man," reasoned Policeman Billings, "makes pretense of being a vender of
roasted chestnuts. He sits all day in the alley between two saloons. I
have never noticed him sell any chestnuts. And come to think of it, I have
never seen more than a half-dozen chestnuts on his roasting pan. I begin
to suspect that this old man is a fraud and that his roasting chestnuts is
a blind. He is very likely a lookout for some bootlegger gang or criminal
mob. And I will keep an eye on him."

Mottka remained unaware of Policeman Billing's attention. He continued to
sit hunched over his roaster, nursing the little fire under it as best he
could--and waiting. But finally Policeman Billings called himself to his
attention in no uncertain way.

"What's your name?" asked the good officer, stopping before the chestnut
vender.

"Mottka," answered Mottka.

"And what are you doing here?" asked Policeman Billings, frowning.

"I roast chestnuts and sell them," said Mottka.

"Hm!" said Policeman Billings, "you do, eh? Well, we'll see about that.
Come along."

Mottka rose without question. One does not ask questions of an officer of
the law. Mottka stood up and put the fire out and put the handful of
chestnuts in his pocket and picked up his roaster and followed the
officer. A half-hour later Mottka stood before the sergeant in the
Twenty-second street station.

"What's the trouble?" asked the sergeant.

And Policeman Billings explained.

"He claims to be selling chestnuts and roasting them. But I never see him
sell any, much less do I see him roasting any. He's got about a dozen
chestnuts altogether and I think he may bear looking into."

"What about it, Mottka?" asked the sergeant.

Mottka shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and smiled deprecatingly.

"Nothing," he said, "I got a chestnut roaster I got from a friend on the
West Side. And I try to make business. I got a license."

"But the officer says you never roast any chestnuts and he thinks you're a
fake."

"Yes, yes," smiled Mottka; "I don't have so many chestnuts. I can't afford
only a little bit at a time. Some time I buy a basket of chestnuts."

"Where do you live, Mottka?"

"Oh, on the West Side. On the West Side."

"And what did you do before you roasted chestnuts?"

"Me? Oh, I was in a business. Yes, in a business. And it failed. So I got
the chestnut roaster. I got a license."

"It seems to me I've seen you before, Mottka."

"Yes, yes. A policeman bring me here before when I was on Wabash Avenue
with my chestnuts."

"What did he bring you in for?"

"Oh, because he thinks I am a crook, because I don't have enough chestnuts
to sell. He says I am a lookout for crooks and he brings me in."

Mottka laughed softly and shrugged his shoulders.

"I am no crook. Only I am too poor to buy more chestnuts."

Policeman Billings frowned, but not at Mottka.

"Here," said the good officer, and he handed Mottka a dollar. Three other
upholders of the law were present and they too handed Mottka money.

"Go and buy yourself some chestnuts, Mottka," said the sergeant, "so the
officers won't be runnin' you in on suspicion of bein' a criminal."

Now Mottka's chestnut roaster in the alley off State Street is full of
chestnuts. A bright fire burns under the pan and Mottka sits watching the
chestnuts brown and peel as they roast. And if you were to ask him about
things he would say:

"Tell something? What is there to tell? Nothing."

"FA'N TA MIG!"

Avast and belay there! Take in the topgallants, wind up the mizzenmast and
reef the cleets! This is Tobias Wooden-Leg plowing his way through a high
sea in Grand Avenue.

Aye, what a night, what a night! The devil astride the jib boom, his tail
lashing in the wind. "Pokker!" says Tobias, "fa'n ta mig. Hold tight and
here we go!"

The boys in the Elite poolroom stand grinning in the doorway. Old Norske
Tobias is on a tear again, his red face shining with the memory of
Stavanger storms, his beard bristling like a north cat's back. An Odin in
caricature.

They watch him pass. Drunker than a fiddler's wench. Drunker than a
bootlegger's pal. Drunk as the devil himself and roaring at the top of his
voice: "Belay, there! Hold tight and here we go!" Poor Tobias Wooden-Leg,
the years keep plucking out his hairs and twisting his fingers into
talons. Seventy years have squeezed him. And they have brought him piety
and wisdom. They have taught him virtue and holiness.

But the wind suddenly rises and comes blowing out of Stavanger again. The
great sea suddenly lifts under his one good leg. And Tobias with his
Bibles and his prayer books struggles in the dark of his Grand Avenue
bedroom. The devil comes and sits on his window sill, a devil with long
locks and bronze wings beside his ears and a three-pronged pitchfork in
his hand.

