The New York Evening Post

“ Talent, the most expert and brilliant that money can attract, as exemplified throughout the pages of this booklet, gives you the secret of reader interest and reader confidence in the New York Evening Journal—an overwhelming public preference over one hundred per cent greater than the next largest standard size evening newspaper in New York City. ”

“ For the past quarter of a century the New York Evening Journal has attracted the largest readership of any evening newspaper in the United States on the sound principle of greatest service to the greatest number of men and women in every substantial walk of life. ”

“ Improvements have been constant. The aim has been to give the public a better and still better newspaper, to make the New York Evening Journal more attractive and interesting to every member of the family. ”

“ Why, that isn't the way to do at all—in New York. It is easy to see you are a stranger, and don't read the papers. The correct thing nowadays is for the guest to criticise his entertainers. Mayor So-and-So always does it. And only last year—it was at an Irish banquet, too—the speaker of the evening, a Down-Easter like yourself, just spilled boiling vitriol over the whole company, and rubbed it in. ”

“ The Editor of the New York Evening Star is so well known and so highly estimated as a political writer, that we believe there is no party which does not feel the stronger for his friendship—or does not experience some dread from his opposition. His genius, however, does not exclusively delight in the carte and tierce of political strife. ”

“ It is coruscating in wit, daring in love, and biting in its palpable caricature of many well-known persons in New York society; but it is so very much more than a clever society novel making the bid of audacity for ephemeral craze. ”

“ From what you say, I think charity must be the gayest of all the virtues; certainly it cuts the most considerable figure of any during the New York season. I am sure you enjoyed the private theatricals; for we all like occasionally to play a part not our own. ”

“ Thursday.—Is there in this world anything more wearisome, more dismal, more intolerable, more indigestible, more stupefying, more unbearable, anything more calculated to kill both soul and body than a great dinner at New York? ”

“ The “Thimble Theatre” in the Evening Journal plays to the largest audience of evening newspaper readers in America. That means nearly half of all the people in New York who buy any New York evening newspaper. ”

“ The excitement is kept alive by daily notices. Paper vies against paper in describing and commenting on her European antecedents and her life since she landed, until some new star appears, or until, often the case, the poor lady, in spite of the press assertions that all this homage delights her, is fairly driven out of New York. ”

“ But he wasn't thinking about that; it was what he had to do when he arrived there: watch a woman—whom he considered a very nice woman—in a lawsuit with a shoemaker; have a talk with each of them, get both sides of the matter, and write a good story, with facetious, satirical touches in it, for New York to smile over the next morning at breakfast. ”

“ I feel, as I write, that any remarks I make on New York society cannot be perfectly free from bias, owing to the overwhelming kindness and glowing hospitality which I met with in that city. I found so much to enjoy in society, and so much to interest and please everywhere, that when I left New York it was with the wish that the few weeks which I was able to spend there could have been prolonged into as many months. ”

“ New York, more than any city in the world, unless it be Paris, loves to be amused, thrilled and surprised all at the same time; and will accept with outstretched hand any one who can perform this astounding feat. ”

“ SUMTER has fallen at last. So much may be accepted. Before many hours I hope to stand amid the ruins of a spot which will probably become historic, and has already made more noise in the world than its guns, gallant as the defence may have been. The news will produce an extraordinary impression at New York—it will disconcert stock-jobbers, and derange the most ingenious speculations. ”

“ It is such as no one could have written except one who was part of it and saw it all, and who with his greater love of literature still makes us realize that in New York it has always been not the superior but subordinate of journalism. ”

“ I have been on the Elevated—the huge shuttle of the great city—hour by hour, had my soul woven into New York on it, back and forth, up and down, until it was hardly a soul at all, a mere ganglion, a quivering, pressed-in nerve of second-story windows, skies of clotheslines, pale faces, mist and rumble and dust. “Perhaps I have a soul,” I say. “Perhaps I have not. Has any one a soul?” When I look at the men I say to myself, “Now I will look at the women,” and when I look at the women I say, “Now I will look at the men.” Then I look at shoes. Men are cheap in New York. ”

“ One good picture is worth ten thousand words, says an old proverb. The Evening Journal is invariably first in serving its readers with accurate, informative, illuminating and exclusive news pictures. Each picture must pass the scrutiny of the most critical staff of experts to be good enough for reproduction in the Evening Journal. New Yorkers know they get better and more interesting pictures in the Evening Journal than in any other New York newspaper.
[Pg 7]
MEANS LIFE TO THE NEWS
You may have the news beat of a century on your desk. ”

“ He possesses much general information, and practical dexterity in applying it, great world-knowledge and aplomb, financial shrewdness, readiness in composition—speaks half-a-dozen languages, dabbles in literature, in business, in every thing but politics—talks metaphysics one minute, and dances a polka the next—in short, knows a little of every thing, with a knack of reproducing it effectively; moreover, is a man of moral purity, deference to women and hospitality to strangers, which I take to be the three characteristic virtues of a New-York gentleman. ”

“ It's time the worldliness of the world was viewed with fresh eyes. Woman, so long held in restraint, in many ways is a better observer than conventional man. She is like a countryman newly arrived in the city. It takes a countryman to see the real sights of New York ”

