The New Yorker

“ The Englishman who visits the United States for a few weeks only, commonly comes away with an idea that the New Yorker is the American people; whereas we have seen why it is that good American authorities maintain that in all the width and depth of the continent there is no aggregation of persons so little representative of the American people as a whole as the inhabitants of New York. ”

“ BEFORE we attempt to show the Reader the vast process that lies behind the making of a great magazine like The New Yorker, it is no doubt wise to give him first a bird's-eye view of the tremendous circulation which so vitally depends upon each weekly issue (for if it were not for these weekly issues, there would simply be no circulation of The New Yorker) . It is our hope here to open his eyes to the stupendous organization of which he forms a part, ere we acquaint him with the more detailed aspects of that organization and the size and scope of its equipment. ”

“ What is the difference between the life of the cave-dweller and the life of the modern New Yorker? We call it civilization. It is not at one bound or at one thousand that we pass from the primitive cave to New York City. Civilization is the accumulation of centuries of achievement. ”

“ As for the New York man (whom one is forever slighting because his rôle is so inconspicuous) , we have a type much less complex—quite the simplest type of normal male, in fact. The average New Yorker (that is, the New Yorker of the upper middle class) is a hard-working, obvious soul, of obvious qualities and obvious flaws. His raison d’être is to provide prodigally for his wife and children ”

“ It is to such men, and such only, that we are indebted for all our great improvements in the construction of elementary works for schools and private learners.'
S. Kirkham.
New-York, July 25, 1837.
Newspaporial.—Our readers are not ignorant of the high estimate which we place upon the 'New-Yorker' weekly journal. For industry, talent, interest, and general usefulness, we scarcely know its superior. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The air seemed charged with human activity, with toil-pulsations. She was all crowded about with human beings, and felt the mystery of what might be termed crowd-touch. Here, surely, was life—life thick, happy, busy, daring, ideal. Here was pioneering—a reaching forth to a throbbing future. So, as the boat landed, she mentally identified herself with this city, labeled herself New-Yorker, and became one of its millions. ”

“ The social life of this community is closely supervised by our Mr. Eustace Tilley, Superintendent of Recreation for The New Yorker. Staff luncheons are served here three times a day, and wit and brilliant conversation sparkle across the festive board. Every effort is made to keep their minds free from financial worries and mundane matters. The staff presents the contributors annually with a year's subscription to The New Yorker, worth the exact total of all their contributions laid side by side for fifty-two weeks, or five dollars. ”

“ After the letters have been mounted on these slugs and are in the form of words, they must be arranged next in sentences; and before a sentence may be used in The New Yorker it must be cleaned and polished. The work of brightening these sentences is accomplished by a trained editorial staff of 5,000 men named Mr. March ; and when they are sufficiently polished they are used for example by Mr. Ring Lardner in that story he is going to write. Sentences in The New Yorker vary in length from six inches to six months or $100 fine or both. ”

“ The adoption of mechanical presses came in the nick of time, for the increasing circulation of The New Yorker was forcing the staff to sit on issues day and night, in order to meet the demand, and the paper was rapidly getting out of touch with events. ”

“ Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred to. ”

“ In fact, so lifelike are these presses becoming that they may be said fairly to think; and as an encouraging example of this tendency, The New Yorker was pleased to receive yesterday from the largest of these Presses a personal check for five dollars ($5.00) for a year's subscription to The New Yorker — an act which might be called almost human. ”

“ It recognizes certain shortcomings and realizes that it is impossible for a magazine fully to establish its character in one number. At the same time it feels a great deal of pride in many of its features and heart-felt gratitude for the support it already has received.
The New Yorker starts with a declaration of serious purpose but with a concomitant declaration that it will not be too serious in executing it. It hopes to reflect metropolitan life, to keep up with events and affairs of the day, to be gay, humorous, satirical but to be more than a jester. ”

“ Or, if they change, they change together as one creature—be he millionaire or Hebrew shop-keeper, doctor of divinity or manager of comic opera. For, of all men under the sun, the New Yorker is a type; acutely suspicious of and instinctively opposed to anything independent of the type. Hence, in spite of the vast numbers of different peoples brought together on Manhattan Island, we find not a community of Americans growing cosmopolitan, but a community of cosmopolitans forced to grow New Yorkers. ”

“ This year my work in New York is going on splendidly. Mr. Leggett is a very rich man of New York and very much interested in me. The New Yorker has more steadiness than any other people in this country, so I have determined to make my centre here. ”

“ The Man on Broadway Just consider for a moment the countless number and variety of impressions that assail the eye and ear of the New Yorker who walks down Broadway in a busy hour of the day. Yet to how few of these does he pay the slightest attention. ”

“ Deane made a long strip of his napkin and ran it horizontally, methodically over his mouth. “You see,” he went on, “you’ll have to change your outlook on life, now that you are to become a part of the great City—a part of the great Machine. You’ll be proud of it, soon enough. The New Yorker is a man of service. He serves Business. He serves Country. He don’t think of himself. ”

“ The music was croaking out, every one was talking busily, and not one of the young ladies who looked enviously at the beautiful and brilliant heiress, nor the men who worshiped her at a distance, and who hated the young New Yorker for the privilege he enjoyed of talking to her—not one of them all dreamed ever so faintly of that other play being enacted off the stage. ”