"Ho, ho!" cries this one on the window sill. "What are you doing here,
Tobias? With the north wind blowing and the gray seas standing on their
heads? Grown old, Tobias, eh? Sitting in a corner and mumbling over
litanies."

And it has always been like that since he came to Grand Avenue ten years
ago. It has always turned out that Tobias takes off his white shirt and
puts on his sailor's black sweater and fastens on his old wooden leg and
follows the one on the window sill.

Avast and belay! The night is still young and a sailor man's abroad. The
sergeant going off duty at the Chicago Avenue station passes and winks and
calls: "Hello, Tobias. Pretty rough tonight."

"Fa'n ta mig!" roars Tobias. "Hold tight." And he steers for Clark Street.
And now the one on the window sill is gone and the storm grows quiet. And
poor Tobias Wooden-Leg, the venerable and pious, who has won the grace of
God through a terrific fight, finds himself again lost and strayed.

Of what good were the prayers and the night after night readings in the
old sea captain's Bible stolen forty years ago? Of what good the promises
and tears of repentance, when this thing that seemed to rise out of
forgotten seas could come and jump up on his window sill and bewitch him
as if he were a heedless boy? When it could sit laughing at him until in
its laugh he heard the sounds of old winds roaring and old seas standing
on their heads, and he put on his black sweater--the moth-eaten badge of
his sinfulness--and he put on his wooden leg and lifted out the handful of
money from under the corner of the carpet?

What good were the prayers if they couldn't keep him pious? Yes, that was
it. And here the habitués along North Clark Street grin. For Tobias
Wooden-Leg is coming down the pavement, his head hanging low, his beard no
longer bristling and his soul on a hunt for a new God. A strong God. A
powerful and commanding God, stronger than the long-locked, bronze-winged
one of the window sill.

They grin because this is an old story. Tobias is an old character. Once
every two or three months for ten years Tobias has come like this with his
head lowered searching for a new and powerful God that would keep him
pious and that would kill the devil that seemed never to die inside his
old Norske soul.

So he had taken them all--a jumble of gods, a patchwork of religions.
Every soapbox apostle in the district had at one time converted him. Holy
Roller, Methodist, Jumper, Yogi, Swami, Zionite--he had bowed his head
before their and a dozen other varied gods. And the missions in the
district had come to know him as "the convert." He had been faithful to
each of the creeds as long as he remained sober and as long as he sat in
his room of nights reading in his Bible.

But come a storm out of Stavanger, come a whistling under the eaves and a
thumping of wind on the window pane and Tobias was off again. "He is not a
good God!" Tobias would cry in his new "repentance." "His religion is too
weak. The devil is stronger than Him. I want a stronger religion. Pagh, I
want somebody big enough to kill this fanden inside me."

The crowd around the soapbox evangelist is rather slight. The night is
cold. The wind bites and the street has a dismal air. The evangelist
stands around the corner from the old book store in whose windows
thousands of musty volumes are piled like the bones of hermits. The man
who owns this curious book store is a sun-worshipper. And the evangelist
on the soapbox is a friend of his.

The slight crowd listens. Peace comes from the sun. The sun is the source
of light and of health. It is the eye of God. Terrible by day and watching
by night. It is the fire of life. The slight crowd grins and the
evangelist, his mind bubbling with a cabalistic jargon remembered out of
musty books, tries to explain something that seems vivid in his heart but
vague to his tongue.

They will drop away soon because the night is cold and the evangelist a
bit too nutty for serious attention. But here comes Tobias Wooden-Leg and
some of the listeners grin and nudge one another. Tobias, with his voice
hoarse and his blue eyes shining with wrath--wrath at himself and wrath at
the God who had abandoned him, unable to cope with the one on the window
sill.

Tobias listens. Terrible by day and ever watchful by night. The King of
Kings, the Great Majesty and secret symbol of the absolute. Tobias drinks
in the jargon of the soapbox man and then shouts: "I'll join, I'll join! I
want a strong God!"

So now Tobias Wooden-Leg is a sun-worshipper. The boys in the Elite
poolroom will tell you all about it. How he walks the street at dawn with
his head raised and bows every seven steps. And how in the evening he is
to be seen standing at his window bowing to the sun going down. And how he
has been around saying: "Well, I have found the big God at last. No more
monkey business for me. Listen to what it says in the book about him." And
how he will quote from the sea captain's Bible stolen forty years ago.

