted inthat unhappy,
frozen land from whence most of them had come. And the heart ofthat plotting
was in the Street, whose crumbling houses teemed with alienmakers of discord
and echoed with the plans and speeches of those who yearned forthe appointed
day of blood, flame and crime.
Of the various odd assemblages in the Street, the Law said muchbut could
prove little. With great diligence did men of hidden badgeslinger and listen
about such places as Petrovitch’s Bakery, the squalid RifkinSchool of Modern
Economics, the Circle Social Club, and the Liberty Cafe. Therecongregated
sinister men in great numbers, yet always was their speechguarded or in a
foreign tongue. And still the old houses stood, with theirforgotten lore of
nobler, departed centuries; of sturdy Colonial tenants and dewyrose-gardens in
the moonlight. Sometimes a lone poet or traveler would come toview them, and
would try to picture them in their vanished glory; yet of suchtravelers and
poets there were not many.
The rumour now spread widely that these houses contained theleaders of a
vast band of terrorists, who on a designated day were to launchan orgy of
slaughter for the extermination of America and of all the fineold traditions
which the Street had loved. Handbills and papers fluttered aboutfilthy gutters;
handbills and papers printed in many tongues and in manycharacters, yet all
bearing messages of crime and rebellion. In these writings thepeople were urged
to tear down the laws and virtues that our fathers had exalted,to stamp out the
soul of the old America—the soul that was bequeathed througha thousand and a
half years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, justice, and moderation. Itwas said that the
swart men who dwelt in the Street and congregated in its rottingedifices were
the brains of a hideous revolution, that at their word of commandmany millions
of brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisometalons from the
slums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying tillthe land of
our fathers should be no more. All this was said and repeated,and many looked
forward in dread to the fourth day of July, about which thestrange writings
hinted much; yet could nothing be found to place the guilt. Nonecould tell just
whose arrest might cut off the damnable plotting at its source.Many times came
bands of blue-coated police to search the shaky houses, though atlast they
ceased to come; for they too had grown tired of law and order,and had abandoned
all the city to its fate. Then men in olive-drab came, bearingmuskets, till it
seemed as if in its sad sleep the Street must have some hauntingdreams of those
other days, when musketbearing men in conical hats walked alongit from the
woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Yet couldno act be
performed to check the impending cataclysm, for the swart,sinister men were old
in cunning.
So the Street slept uneasily on, till one night there gathered in
Petrovitch’s Bakery, and the Rifkin School of ModernEconomics, and the Circle
Social Club, and Liberty Cafe, and in other places as well, vasthordes of men
whose eyes were big with horrible triumph and expectation. Overhidden wires
strange messages traveled, and much was said of still strangermessages yet to
travel; but most of this was not guessed till afterward, when theWestern Land
was safe from the peril. The men in olive-drab could not tellwhat was
happening, or what they ought to do; for the swart, sinister menwere skilled in
subtlety and concealment.
And yet the men in olive-drab will always remember that night,and will
speak of the Street as they tell of it to their grandchildren;for many of them
were sent there toward morning on a mission unlike that whichthey had expected.
It was known that this nest of anarchy was old, and that thehouses were
tottering from the ravages of the years and the storms and worms;yet was the
happening of that summer night a surprise because of its veryqueer uniformity.
It was, indeed, an exceedingly singular happening, though afterall, a simple
one. For without warning, in one of the small hours beyondmidnight, all the
ravages of the years and the storms and the worms came to atremendous climax;
and after the crash there was nothing left standing in the Streetsave two
ancient chimneys and part of a stout brick wall. Nor did anythingthat had been
alive come alive from the ruins. A poet and a traveler, who camewith the mighty
crowd that sought the scene, tell odd stories. The poet says thatall through
the hours before dawn he beheld sordid ruins indistinctly in theglare of the
arc-lights; that there loomed above the wreckage another picturewherein he
could describe moonlight and fair houses and elms and oaks andmaples of
dignity. And the traveler declares that instead of the place’swonted stench
there lingered a delicate fragrance as of roses in full bloom.But are not the
dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?
There be those who say that things and places have souls, andthere be those
who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I have toldyou of the
Street.