Stephen Crane

New York Herald/July 5, 1891

Hard featured is the “tough youth.” Hard mannered is the tough girl. She abounds on the east side. Down around Tompkins square she and her striped jersey are particularly prevalent. There are musicales in Tompkins square these hot summer nights—band concerts they are called—and great is the rejoicing thereabouts each season at the advent of the band.

This particular tough girl’s name was Maggie. Her intimates call her “Mag.” And Mag goes.

After supper last Wednesday in the apartments of her parents in a Stanton street tenement house Mag announced to her brother:

“Say, Jimmy, I’m going to the band play tonight an’ I want de watch.”

“Oh, you do, do you! Well, now, I’m just goin’ out meself tonight an’ I need de ticker mor’n I need a dollar. So you don’t get it, see?”

“Don’t be fresh, Jimmy, you know it’s me own watch, an’ you said you’d give it me back last week. Give it me now or you don’t get it again.”

“Again! Rats! I don’t need to get it again. I got it now.”

A cloud of suspicion settled in the narrow strip between Mag’s bang and her eyebrows.

“Say, Jim, give it to me straight. Have you soaked that watch? If you have, I’ll tell dad.”

“Soakin’ nothin’. You’r always thinking people are soakin’ things. If the band loses the air tonight you’ll think they’ve hocked it. An’, say, if I catch you doin’ the walk tonight with that dude mash I’ll spoil his face, see? You’r getting too lifted, anyway, since ye got in de factory.”

Mag resorted to the feminine reply of slamming the door, and ten minutes later was lounging down the street with both hands stuck in the pockets of her black jacket, a flat brimmed glazed hat on the back of her head and some pliable substance in her mouth which she assiduously chewed upon. “Mag” was out for a good time, not a bad time in the sense of viciousness, mind you, but simply to lounge around that dreary, house hemmed, overcrowded, electric lighted square and to listen to the brassy melodies of the band.

Hundreds of other girls were there in the same way, and yet Local Propriety did not think of holding up its hands, scarcely of washing them.

It was Leiboldt’s band that furnished the attraction for the streams of infantile, young and middle aged humanity that poured into the square from the big tenements roundabout, meandered aimlessly along the paths and overflowed the benches. Babies with thin faces, that had breathed the air of stuffy little kitchens all their lives, were there to get a mouthful of what passed current for ozone.

The music was like a tonic to them. They danced shadow dances on the grass plats where the hissing electric lights cast fantastic figures for them.

“Them kids are havin’ all the fun,” observed Mag to her “ladifriend,” who had met her.

“Did you hear the heat laid out Bella’s baby ‘safternoon? Umha, so Ed told me. Hard on Bella, ain’t it? That’s four she’s lost, you know. She’s takin’ on awful, Ed says.”

“Didn’t she have no doctor?”

“Ayap, young fellow from de hospital. Didn’t do no good. Let’s go round the square and touch some of the gang for soda. I’m broke; you got any coin?”

“Nope, only a half, an’ I’m a savin’ up hard now.”

“What you goin’ to get?”

“One of them yachting waists, with a white cap. I think they real neat an’ stylish lookin’, don’t you?”

“Do fur your figger all right. I’m goin’ to have one of those long coat basques, with lace around the bottom of the skirt, made o’ that blue sateen I got. Going to get it made next week so I can have it for the excursion. Goin’, ain’t you?”

“Was, but Jimmy ain’t in de ‘sociation now; says they ain’t nathin’ but speelers in it, and when I told him I was goin’ swore he’d hock me shoes and give me away to the old man about Fred. Nice way to treat a sister, ain’t it, after me puttin’ up me wages fur him to rush the growler with ever since he lost his job. Jimmy’s getting awful tough and sometimes I feel real mortified about him. He don’t seem to care nathin’ about society nowadays. He’s left off keepin’ company with May too.”

“What’s he going to do anyway? Goin’ back to his trade in the fall when they open up?”

“I dunno. He talks a good deal about primaries and such things. Guess he’ll be a politician, if he don’t get some steady work this summer.”

It is eight o’clock and the music has begun. They are playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” and that melodious expression of a nation’s pride floats out over a queer and cosmopolitan audience. Hun and Hebrew, German and Gentile, Gaul and Celt, they all applaud it, though it is safe to say that at least one half the listeners don’t know what the air is.

It is music, however, and music of any kind is balm to the workwom souls of the teeming east side. Old men are there puffing stubby pipes and listening attentively.

Two grizzled sons of Erin, whose raiment bore plenteous marks of mother earth and mortar, were sitting solemnly together and discussing the quality of the music. “To me moind this band do play the classical tunes pretty well, Tim,” said one, “but O’im thinking ye’ll agree wid me that fur rale music the Sixty-ninth regiment band do beat out anything there be in this country.”

“These min do play smooth, but they don’t hav’ the shnap to um. Oi’ll say they do play smooth.”

“Your right; they do play smooth.”

“Yis, they do.”

“They do.”

“Yis.”

“O’i do say they play smooth.”

“So they may, but O’i know –.”

And the argument then grew heated.

Dark browed Italians slouched about in little groups chattering like magpies and then relapsing into sullen silence. Great admirers are they of Leader Leiboldt and his players. So, too, are the Italian women. Now and then you see one made picturesque by a gay colored native headdress or a bright hued gown. Queer colors there are in some of those costumes, shades that if introduced into a Broadway window would immediately be fashionable from very novelty.

But outnumbering all the rest are the Germans, the blue eyed, good natured Germans, who stand around and hum the airs to themselves.

And mingling with them all, giving a spice to every nationality, is the “tough girl” and her “tough brother.”

They are of no nation.

They are just “eastsiders.”

“Jimmy” gets there with the proceeds of his sister’s pawned watch, and generously buys beer for “the gang.” Everybody buys beer for that matter, it seems, not by the glassful; the financial resources of the east side could not stand such a pressure; but by the pailful. “Growler” is the only word known for it.

No matter what the size of the receptacle may be seven cents is the price. The hot nights have come and how the “growlers” are rushed!

The bearers hurry away in a stream, either to a convenient truck, there to lie down, gulp the beer and listen to the music, or to the roof of some neighboring tenement, where a little air comes stirring from the river, laden with suggestions of Hunter’s Point. Highly flavored, but enjoyable nevertheless.

“Say, Jimmy, what was ye sayin’ to me girl last?”

“Oh, I was just a stringin’ her about you; just guff. She said you hadn’t asked her to de picnic, and I told her ye had an important engagement with a cop and couldn’t get away to see her.”

“Ye just cut yer string; ye hear, young feller. I’ll take care of me girl meself. See?”

“All right, but, just the same, you don’t go to de picnic ‘less ye giv’ me de case fur de ticket first, see? I got stuck one already.”

“Who did you?”

“Billy.”

“What’s he doin’ now, anyway?”

“Nothin’. He’s married.”

“Come, now, you fellows, move on there. Move on, I tell you, or I’ll fan ye.” This from a policeman.

And they moved.

Only to stop on the next comer, join raspy voices with the band while it played “Annie Rooney” and loudly demand an encore.

The music programme, however, was a good one.