But the boys also say: "Just wait."

And they wink, meaning that another storm will blow up out of Stavanger in
Norway and old Tobias will come plowing down the street again howling that
fa'n ta mig the devil has him and that old Thor leaped on his window sill
and tossed the all-powerful sun out of the sky with his hammer.

FANTASTIC LOLLYPOPS

They will never start. No, they will never start. In another two minutes
Mr. Prokofieff will go mad. They should have started at eleven. It is now
ten minutes after eleven. And they have not yet started. Ah, Mr.
Prokofieff has gone mad.

But Mr. Prokofieff is a modernist; so nobody pays much attention.
Musicians are all mad. And a modernist musician, du lieber Gott! A Russian
modernist musician!

The medieval face of Mr. Boris Anisfeld pops over the rows of empty seats.
It is very likely that Mr. Anisfeld will also go mad. For Mr. Anisfeld is,
in a way, a collaborator of Mr. Prokofieff. It is the full dress rehearsal
of "The Love for Three Oranges." Mr. Prokofieff wrote the words and music.
Mr. Anisfeld painted the scenery.

"Mees Garden weel be hear in a meenute," the medieval face of Boris
whispers into the Muscovite ears of Serge.

Eleven-fifteen, and Miss Garden has arrived. She is armed, having brought
along her heaviest shillalah. Mr. Prokofieff is on his feet. He takes off
his coat. The medieval face of Mr. Anisfeld vanishes. Tap, tap, on the
conductor's stand. Lights out. A fanfare from the orchestra's right.

Last rehearsal for the world premier of a modernist opera! One winter
morning years ago the music critics of Paris sat and laughed themselves
green in the face over the incomprehensible banalities of an impossible
modernist opera called "Tannhäuser." And who will say that critics have
lost their sense of humor. There will unquestionably be laughter before
this morning is over.

Music like this has never come from the orchestra pit of the Auditorium.
Strange combinations of sounds that seem to come from street pianos, New
Year's eve horns, harmonicas and old-fashioned musical beer steins that
play when you lift them up. Mr. Prokofieff waves his shirt-sleeved arms
and the sounds increase.

There is nothing difficult about this music--that is, unless you are
unfortunate enough to be a music critic. But to the untutored ear there is
a charming capriciousness about the sounds from the orchestra. Cadenzas
pirouette in the treble. Largos toboggan in the bass. It sounds like the
picture of a crazy Christmas tree drawn by a happy child. Which is a most
peculiar way for music to sound.

But, attention! The curtain is up. Bottle greens and fantastic reds. Here
is a scene as if the music Mr. Prokofieff were waving out of the orchestra
had come to life. Lines that look like the music sounds. Colors that
embrace one another in tender dissonances. Yes, like that.

And here, galubcheck (I think it's galubcheck), are the actors. What is it
all about? Ah, Mr. Prokofieff knows and Boris knows and maybe the actors
know. But all it is necessary for us to know is that music and color and a
quaint, almost gargoylian, caprice are tumbling around in front of our
eyes and ears.

And there is M. Jacques Coini. He will not participate in the world
premier. Except in spirit. Now M. Coini is present in the flesh. He wears
a business suit, spats of tan and a gray fedora. M. Coini is the stage
director. He instructs the actors how to act. He tells the choruses where
to chorus and what to do with their hands, masks, feet, voices, eyes and
noses.

The hobgoblin extravaganza Mr. Prokofieff wrote unfolds itself with
rapidity. Theater habitués eavesdropping on the rehearsal mumble in the
half-dark that there was never anything like this seen on earth or in
heaven. Mr. Anisfeld's scenery explodes like a succession of medieval
skyrockets. A phantasmagoria of sound, color and action crowds the
startled proscenium. For there is no question but that the proscenium,
with the names of Verdi, Bach, Haydn and Beethoven chiseled on it, is
considerably startled.

Through this business of skyrockets and crescendos and hobgoblins M. Coini
stands out like a lighthouse in a cubist storm. However bewildering the
plot, however humpty-dumpty the music, M. Coini is intelligible drama. His
brisk little figure in its pressed pants, spats and fedora, bounces around
amid the apoplectic disturbances like some busybody Alice in an operatic
Wonderland.

