Ben Blair

The habits of a lifetime are not changed in a day. Ben Blair was accustomed to rising early, and he was astir next morning long before the city proper was thoroughly awake. In the hotel where he was stopping, the night clerk looked his surprise as he nodded a stereotyped "Good-morning." The lobby was in confusion, undergoing its early morning scrubbing, and the guest sought the street. The sun was just risen, but the air was already sultry, casting oppression and languor over every detail of the scene. The bare brick and stone fronts of the buildings, the brown cobblestones of the pavements, the dull gray of the sidewalks, all looked inhospitable and forbidding. Few vehicles were yet in motion--distributors of necessities, of ice, of milk, of vegetables--and they partook of the general indolence. The horses' ears swayed listlessly, or were set back in dogged endurance. The drivers lounged stolidly in their seats. Even the few passengers on the monotonously droning cars but added to the impression of tacit conformity to the inevitable. Poorly dressed as a rule, tired looking, they gazed at their feet or glanced out upon the street with absent indifference. It was all depressing.

Ben, normal, vigorous, country bred, shook himself and walked on. He was as susceptible as a child to surrounding influences, and to those now about him he was distinctly antagonistic. Life, as a whole, particularly work, the thing that does most to fill life, he had found good. That others should so obviously find it different grated upon him. He wanted to get away from their presence; and making inquiry of the first policeman he met, he sought the nearest park.

All his life he had heard of the beauty of the New York parks. The few people he knew who had visited them emphasized this beauty above all other features. Perhaps in consequence he was expecting the impossible. At least, he was disappointed. Here was nature, to be sure, but nature imprisoned under the thumb of man. The visitor had a healthy desire to roll on the grass, to turn himself loose, to stretch every joint and muscle; yet signs on each side gave warning to "keep off." The trees, it must be admitted, were beautiful and natural,--they could not live and be otherwise; but somehow they had the air of not being there of their own free-will.

Ben chose a bench and sat down. A listlessness was upon him that the ozone of the prairies had never let him feel. He felt cramped for room, as though, should he draw as full a breath as he wished, it would exhaust the supply. A big freshly-shaven policeman strolled by, eying him suspiciously. It gave the young man the impression of being a prisoner out on good behavior; and in an indefinite way it almost insulted his self-respect. For the lack of something better to do he watched the minion of the law as he pursued his beat. Not Ben Blair alone, but every person the officer passed, went through this challenging inspection. The countryman had been too much preoccupied to notice that he had companions; but now that his interest was aroused, he began inspecting the occupants of the other benches. The person nearest him was a little old man in a crumpled linen suit. Most of the time his nose was close to his morning paper; but now and then he raised his face and looked away with an absent expression in his faded near-sighted eyes. Was he enjoying his present life? Ben would have taken his oath to the contrary. Again there flashed over him the impression of a prison with this fellow-being in confinement. There was indescribable pathos in that dull retrospective gaze, and Ben looked away. In the land from which he came there could not be found such an example of hopeless and useless age. There the aged had occupation,--the care of their children's children, a garden, an interest in crops and growing things, a fame as prophets of weather,--but such apathy as this, never.