« p. 57-62: The Skyscraper Seen From Above and At Night
Up the Hudson
p. 63-65
Tuesday morning at nine, a July morning that God must have made in a good mood. I travel away from New York with a few thousand delighted and noisy people up the Hudson in the most delightful ship I’ve ever traveled on, the Hendrik Hudson, a white and gold palace cheerfully tooting down the river. All the decks are full of life and good cheer. The day-trippers carry their provisions with them; a colorful newspaper, a box full of candy, a bag of fruit. Down in the salon, an Italian plays American dance songs that have been composed by a Polish Jew. The Americans continually applaud and demand to hear the songs again and again. Up on the sundeck, the air is sharp like on the sea.
I stand at the rear of the uppermost deck and look back at the enormous city, which I’ll be returning to in three or four months. Looking back at New York, I conjure up the contours of the tall buildings and have nothing new to say about them. I usually have a standard which allows me to compare people and things, what things are good in them or bad in them or beautiful or ugly in them. But now, when I really need to evaluate the tall buildings, my standards break down and I throw them out.
Looking back at New York, I say to myself: the tall buildings back there are nothing but the simple, cold, bricked-in spirit of the bourgeoisie of our day. A cold, freezing-cold arrogance, which has nothing to do with the shining bravery of the great adventurers or even the poor people who make their living and risk their lives working in the caissons. It’s a well-calculated spirit, which builds with rock and claws itself into the rock and will never soften, unless an earthquake comes and washes the entire island into the bay.
The Hendrik Hudson glides, glides, carrying noise and cheer on all five of its backs up the broad stream which bears the same name it does, the name of a bold and restless man. A palisade appears, and under the palisade large red cliffs, and under them a forest which stretches from the rock to the edge of the water below. At the edge of the forest and the stream, down by the water, tents stand, a mass of tents. You can see people standing in front of these tents in the summer morning, pushing off canoes from the shore and paddling naked with short Indian oars. Others run into the water up to their hips, and others swim around.
Many of these tents display flags that flutter merrily in the breeze. Each one carries a beautiful sounding Indian name. We see these summer-tents, these camps, for hours as we travel many miles up the Hudson. Many of them come in groups, twos or threes, especially on the small clearings by the shore. You can often look into these tents. You see iron beds, chairs, an open hearth, a gramophone, a suitcase, a kitchen’s worth of utensils. Some of these tents are pretty, painted and decorated with ornaments, mostly Indian ornaments, and when the good-natured and cheerful people here on the ship see a pretty tent, they shout and wave, cheerfully applauding at the tent owner, who answers from the shore by swinging his arms, towels and flags.
In front of one of the tents, a giant brute sits in shaggy pants, his browned upper body a little pale. He shoots his revolver as we pass just for fun. He’s comfortable. He lives completely by himself in his tent. So far as I can see, his tent stands entirely alone. To the left and the right are forests, streams, cliffs, for far and wide nothing but forest, no other tent, nothing. He sits there on the Hudson in front of his wigwam. He smokes his short pipe, fishes, roasts his fish and lets himself dream. When it is expected of him, he shoots his revolver into the air whenever a large ship passes by. He enjoys himself, as they say.
I watch this hermit on a July morning. Who is this bold Leatherstocking, this true Natty Bumpo, this sharp eagle, this dangerous Mohican?
It’s just one of the ten thousand employees of the Singer Building out here on holiday, one of the exhausted, overtired, worked to death, bustled-about and pushed-around inhabitants of the skyscraper city far behind us. For a couple of days, he gets to feel what they call being a person.