The opus mounts. The music mounts. Singers attired as singers were never
attired before crawl on, bounce on, tumble on. And M. Coini, as
undisturbed as a traffic cop or a loop pigeon, commands his stage. He
tells the singers where to stand while they sing, and when they don't sing
to suit him he sings himself. He leads the chorus on and tells it where to
dance, and when they don't dance to suit him he dances himself. He moves
the scenery himself. He fights with Mr. Prokofieff while the music
splashes and roars around him. He fights with Boris. He fights with
electricians and wigmakers.

It is admirable. M. Coini, in his tan spats and gray fedora, is more
fantastic than the entire cast of devils and Christmas trees and
lollypops, who seem to be the leading actors in the play. Mr. Prokofieff
and Miss Garden have made a mistake. They should have let M. Coini play
"The Love for Three Oranges" all by himself. They should have let him be
the dream-towers and the weird chorus, the enchantress and the melancholy
prince. M. Coini is the greatest opera I have ever seen. All he needed was
M. Prokofieff's music and the superbly childish visions of the medieval
Boris for a background.

The music leaps into a gaudy balloon and sails away in marvelous zigzags,
way over the heads of the hobgoblins on the stage and the music critics
off the stage. Miss Garden beckons with her shillalah. Mr. Prokofieff
arrives panting at her side. He bows, kisses the back of her hand and
stands at attention. Also the medieval face of Mr. Anisfeld drifts gently
through the gloom and joins the two.

The first act of "The Oranges" is over. Two critics exchanging opinions
glower at Mr. Prokofieff. One says: "What a shame! What a shame! Nobody
will understand it." The other agrees. But perhaps they only mean that
music critics will fail to understand it and that untutored ones like
ourselves will find in the hurdy-gurdy rhythms and contortions of Mr.
Prokofieff and Mr. Anisfeld a strange delight. As if some one had given us
a musical lollypop to suck and rub in our hair.

I have an interview with Mr. Prokofieff to add. The interview came first
and doesn't sit well at the end of these notes. Because Mr. Prokofieff,
sighing a bit nervously in expectation of the world's premier, said: "I am
a classicist. I derive from the classical composers."

This may be true, but the critics will question it. Instead of quoting Mr.
Prokofieff at this time, it may be more apropos merely to say that I would
rather see and listen to his opera than to the entire repertoire of the
company put together. This is not criticism, but a prejudice in favor of
fantastic lolly-pops.

NOTES FOR A TRAGEDY

Jan Pedlowski came home yesterday and found that his wife had run away.
There was supper on the table. And under the soup plate was a letter
addressed to Jan. It read, in Polish:

"I am sick and tired. You keep on nagging me all the time and I can't
stand it any more. You will be better off without me.

"Paula."

Jan ate his supper and then put his hat and coat on and went over to see
the sergeant at the West Chicago Avenue police station. The sergeant
appeared to be busy, so Jan waited. Then he stepped forward and said:

"My wife has run away. I want to catch her."

The sergeant was lacking in sympathy. He told Jan to go home and wait and
that the missus would probably come back. And that if she didn't he could
get a divorce.

"I don't want a divorce," said Jan. "I want to catch her."

But Jan went home. It was no use running around looking for her and losing
sleep. And, besides, he had to be in court tomorrow. The landlord had left
a notice that the Pedlowskis must get out of their flat because they
didn't pay their rent.

Before coming home Jan had arranged with the foreman at the plating works
for two hours off, to be taken out of his pay. He could come to work at
seven and work until half-past nine, then go to court and be back, maybe,
by half-past eleven.

So Jan went to bed. He put the letter his wife had left in his coat
pocket, because he had a vague idea it might be evidence. He might show it
to somebody and maybe it would help.

It was snowing when Jan left the plating works in the morning to come to
court. He arrived at the City Hall and wandered around, confused by the
crowd of people pouring in and out of the elevators. But it was growing
late and he only had two hours off. So Jan made inquiries. Where was the
court where he should go?

"Judge Barasa on the eighth floor," said the starter. Jan went there.

A lot of people were in the court room. Jan sat down among them and looked
like them--blank, uninterested, as if waiting for a train in the railroad
station.

One thing worried Jan. The two hours off. If they didn't call him he'd be
late and the foreman would be mad. He might lose his job, and jobs were
hard to get. It took five weeks to get this one. It would take longer now.

But they called Jan Pedlowski and he came forward to where the judge sat.
At first Jan had felt confused and frightened. He had worried about coming
to court and standing before the judge. Now it seemed all right. Everybody
was nice and businesslike. A lawyer said:

"There's almost two months' rent due now. Eighteen dollars for the
November rent and $27.50 for December."

