Nightlife

“ At no other hour were the pavements so thronged, was there such a crush of carriages, such a blockade of cars, such running, and shouting, greetings and decorous laughter, such a swirl of pleasurable excitement. Never were the fashionable cafes and restaurants so crowded and brilliant. It is not a carnival time; it is just the flow and ebb of a night's pleasure, an electric night which has all of the morning except its peace, a night of the gayest opportunity and unlimited possibility. ”

“ Only those who are called by business or curiosity to walk into this night world know of the strange sights it presents.
At 12 o’clock the night in the city may be said to begin. By that time the day toilers are at home, and the night shift is on. The street cars have ceased to run, and the last belated citizen, hurrying home from “the lodge” or the political caucus is, or should be, at home. Even the slow-moving couples who have been to the theater and partaken of oysters at the “café for ladies and gents,” have bowed to the inevitable and reluctantly turned homeward. ”

“ To see them close by with our last glance before entering an inn is good, or, far off, on a midsummer night when we are to watch the sun rise from the encampment which makes one of them, or to fancy them by the winter fire; but to see them thus, in full summer, when day is separate from day only by brief, perfumed nights of stars, stimulates like a page of saga or history or a perfect rhyme, setting the heart free. ”

“ Then visit from local manager or secretary—friends—strangers, a walk round the town to get "copy," tea, a good hour's drawing (no matter how tired I can work on tea) , dress, off to evening's work on stage; autographs to be written and people to meet; back to change, supper at some club, speeches; back 3 a.m., bed, sleep—no, only occasionally. Hotel servants turn on electric light, begin sweeping the passage—sw—w—w—whish, sw—w—w—whish! they chat and laugh just outside one's door; they gradually sweep down the long, long passage. Doze—sleep. Bang, bang! "Five o'clock, sir." ”

“ It is quite a sight at night walking home—however late one may be—to see on the maidans and open spaces bright lamps placed on the dusty turf, and groups of Parsees and others sitting round them on mats—playing cards, and enjoying themselves very composedly. Round the neighborhood of the Bunder quay and the club-houses and hotels the scene is rather more gay and frivolous. How pleasant and cool the night air, and yet not too cool! The darkies sleep out night-long by hundreds in these places and on the pavements under the trees. ”

“ Life there does not begin till eight o'clock in the evening, if as early. The clanging of cans and the effort at music is terrifying. Hotels of from four to five stories, with all their balconies illuminated, gave an effect of festive cheerfulness which the rest of the city lacked utterly. ”

“ The morning foggy and chill; the hotel parlor, so pleasant the evening before, as you sat upon its comfortable sofa with a party of friends looking now quite as miserable as you feel, with its gay bouquets of yesterday drooping and faded. Blue-looking men emerging from the bar-room, twisting their travelling-shawls, in folds more warm than graceful, over their chests and shoulders; ladies shivering as the chill morning air strikes their but half-protected, shrinking figures. ”

“ The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to “take one’s ease at one’s inn”! ”

“ You sleep in the office of the hotel, between two safes, because there is no room to be had anywhere. Your curtainless windows are right on the street, and the endless razzle-dazzle of night-life goes on. ”

“ We talk and laugh with our companions, who are dressed in a light gauze, and whose tresses are adorned with flowers; we press them to partake of exquisite sherbets, differently prepared. The hour of supper being arrived, we repair to rooms illuminated with the lustre of a thousand tapers fragrant with amber. The supper-room is surrounded by three vast galleries, in which are placed musicians, whose various instruments fill the mind with the most pleasurable and the softest emotions. ”

“ It is a night and place when one might hear such a story as that of "The Bells," but the faces all look friendly and we chat on until dinner, about anything save murder. It is a good night for sleep and I am not long in seeking that tonic of nature. ”

“ The inexorable bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow have scarcely yielded their last feather to the sleeper’s head before the drowse is rudely shaken from his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises himself, he finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over, and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine till the flag waves on the capitol. ”

“ The people from the other hotels must all come here to drink the mineral waters and take the baths, to dance twice a week if they wish, to hear the music three times a day, to attend various entertainments given by marvellous prestidigitateurs from Paris and singers from Vienna; and though these things are very ignoble to talk about when one is among the grand mountains, yet there come nights and days when it rains in torrents, and when the most enthusiastic mountain-climber must condescend to be amused or bored under a sheltering roof. ”

“ We can now see that this hostelry of the Human Life is not a house of Suffering so far as we are concerned, but the Gate of Mercy. When thus the Night of Life is over and the Glorious Morning begins to dawn, most of the travellers begin to bustle about and with much stamping, shouting, and parade, go out into the outside air. ”

“ You have worked hard, or played hard, toiled over the mountain under the burning sun, and now the evening has come and you sit at ease at the inn and ask for nothing but a pipe, a quiet talk, and so to bed. "And the morrow's uprising to deeds shall be sweet." You have had your fill of adventure for the day. The morning's passion for experience and possession is satisfied, and your ambitions have shrunk to the dimensions of an easy chair. ”

“ The great hotel was swarming with life, ablaze with light, resonant with the tread of feet, the hum of voices, the musical din of the band, and full of the sights and sounds which fill such human hives at a fashionable watering place in the height of the season. ”

“ How often when we have been doomed to spend the night in some wretched inn or house, half-stifled by the heat and bad smells, tormented beyond endurance by swarms of mosquitoes, sand-flies, fleas, or perhaps worse, have we sighed for the little cabins with their comfortable elastic mattresses, the fresh clean sheets, and the cool night wind that would have been fanning us as we rocked in our dear Claymore! ”

