HOW TO LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY

BY THE REV. DR. CHARLES E. JEFFERSON

It is not easy to live anywhere if one has high ideals and strong desires. It is especially hard to live in New York City. This is because New York is unique. To be sure every city is unique, but New York is unique in a multitude of ways. For instance, no other American city has an island at the center of it, on which over two million people are living. No other city has two wide rivers flowing through it, cutting the land into a narrow strip, thus creating an unparalleled congestion of traffic. No other city asks so many of its people to live twenty and thirty and forty stories above the sidewalk. No other city in the United States cuts its bedroom space into such small bits, and asks the bulk of its population to put up with such meager home accommodations. New York is probably the noisiest of all the cities in the world. We have recently added airplanes to our repertoire. New York is the most uncomfortable of all cities to get around in. No other city has so many automobiles to the square yard. There is no way of traveling in comfort inside New York, not even in a Rolls Royce. The highest priced automobiles crawl up and down Fifth Avenue like snails. No other American city has six million people in it. That is the cause of most of our troubles. It is these people who make it difficult for us to live. In New York we are compelled to live close together. Our neighbors are not across the street; they are on the floor above us, and on the floor below us, and just across the hall. They peer in at our front windows, and at our back windows, too. There are no side windows in New York. They listen in through the partitions. We can never get people out of our eye. Wherever we go they are with us, great crowds of them. They have filled up the subway before we arrive. They have packed the elevated train before we get there. They have jammed every store before we decide to go shopping. If we go into a bank we are compelled to

stand in line. If we want to buy a theatre ticket we stand in line. If we want to buy a bunch of radishes we stand in line. No matter where we go there are a hundred people ahead of us. They swarm like the frogs and locusts of ancient Egypt. Egypt had ten plagues. We have only one, the plague of people.

When we

We could get on better with them if they were not so close to us. They elbow us and jostle us and shove us and step on us. Even when we get them out of our eye they tarry in our ear. go into the inner chamber and shut the door, we cannot shut it tight enough to keep out the sounds of people. We hear them day and night. "Night" is only a poetic expression, for New York City is like the New Jerusalem. There is no night there. A Biblical writer informs us that once upon a time there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. No one has ever made such a statement about New York. How to live in a city close up to people who never keep still is one of the vexing problems of modern civilization.

And what a variety of people! They are here from the ends of the earth. They have brought their languages and customs and household gods. They have brought their odors and manners and habits, their oddities and vices and notions. New York is a foreign city built on American soil. It is Nineveh and Babylon and Rome and Tyre all rolled into one, and round this huge bundle of life the Goddess of Liberty has wrapped the Stars and Stripes. How to live in such a Babel of languages and such a bedlam of noises and such a welter of human nature, is a problem indeed.

But however difficult it may be, many people do it. Six million people do it, and most of them do it three hundred and sixty-five days every year. Multitudes of them do it victoriously, some of them do it radiantly, almost hilariously. More would do it triumphantly if they would only set about it in

earnest.

The person who purposes to live in New York ought to free himself from inherited or acquired prejudices against the city. Some people start out with the assumption that New York is the wickedest city since Sodom. The assumption is false. New York City is no wickeder than other cities. It is no viler than the

average country town. There is a vast amount of sin in the city, but not more in proportion to its population than in any other place. Thousands of the best people in the world live in New York City, and have lived here for many years without showing the slightest trace of contamination from their slimy surroundings. If a man is forever slandering New York in his heart he ought to go elsewhere. Not all one's time should be devoted to the question, "What is wrong with New York?" There is a deeper question to consider, "What is right with New York?"

