. The new New York : a commentary on the place and the people . e prevailing language correspondsto the supporting constituency. The old Bowery Theaterthat once housed traditions of the English stage with theelder Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Charlotte Cushman,still stands to-day, but it now belongs more to the He-brew than to the American, and performances are giventhere in German or Yiddish oftener than in English. Atthe side of it is the popular Atlantic Gardens, where vaude-ville, music, beer, and the German language are largelyprovided each night. Farther up town is the IrvingPlace Theater,
. The new New York : a commentary on the place and the people . e prevailing language correspondsto the supporting constituency. The old Bowery Theaterthat once housed traditions of the English stage with theelder Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Charlotte Cushman,still stands to-day, but it now belongs more to the He-brew than to the American, and performances are giventhere in German or Yiddish oftener than in English. Atthe side of it is the popular Atlantic Gardens, where vaude-ville, music, beer, and the German language are largelyprovided each night. Farther up town is the IrvingPlace Theater, once more devoted to Germans; and ashigh up on Madison Avenue as Fifty-Eighth Street thereis still another German theater. The language seems toprevail on the East Side. Not but what there are othertongues. The Italians crowd into the Teatro Italianoon the Bowery, as the Chinese into the queer littletheater on Doyers Street, or the Irish into Miners; butthere is always someone at your elbow who speaks Ger-man, or some kindred dialect. In other quarters of the. Pl. 55. — Across the Bowery looking East THE BOWERY 249 city there are colonies where one hears only Syrian, Greek,Russian, Rumanian, Hungarian; but on the Bowery,though all nationalities meet and talk each its ownlanguage, there is, aside from English, a preponderanceof German and Yiddish. The babel of tongues makes more of a noise than onewould imagine. There are four lines of street cars runningup the Bowery, besides the roaring elevated overhead andinnumerable vans, trucks, beer wagons, delivery wagons,and pushcarts rattling over pavements and through sidestreets. If the mob would make itself heard, it must shoutabove this din of traffic. As a result, almost everyonethere speaks explosively, talks much with his hands, andexpresses acceptance or dissent with his head. At theChatham Square end of the Bowery, where the elevatedmakes a junction with its Second Avenue line, the uproaris increased. The crowd presses close
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