“ There was no sleeping to be done, for some of the rising generation rose all night, and made the little cabin vocal with their cries, so that only those who enjoy the music of sleepless babes could be said to have a pleasant night in that vicinity. ”

“ Immediately after supper, we drove once more out of town, to a garden and tea-room, where all degrees and ages dance jovially together till morning. Whilst one party wheel briskly away in the valz, another amuse themselves in a corner with cold meat and rhenish. ”

“ To look forward to luncheon and an afternoon nap, to anticipate dinner and then digest it, makes the day run with pleasant monotony into the night. And night is worth the inspection. The beds in the train are comfortable enough, but the night is vested with misty beauty, and its fascination woos the traveller from his rest. There is the roar of the engine, the rumble of the carriages, the buzz of insects, and the faint rustle of the night wind over the plains. ”

“ A great many people like to spend months in a comfortable hotel, lounging on the piazzas, playing lawn-tennis, taking a morning ride or afternoon drive, making an occasional picnic excursion up some mountain cañon, getting up charades, playing at private theatricals, dancing, flirting, floating along with more or less sentiment and only the weariness that comes when there are no duties. ”

“ They are people of leisure, and, after their manner, of pleasure. How they swarm in the cafés in the Gate of the Sun—where they keep up the Moorish custom of calling waiters by two claps of the hands—or on the one great thoroughfare, Calle de Alcalá, or in the bull-ring of a Sunday! They are never at rest, yet never altogether active. They never sleep, or, if they do, others take their places in the public resorts. ”

“ When the sun has set and evening has come, supper over, we sit in the lamp-lit drawing-room, enjoying the sweet intoxication of the ladies' presence. Or we lounge on the verandah outside the open windows, listening to the chat within, hearing around us the whispers of the forest, or the ripple and risp of the moonlit river, gazing at the profound shadows of the wooded ranges opposite, and inhaling the fragrant sweets of the sleeping garden. Peaceful and silent is that starlit night in the bush. ”

“ A coarse, ill-cooked dinner, untidy service, and an unappeased appetite must be compensated by active interest in grand and peculiar scenery; a hard bed and a sleepless night, by the intelligent enjoyment of famous places clothed with historic interest; foul smells and rank odors, by the charming study of a unique people, extraordinarily interesting in their wretched squalor and nakedness. ”

“ The latest sitter leaves him standing far in the night, prepared to live right on, while suns rise and set, and his "good night" has as brisk a sound as his "good morning;" and the earliest riser finds him tasting his liquors in the bar ere flies begin to buzz, with a countenance fresh as the morning star over the sanded floor,—and not as one who had watched all night for travellers. And yet, if beds be the subject of conversation, it will appear that no man has been a sounder sleeper in his time. ”

“ The next day he asked for and obtained a holiday and started northwards.
It was evening when he arrived; he went to a little inn, and after dinner he walked to the jetty and stood upon it looking at the water leaping on the bar, and the glowing line of the sun-bathed hills. He looked and he looked and he looked, and behold! there was nothing there which he desired. The hunger of twenty years was for something which this beauty recalled to him—nothing more. The Glamour-Land was not here. ”

“ Hence the luxuriant hotel, with all its home comforts, its artistic adornments, and its princely entertainment, beauty for the eye, music for the ear, feasting the æsthetic while feeding the materialistic nature of man. All this enjoyment, while a soft, balmy air is breathed beneath a clear, blue sky, and while the invalid is bathed in the bright, warm sunshine of a southern clime, induces repose, peace, content, happiness, and health. ”

“ The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round of calls among friends scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when one may divert himself with summer orchestras or itinerant bands of Italian singers in crimson sashes, or revel in a rare profusion of beautiful flowers ”

“ People had their sleeping rooms, with, it might be, antechambers, rooms that were always sanitary at least whatever the degree of comfort and privacy, and for the rest they lived much as many people had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days, eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of public resort, going to their work in the industrial quarters of the city or doing business in their offices in the trading section. ”

“ But when, after dinner, we sat and smoked out on the balcony and watched the still gardens, the glimmering houses and, above all, the noble bay sleeping beneath the gentle shadow of the night, I confess to a feeling that, after all, man is at home wherever Nature smiles so kindly. ”

“ At nights the principal ways are brilliantly lighted, and in passing by one sees scores of people in the fascinating cafés enjoying the refreshing night air and the merry music as they sit and sip.
The Champs Elysees at night is one great highway of pleasure. ”

“ The night-life of the great glaring city poured on unceasingly—the stream of souls all hurrying by divers routes and means toward a state where they sought to lose themselves—to forget the pressure of the bars that held them—to escape the fret and worry of their harassing personalities, and touch some fringe of happiness! ”

“ Pent up in a close, dusty atmosphere from half-past five or six o’clock in the morning till seven or eight o’clock at night, from week to week, without change, without intermission, it is not to be wondered at that they fly to the spirit and beer-shops, and the dancing-houses, on the Saturday nights to seek those, to them, pleasures and comforts which their own destitute and comfortless homes deny. ”

“ Dives, who had lived so comfortably, clothed in purple and fine linen, and had had such a good coat, and such excellent dinners, and such a cellar of wine, and such good friends at his dinners, goes to sleep one night after a banquet, and wakes up, and lo!—he is in hell. ”