The Phial of Dread and other stories

I believe that I am now safe. This part of Columbia Street is not much
visited by any people who ever knew me. The other end is in Grand
Street. I doubt whether any of my acquaintance have vivid recollection
of that end either. As for myself, I was aware of neither end nor
middle till three days ago. Being in Broadway, with an infinite terror
hanging on my shoulders like a cloak--starting at every louder voice
of man, woman, or child---recoiling from every rapidly approaching
stranger who looked me in the face--I naturally enough wished to get
away--any where out of the bustle. On my left hand was Grand Street;
to turn into it was the most obvious method of escaping from Broadway.
So I _did_ turn. For a block beyond Brooks's great limbo of possible
but undeveloped pantaloons Grand Street keeps a fashionable air. Thus
far are whiffs of Broadway sucked into its draft; thus far you meet
Broadway faces; thus far you are reminded of Broadway---are not quite
at ease with the idea of being out of it--may at any moment be
accosted by somebody you have met before on the great pave. I walked
faster, therefore. Broadway began to fade out; the Bowery character
become slowly dominant. I reached--I crossed the Bowery. Now I began
to breathe freer. I was pretty sure--growing surer--that I should not
be recognized; and the cloak lifted from my shoulders. The terror did
not leave me, but it followed quietly afar off.

A strange place is the part of Grand Street I was going through now,
to be sure! Quite a Broadway by itself, though not _the_ Broadway,
thank Heaven! but a sort of shabby Broadway come to New York to visit
its merchant prince-cousin; and not being recognized as a connection,
going off in a huff and setting up for itself--the Broadway of the
east to west, entirely independent of the north to south aristocrat.
Or to the speculative mind it might seem an old shell shed by Broadway
the Magnificent thirty years ago, while marble and Albert granite were
unconceived--a shell captured by the hermit crab called Grand Street,
and peacefully lived in ever since; the ghost of old Broadway, as
known to our fathers, reappearing across the track of young Broadway,
yet a ghost, sociable, responsive, fearless of daylight, not to be
laid. All such thoughts as these whirled through my brain as I strode
along with nervous, devious feet, and they seemed to fight back for a
short farther distance _the terror_. I hailed them gladly, therefore,
and indulged them.

Here were tailors, from the plethora of their shops evidently
rejoicing in abundant custom, famous, blessed, well-to-do; and all
this within the world of Grand Street--elsewhere unknown. So many
green-grocers, with fresh Bermuda potatoes and cucumbers piled up in
front of them, supplying a class of citizens who never gave one
thought to Washington Market. So many celebrated doctors, all in black
and gilt on the dull sides of the two-story brick houses. Dentists, on
great door-plates of tarnished mock silver--and I had never heard of
them before. Mouths filled, teeth pulled, backs clothed, children
educated--all trades and professions going on--even a wholesale dry-
goods store taking up two numbers, like a Murray Street or Liberty
Street firm, and selling dollars' worths to its small neighbors who
did the pennyworth business; and evidently none of all these depended
in the least on any other part of New York for a living. I breathed
free in Grand Street, more and more.

All the baggage that it was at present convenient for my to carry was
a carpet-bag, not over heavy. I had that in my hand. What, then, was
to prevent my taking lodgings in Grand Street? I should not be traced
here; the chances were a thousand to one against my ever seeing a
known face; and these were the qualifications which just now would
make the most miserable tenement worth double the most sumptuous
parlor of the St. Nicholas. Why not take lodgings here?--yes, why not?

As I asked myself this question I stood, with the carpet-bag in my
hand, vacillating from one foot to the other, and once or twice
turning completely around. Take lodgings? Yes, to be sure. Why not?