"Can you pay the rent?" the judge asked of Jan.

Jan looked and blinked and tried to think of something to say. He could
only think of "My wife Paula ran away last night. Here, she wrote this
letter left me on the table when I come home last night."

"I see," said the judge. "But what about the rent? If I give you until
January 10, do you think you can pay it?"

"I don't know," said Jan, rubbing his eyes. "I got job now, but they going
to layoff after new year. If I have job I pay it all. I can pay $10 now."

"Have you got it with you," asked the judge.

"Yes," said Jan. "I was going to buy Christmas present for Paula, but she
ran away."

Jan handed over the $10 and listened to the judge explain that he would be
allowed to stay where he was until January 10 and have till then to pay
his rent. When this was over he walked out, putting his hat on too soon,
so that the bailiff cried: "Hats off in the courtroom." Jan grabbed his
hat and grew red.

Now he had almost a full hour and a half before going to the factory. It
had taken less time than he thought. Jan started to walk. It was cold and
the streets were slippery. He walked along with his hands in the frayed
pockets of his overcoat and his breath congealing over his walrus
mustache.

His eyes were set and his face serious. Jan's thoughts were simple.
Rent--Paula--jobs. Christmas, perhaps, too. But he walked along like
anybody else in the loop.

Jan wandered as far as Quincy and La Salle streets. Here he stopped and
looked around. It was beginning to snow heavier now. He stood still like a
man waiting. And having nothing to do he took the letter his wife had left
under the soup plate and read it again.

When Jan had folded the letter up and started to walk once more his eyes
suddenly lighted up. He turned and started to run and as he ran he cried:
"Paula, Paula!" Some of the crowd moving on paused and looked at a stocky
man with a heavy mustache running across the street and shouting a woman's
name.

The cabs were thick at the moment and it was hard running across. But Jan
kept on, his overcoat flapping behind him and his short legs jumping up
and down as he moved. A young woman with a cheap fur around her neck had
stopped. There were others who paused to watch Jan. But this young woman
was one of the few who didn't smile.

She waited as if puzzled for a moment and then started to lose herself in
the crowd. She walked swiftly ahead, her eyes anxiously on the corner. And
in the meantime Jan came galumphing toward the curbing still crying:
"Paula, Paula!" At the curbing, however, Jan came to a full stop. His toe
had caught the cement and he shot forward, landing on his hands and chin.

A crowd gathered around Jan and some one helped him to his feet. His chin
was bleeding and his hands were scraped from hitting the cold pavement. He
made no sign, however, of injury, but stood blinking in the direction the
young woman with the cheap fur had gone.

A policeman arrived and inquired sympathetically what was wrong. Jan
brushed himself mechanically as the policeman spoke. Then he answered:
"Nothing, I fell down." The policeman went away and Jan turned back to
catch a Milwaukee Avenue street car.

He stood on the corner waiting and fingering his bruised chin. He seemed
to be getting impatient as the car failed to appear. Finally he thrust his
hand inside his pocket and drew out the letter again. He held it without
reading for an instant and then tore it up.

When the car came Jan was still tearing up the letter, his thick fingers
trying vainly to divide it into tinier bits.

CORAL, AMBER AND JADE

There are no gold and scarlet lanterns bobbing like fat little oriental
Pierrots over this street. No firecracker colors daub its sad walls. Walk
the whole length and not a dragon or a thumbnail balcony or a pigtail will
you see.

Instead, a very efficient, very conservative Chinatown and a colony of
very efficient and very matter-of-fact Chinamen who have gradually taken
possession of a small district around Twenty-second Street and Wentworth
Avenue. A rather famous district in its way, where once the city's
tenderloin put forth its red shadows.

But now as you walk, the night stares evilly out of wooden ruins.
Stretches of sagging, empty buildings, whose windows and doors seem to
have been chewed away, an intimidating silence, a graveyard of crumbling
little houses--these remain. And you see Venus, grown old and toothless,
snoozing amid the debris of another day.

Then the Chinamen begin. Lights twinkle. Clean-looking interiors and
carefully washed store windows. Roofs have been hammered back in place,
stairways nailed together again. The sagging walls and lopsided cottages
have taken a new lease on life. Another of the innumerable little business
districts that dot the city has fought its way into evidence.