“ What is particularly worthy of admiration is, that this terrible art, which has baffled the studies and researches of philosophers, astrologers, theurgists, and other sages, was chiefly confined to the most ignorant, decrepid, and ugly old women in the community, with scarce more brains than the broomsticks they rode upon.
When once an alarm is sounded, the public, who dearly love to be in a panic, are always ready to keep it up. ”

“ The world is a bewildering place for one unused to it. All the savoir-faire and sophistication acquired in reception-rooms didn't stand me in very good stead when it came to earning my own living in New York City. ”

“ You try to tell it—and you can’t. That’s why the people who’ve been there and come back so often have nothing to say. That’s why so many of the books—except those that contain diaries jotted down on the minute—that are written afterward are so often disappointing. It’s like a great secret in every man’s soul that he knows and thinks about, and can never get out of him. So I shall make no attempt to do more than to tell the little things, the small human details—”
You will see that I was following my own train of thought as I broke in, “But New York life will get hold of you again.” ”

“ At a small dinner-party or a big reception, in one of the great mansions of New York, or in a suite of rooms high above the traffic of the street, conversation was free-and-easy, with or without the aid of a cocktail, and laughter came in gusts, and American men and women spoke of the realities of life frankly and without camouflage, with a directness and sincerity that touched the essential truth of things. ”

“ For a moment he stands locking from the window at the newsboys howling the afternoon papers. The crowds in front of the bulletin boards grow more vociferous. New York at large is preparing to succumb to its once-in-four-years period of hysteria. ”

“ There is a stirring vitality of busy life about this your city of New York, striking with astonishment the stranger's mind. How great is the progress of Humanity! Its steps are counted by centuries, and yet while countless millions stand almost at the same point where they stood, and some even have declined since America first emerged out of an unexplored darkness which had covered her for thousands of years, like the gem in the sea ”

“ One need not wonder very long that nearly every man one knows in New York is at best a mere cheered-up and plucky pessimist. Of course one has to go down and see one’s favourite New Yorker, one needs to and wants to, and one needs to get wrought in with him too, but when one gets home, who is there who does not have to get free from his favourite New Yorker, shake himself off from him, save his soul a little longer? “Men are cheap,” it keeps saying over and over to one,—a New York soul does. It keeps coming back—whispering through all the aisles of thought. ”

“ But if you believe that there is also an inherent, characteristic beauty in the material manifestations of the spirit of our own new, vigorous, fearless republic—and whether you do or not, if you care to look at one of these sudden contrasts referred to—not a stone's throw farther up the water-front there is a notable sight of newest New York. ”

“ Is there any body in New-York with sufficient moral courage to sleep upon any thing short of a French bed-stead? Is there a chamber-maid who will lie upon any thing less than a paliastre? Are there any more fat, or plump, or round, or full people? ”

“ But if I may be allowed one more word, I think the trouble about our New York society is that we have too much of it. We have no leisure to select. And then we seem to be always en representation—as Senior said of an American girl. We are consumed with a desire to make an impression,—that deadly foe to good manners,—or else we wrap ourselves in reserve like a garment. ”

“ The moment they are bored with the pastime, they will drop the pretence, and feel injured if the man complains. We take the beauty of their faces, the softness of their eyes, for the outward signs of tenderness and fidelity ”

“ I find the pioneer business has less of romance in the reality than in the description, and I find some tough stumps to pry up and heavy stones to roll out of the way, and I get exhausted and desponding, and I should like a little of your sinew to come to my aid at such times, as it was wont to come at the Louvre....
"There is nothing new in New York; everybody is driving after money, as usual, and there is an alarm of fire every half-hour, as usual, and the pigs have the freedom of the city, as usual ”

“ I was born there, and when I wish to rest and get away from the noise and turmoil of New York, I go there and grow a younger and a better man amid the Sunday stillness which reigns perpetually in its streets. ”

“ It seemed as if I could not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores. ”

“ It is gratifying to observe that any known deviation from the rules of morality is punished with exclusion from the houses of those who are considered the leaders of New York society; it is also very pleasing to see that to the best circles in New York wealth alone is not a passport. ”

“ As said in another chapter, people of position are people of position the world over, and all the cities strung around the whole globe are like so many chapter-houses of a brotherhood, to which letters of introduction open the doors.
However, this is off the subject, which is to advise those who have no position, or letters, how to acquire the former. It is a long and slow road to travel, particularly long and slow for a man and his wife in a big city. In New York people could live in the same house for generations, and do, and not have their next door neighbor know them even by sight. ”

“ He would be confronted with a mournful fact in our social life: the men who “go out” are nearly all silly striplings who, on reaching a sensible age, discreetly remain at home.
He would soon begin to perceive that New York society is a blending of the ludicrous and pathetic. The really charming women have two terrible faults, one which their fathers, husbands, and brothers have taught them, and one which they have apparently contracted without extraneous aid. ”

“ As criticism, in the nobler sense of the word, is for me enjoyment, I've in other words much liked them. Only they've made me again, as I hinted to you other things had, want to get hold of the little lady and pump the pure essence of my wisdom and experience into her. She must be tethered in native pastures, even if it reduces her to a back-yard in New York. If a work of imagination, of fiction, interests me at all (and very few, alas, do!) ”

“ Nor, on the other hand, must anyone suppose because the younger fashionables in New York pay few visits and never have days at home, that they are a bit less careful about the things which they happen to consider essential to good-breeding.
The best type of young men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in their club or at the house of a young woman, not tête-a-tête, but invariably playing bridge. ”