The Street

The Street
by H.P. Lovecraft

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those
who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of the Street.
Men of strength and honour fashioned that Street: good valiant men of our
blood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. At first it was but a
path trodden by bearers of water from the woodland spring to the cluster of
houses by the beach. Then, as more men came to the growing cluster of houses and
looked about for places to dwell, they built cabins along the north side, cabins
of stout oaken logs with masonry on the side toward the forest, for many Indians
lurked there with fire-arrows. And in a few years more, men built cabins on the
south side of the Street.
Up and down the Street walked grave men in conical hats, who most of the
time carried muskets or fowling pieces. And there were also their bonneted wives
and sober children. In the evening these men with their wives and children would
sit about gigantic hearths and read and speak. Very simple were the things of
which they read and spoke, yet things which gave them courage and goodness and
helped them by day to subdue the forest and till the fields. And the children
would listen and learn of the laws and deeds of old, and of that dear England
which they had never seen or could not remember.
There was war, and thereafter no more Indians troubled the Street. The men,
busy with labour, waxed prosperous and as happy as they knew how to be. And the
children grew up comfortable, and more families came from the Mother Land to
dwell on the Street. And the children’s children, and the newcomers’ children,
grew up. The town was now a city, and one by one the cabins gave place to
houses—simple, beautiful houses of brick and wood, with stone steps and iron
railings and fanlights over the doors. No flimsy creations were these houses,
for they were made to serve many a generation. Within there were carven mantels
and graceful stairs, and sensible, pleasing furniture, china, and silver,
brought from the Mother Land.
So the Street drank in the dreams of a young people and rejoiced as its
dwellers became more graceful and happy. Where once had been only strength and
honour, taste and learning now abode as well. Books and paintings and music came
to the houses, and the young men went to the university which rose above the
plain to the north. In the place of conical hats and small-swords, of lace and
snowy periwigs, there were cobblestones over which clattered many a blooded
horse and rumbled many a gilded coach; and brick sidewalks with horse blocks and
hitching-posts.
There were in that Street many trees: elms and oaks and maples of dignity;
so that in the summer, the scene was all soft verdure and twittering bird-song.
And behind the houses were walled rose-gardens with hedged paths and sundials,
where at evening the moon and stars would shine bewitchingly while fragrant
blossoms glistened with dew.
So the Street dreamed on, past wars, calamities, and change. Once, most of
the young men went away, and some never came back. That was when they furled the
old flag and put up a new banner of stripes and stars. But though men talked of
great changes, the Street felt them not, for its folk were still the same,
speaking of the old familiar things in the old familiar accounts. And the trees
still sheltered singing birds, and at evening the moon and stars looked down
upon dewy blossoms in the walled rose-gardens.
In time there were no more swords, three-cornered hats, or periwigs in the
Street. How strange seemed the inhabitants with their walking-sticks, tall
beavers, and cropped heads! New sounds came from the distance—first strange
puffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and then, many years later,
strange puffings and shrieks and rumblings from other directions. The air was
not quite so pure as before, but the spirit of the place had not changed. The
blood and soul of their ancestors had fashioned the Street. Nor did the spirit
change when they tore open the earth to lay down strange pipes, or when they set
up tall posts bearing weird wires. There was so much ancient lore in that
Street, that the past could not easily be forgotten.
Then came days of evil, when many who had known the Street of old knew it no
more, and many knew it who had not known it before, and went away, for their
accents were coarse and strident, and their mien and faces unpleasing. Their
thoughts, too, fought with the wise, just spirit of the Street, so that the
Street pined silently as its houses fell into decay, and its trees died one by
one, and its rose-gardens grew rank with weeds and waste. But it felt a stir of
pride one day when again marched forth young men, some of whom never came back.
These young men were clad in blue.
With the years, worse fortune came to the Street. Its trees were all gone
now, and its rose-gardens were displaced by the backs of cheap, ugly new
buildings on parallel streets. Yet the houses remained, despite the ravages of
the years and the storms and worms, for they had been made to serve many a
generation. New kinds of faces appeared in the Street, swarthy, sinister faces
with furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners .spoke unfamiliar words and
placed signs in known and unknown characters upon most of the musty houses.
Push-carts crowded the gutters. A sordid, undefinable stench settled over the
place, and the ancient spirit slept.
Great excitement once came to the Street. War and revolution were raging
across the seas; a dynasty had collapsed, and its degenerate subjects were
flocking with dubious intent to the Western Land. Many of these took lodgings in
the battered houses that had once known the songs of birds and the scent of
roses. Then the Western Land itself awoke and joined the Mother Land in her
titanic struggle for civilization. Over the cities once more floated the old
flag, companioned by the new flag, and by a plainer, yet glorious tricolour. But
not many flags floated over the Street, for therein brooded only fear and hatred
and ignorance. Again young men went forth, but not quite as did the young men of
those other days. Something was lacking. And the sons of those young men of
other days, who did indeed go forth in olive-drab with the true spirit of their
ancestors, went from distant places and knew not the Street and its ancient
spirit.