“ Our own countrymen seem to lose their local peculiarities in such a crowd, and it is by chance epithets rather than by manner, that the New Yorker is distinguished from the Kentuckian, the Carolinian from the Down-Easter, the Virginian from the Texan. The German and Frenchman are more easily recognized. ”

“ At the back is the city, teeming with life, humming with trade, muttering with the thunder of passage. Opposite, in Jersey City, people say: “Every New Yorker has come a good half-hour late into the world, and is trying all his life to make it up.” ”

“ With this goes an air of almost offensive competency—an air that is part of the garments of the true New Yorker; as though he and he alone can compass the affair towards which he is forever hurrying. There is about him, always, the piquant insinuation that he is keeping someone waiting ”

“ He keeps up with the times; he meddles not in politics; he enjoys such sports as hunting with hounds and riding across country. The difference between him and the New Yorker is that he speaks three or four languages where the New Yorker only speaks one or two and he has sense enough to take many holidays in the year where the New Yorker takes but few. ”

“ An Englishman once complained that the roast beef and mutton were not such as he had at home, and he didn’t care for the other things, fussed-up dishes; but most persons, like the New Yorker, rejoice in what is provided, at least for a reasonable time, especially if they have come from plateau or desert or from almost anywhere. ”

“ In return for what he pays, the Parisian enjoys well-paved and well-cleaned streets, wide and unobstructed sidewalks, shade trees with benches under them for the weary, public gardens kept in beautiful order, etc., while the New-Yorker gets—well, the less said on this subject the better. ”

“ The complacent, correctly worded and phrased Bostonian, the haughty and self-assertive, successful New Yorker, is each assured that he has all there is of good to have, and that no good thing can come out of any other place than his. ”

“ Almost any other kind of young man suddenly uplifted by strange fortune they might have known some parallel for, but a newsboy of New York! All the New Yorkers they had met or heard of had been so rich and grand as to make them feel themselves, by contrast, mere country paupers, quite shivering with poverty and huddling for protection in their barely clean rags, so what was there to go on? ”

“ It is now the middle of February and by this time most magazines have got their Fourth of July issue behind them and are relaxing before the strenuous work on the Big Christmas Number. By nature The New Yorker cannot be so forehanded. Most of its contents must be speedily prepared by a dozen persons and the magazine must be speedily put together. ”

“ Tilley decided to call it New York, a clever combination of the first seven letters of the name of this magazine (The New Yorker) . Although "New York" is today the second largest city in the world, with a population well over four million, it is significant that every one of its citizens is actively con- nected with this magazine, most of them being engaged in contributing $5.00 an- nually — the best way of becoming a recognized citizen of "New York." ”

“ How it hardens our hearts, and makes vulgar our thoughts! Dives has ever gone to the devil, while Lazarus has been laid up in heavenly lavender. The hand that employs itself in compelling gold to enter the service of man has always been stigmatized as the ravisher of things sacred. The world is agreed about that, and therefore the New Yorker is in a bad way. There are very few citizens in any town known to me which under this dispensation are in a good way, but the New Yorker is in about the worst way of all. ”

“ Fifth Avenue, surely, is a thing to admire in the new sense as well as the old. It sometimes suggests, perhaps, the ill-natured definition of a New Yorker as a man who, when he makes a set of chimes, puts it in a life insurance building. But it more often suggests a restatement of this definition; that is, that a New Yorker is a man who, when he makes a life insurance building, puts a set of chimes in it. ”

“ The louder the report of the gun, the more violent the kick is. When a New-Yorker hears his beloved town called 'a city of kites and crows' his first impulse is to laugh; his second is to inquire as to the man who said it; and his third is to laugh again and louder when he discovers that the author of this assertion is from Nevada, a state where even Santa Claus on Christmas Eve does not dare go his rounds for fear of being held up by road-agents!"
This time a burst of hearty laughter mingled with the abundant applause as the speaker sat down. ”

“ That's what you hear in every city in America, big or little. And it's always the poor, impressionable New Yorker who says it, the fellow who has to put up with the depressing homeliness and dowdiness of Fifth Avenue. ”

“ To a New-Yorker, many things which they contain must necessarily appear stale, stupid, and commonplace. For instance, in one number half a page is taken up with the description of a trotting-wagon; to an American I should as soon think of describing a pair of boots; the one is as familiar an object to him as the other. But at the very first number, some clever folks took it into their heads that they were to be very personal,—that every character described or even alluded to in them was to represent a real living prototype ”

“ She was silent a moment in sheer surprise. She had thought of this Southern essay as a quickly passing incident, a colorful chapter whose page might any day be turned. But it was impossible to mistake his meaning. Clearly, he was deeply infatuated with this Arcadian experience and had no thought at present but to continue it indefinitely.
But it would pass! He was a New Yorker, after all. And what more charming than to have an old place in such a countryside—a position ready-made at one’s hand, to step into for a month or two when ennui made the old haunts tasteless? ”

“ It is not only New York that has changed its aspect in the hurrying years; the times have changed, too, and the conditions of life are not so hard for this adopted New Yorker as they were in his boyhood and early youth. ”

“ I have been guilty of suspecting that this attitude, together with his painstakingly correct clothes, constitute the chief elements in the New Yorker’s game of “bluff.” Let him wear what the ready-made tailor describes as “snappy” clothes, and he is at once respected as successful. A man may be living on one meal a day, but if he can contrive a prosperous appearance, together with the preoccupied air of having more business than he can attend to, he is in13 the way of being begged to accept a position, at any moment. ”