After one has rid himself of his prejudices he ought to exorcise his conceits and his fads. Many New Yorkers are unhappy because of their egotism. They shone like stars of the first magnitude in their home town, but in New York their light is dimmed. A girl who has a wonderful voice in a village, finds on arriving in New York that her voice is not so wonderful as her village friends imagined. A young man who is a reputed Demosthenes in his town, finds on reaching New York that the people would rather see Babe Ruth make a home run than listen to the most eloquent Demosthenes who ever lived. A business man considered phenomenally clever in a city of a hundred thousand, is surprised on coming to New York to discover that there are other clever men beside himself. There is a great company of the disappointed in New York. Social climbers fail to climb and look doleful. Ladder-of-fame climbers cannot reach the rung on which their heart was set, and life is now "sound and fury, signifying nothing". No other city has a greater genius for taking the bumptiousness out of a person than New York. Like a sensible old woman, she takes her children one after the other on her knee and says, "Let no man think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but let him think soberly. Be not wise in your own conceits."

New York City is fiercely hostile to fads. She steps on all the fads with merciless promptness. There is a silly notion in certain educational circles, that a child ought never to be made to do what he does not want to do, and that he ought to be allowed to do just what he feels like doing. When people come to New York and start to doing just what they feel like doing, the city at once points out their error. One person is sent to the psycho

pathic ward in Bellevue, another is sent to the Tombs, another to the Island, and another to Sing Sing. All the people in our prisons are there for the simple reason that they were doing the things they felt like doing.

To live in New York one must step lively. Some one has jocosely said that we have only two classes here, the quick and the dead. Those who do not join the first are promptly numbered among the second. Men are stationed at strategic points throughout the city to exhort us to step lively. A New Yorker must be quick in the use of his feet, and of his eyes, and of his mind. Sluggishness is penalized. Lethargy is dangerous. Some mortals do not like to step lively. Let them move lively toward the country.

One of the slogans of New York is "Watch your step!" New Yorkers cannot afford to stumble or fall. If anyone falls, somebody is on top of him inside of ten seconds. One must watch his step in more ways than one. In eating and sleeping and exercising, in seeking acquaintances and making friends, one must watch his step. New York is not a city to be sick in. Sickness is too expensive. Prices are well-nigh crushing for those in good health. They are still heavier for invalids. If any man or woman is planning to be sick, let him keep out of New York.

The city is a master teacher in patience. To live happily in New York, one must have more than the patience of Job. What cannot be cured must be endured, and there are a lot of things in New York which cannot be cured in our generation. The subway jam, for instance, what can be done with that? Many persons pronounce it "abominable", "horrible", "atrocious", "outrageous", "infernal". These all seem to be fitting adjectives. The only trouble is they are all futile. The subway muddle cannot be solved by the use of adjectives. The only method at present available is to suffer and to wait. It has been said that "Tribulation works patience, and patience experience, and experience hope." We New Yorkers have had a deal of experience, and that experience leads us to hope that some day things are going to be better.

To live wisely in New York one should cultivate a friendly disposition. He should be ready to lend a hand. The city as a

whole cannot be changed. Reformers who rush to New York with the idea of making it over are found at last under a juniper tree. New York does not want to be reformed. She is too big a chunk of human flesh for any one man to cope with. No matter how earnestly she is denounced and exhorted, she refuses to budge. But one can keep alive in him a disposition to help others. The individual is always within reach. Every man with open eyes can find a chance every day to do a noble and helpful deed. No one of us can do much, but each one of us can do a little, and when we are faithful in that which is little, we are faithful also in much.

It is a good thing for a New Yorker to look often at the stars. Their steady, silent fires suggest permanence and order and purpose. The God who created the stars has also created New York City. If He created the stars for a purpose, the city was no doubt created for a purpose too. If God has a plan for the universe, He has a plan for our little earth, and if He has a plan for our earth, He has, of course, a plan for New York City. This city is big and rich and powerful, and her location is strategic. It looks as though she must have a tremendously important rôle to play, and a highly exalted position to fill. Her mission must be immeasurably important, and her failure to play the rôle assigned her would be a tragedy of cosmic dimensions. To be permitted to live in such a city is a privilege and a challenge, for to each New Yorker the opportunity is given to make a contribution, however small, to the higher life of the greatest city of that promising world which Columbus lifted out of the sea, and one of the most wonderful cities which have been permitted to play a part in the great drama of human life.