Over the seas there was a great victory, and in triumph most of the young
men returned. Those who had lacked something lacked it no longer, yet did fear
and hatred and ignorance still brood over the Street; for many had stayed
behind, and many strangers had come from distance places to the ancient houses.
And the young men who had returned dwelt there no longer. Swarthy and sinister
were most of the strangers, yet among them one might find a few faces like those
who fashioned the Street and moulded its spirit. Like and yet unlike, for there
was in the eyes of all a weird, unhealthy glitter as of greed, ambition,
vindictiveness, or misguided zeal. Unrest and treason were abroad amongst an
evil few who plotted to strike the Western Land its death blow, that they might
mount to power over its ruins, even as assassins had mounted in that unhappy,
frozen land from whence most of them had come. And the heart of that plotting
was in the Street, whose crumbling houses teemed with alien makers of discord
and echoed with the plans and speeches of those who yearned for the appointed
day of blood, flame and crime.
Of the various odd assemblages in the Street, the Law said much but could
prove little. With great diligence did men of hidden badges linger and listen
about such places as Petrovitch’s Bakery, the squalid Rifkin School of Modern
Economics, the Circle Social Club, and the Liberty Cafe. There congregated
sinister men in great numbers, yet always was their speech guarded or in a
foreign tongue. And still the old houses stood, with their forgotten lore of
nobler, departed centuries; of sturdy Colonial tenants and dewy rose-gardens in
the moonlight. Sometimes a lone poet or traveler would come to view them, and
would try to picture them in their vanished glory; yet of such travelers and
poets there were not many.
The rumour now spread widely that these houses contained the leaders of a
vast band of terrorists, who on a designated day were to launch an orgy of
slaughter for the extermination of America and of all the fine old traditions
which the Street had loved. Handbills and papers fluttered about filthy gutters;
handbills and papers printed in many tongues and in many characters, yet all
bearing messages of crime and rebellion. In these writings the people were urged
to tear down the laws and virtues that our fathers had exalted, to stamp out the
soul of the old America—the soul that was bequeathed through a thousand and a
half years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, justice, and moderation. It was said that the
swart men who dwelt in the Street and congregated in its rotting edifices were
the brains of a hideous revolution, that at their word of command many millions
of brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from the
slums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying till the land of
our fathers should be no more. All this was said and repeated, and many looked
forward in dread to the fourth day of July, about which the strange writings
hinted much; yet could nothing be found to place the guilt. None could tell just
whose arrest might cut off the damnable plotting at its source. Many times came
bands of blue-coated police to search the shaky houses, though at last they
ceased to come; for they too had grown tired of law and order, and had abandoned
all the city to its fate. Then men in olive-drab came, bearing muskets, till it
seemed as if in its sad sleep the Street must have some haunting dreams of those
other days, when musketbearing men in conical hats walked along it from the
woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Yet could no act be
performed to check the impending cataclysm, for the swart, sinister men were old
in cunning.
So the Street slept uneasily on, till one night there gathered in
Petrovitch’s Bakery, and the Rifkin School of Modern Economics, and the Circle
Social Club, and Liberty Cafe, and in other places as well, vast hordes of men
whose eyes were big with horrible triumph and expectation. Over hidden wires
strange messages traveled, and much was said of still stranger messages yet to
travel; but most of this was not guessed till afterward, when the Western Land
was safe from the peril. The men in olive-drab could not tell what was
happening, or what they ought to do; for the swart, sinister men were skilled in
subtlety and concealment.
And yet the men in olive-drab will always remember that night, and will
speak of the Street as they tell of it to their grandchildren; for many of them
were sent there toward morning on a mission unlike that which they had expected.
It was known that this nest of anarchy was old, and that the houses were
tottering from the ravages of the years and the storms and worms; yet was the
happening of that summer night a surprise because of its very queer uniformity.
It was, indeed, an exceedingly singular happening, though after all, a simple
one. For without warning, in one of the small hours beyond midnight, all the
ravages of the years and the storms and the worms came to a tremendous climax;
and after the crash there was nothing left standing in the Street save two
ancient chimneys and part of a stout brick wall. Nor did anything that had been
alive come alive from the ruins. A poet and a traveler, who came with the mighty
crowd that sought the scene, tell odd stories. The poet says that all through
the hours before dawn he beheld sordid ruins indistinctly in the glare of the
arc-lights; that there loomed above the wreckage another picture wherein he
could describe moonlight and fair houses and elms and oaks and maples of
dignity. And the traveler declares that instead of the place’s wonted stench
there lingered a delicate fragrance as of roses in full bloom. But are not the
dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those
who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I have told you of the
Street.