There are few oddities. Through the glass of the store fronts you see
curiously immobile groups, men seated in chairs, smoking long pipes and
waiting in silence. Strange fruits, foods, herbs, cloths, trinkets, lie on
the orderly shelves around them. The floors look scrubbed and there is an
absence of litter. It is all very efficient and very natural except for
the immobility of the men in the chairs and the silence that seems to have
descended on them.

A Chinese silence. And if you linger in the neighborhood you begin to feel
that this is more Chinese than the gaudy dragons and the firecracker daubs
and the bobbing paper lanterns of fiction.

This night I am looking for Billy Lee. No. 2209 Wentworth Avenue, says Mr.
Lee's card. We are to talk over some matters, one of which has already
been made public, others of which may never be.

He sits in his inner office, attired like a very efficient American
business man, does Mr. Lee. We say hello and start the talk. In the rooms
outside the inner office are a dozen Chinese. But there is no sound. They
are sitting in chairs or standing up. All smoking. All silent. A sense of
strange preoccupation lies over the place. Yet one feels that the twelve
silent men are preoccupied with nothing except, possibly, the fact that
they are Chinese.

Mr. Lee himself is none too garrulous. We have been talking for several
minutes when he becomes totally silent and after a long pause hands me a
cablegram. The cablegram reads: "Hongkong--Ying Yan: Bandits captured Foo
Wing and wife. Send $5,000 immediately. Signed: Taichow."

"I just received this," says Mr. Lee. "Ying Yan is my father. Foo Wing is
my brother. His American name is Andrew Lee. He went to Hongkong ten
months ago and was married. This is terrible. I am worried to death."

Mr. Lee appears to sink into a studious calm. His eyes regard the
cablegram stolidly. He remarks at length: "Bad news. This is very bad
news."

From outside comes a sudden singsong of Chinese. One of the twelve men has
said something. He finishes. Silence resumes. There seems to be no answer.
Mr. Lee puts the cablegram back in his pocket and some one knocks on the
door.

"Come in," says Mr. Lee. A Chinese youth enters. He carries a bundle.

"Meet Mr. Tang," says Billy Lee. We shake hands and Mr. Tang begins
talking in Chinese. Mr. Lee listens, nods his head and then holds out his
hand for the bundle.

"This is a very interesting event," says Mr. Lee in English. "Mr. Tang is
just over from the Orient. He comes from north of China, from Wu Chang,
where the revolution started, you know. He has with him a very interesting
matter."

Mr. Lee unwraps the bundle. He removes a long necklace made of curiously
carved wooden beads, large balls of jade and pendants of silk and
semi-precious stones.

Next he removes a second necklace somewhat longer than the first. It is
made of marvelously matched amber beads, balls of jade and pendants of
coral.

"A very interesting matter," says Mr. Lee. "Mr. Tang is son of a formerly
very wealthy and high-born mandarin family. But his family has lost
everything and Mr. Tang is here seeking an education in modern business.
He has left of his family's wealth only these two things here. They are
necklaces such as only mandarins could wear when they appeared before the
emperor in court in the old days.

"You see these have three pendants, so they show the mandarin was a
gentleman of the third class under the emperor. They have been in Mr.
Tang's family's possession for generations. You will notice this one of
carved beads is made of beads which are formed from the pits of the
Chinese olive. There are two hundred beads and on each is carved some
figure or scene which in all represent the history of China."

Mr. Lee holds the two necklaces in his hand. Mr. Tang stands by silently.
His eyes gaze at the beads.

"Your father wore them at court?" inquires Mr. Lee in the manner of a
host.

Mr. Tang nods his head slowly and adds a word in Chinese.

"He says his family wore them for generations," explains Mr. Lee. "Now the
family is vanished and all that is left are these insignia of their
nobility. And Mr. Tang wishes me to dispose of them for him so he may have
money to go to school."

Mr. Lee and Mr. Tang are then both silent. Mr. Lee slips one of the
necklaces over his head. It hangs down over his American coat and American
silk shirt in a rather incongruous way. But there seems to be nothing
incongruous in the matter for Lee and Tang. Billy Lee with the necklace
around his neck, the three mandarin pendants against his belt, looks at
Mr. Tang and Mr. Tang bows and leaves.

Our matters have been fully discussed and I follow a half-hour later.
There are still twelve men in the room. They stand and sit and smoke. None
speaks. I notice in the group the immobile figure of Mr. Tang. He is
smoking an American cigarette--one of the twelve silently preoccupied
residents of Chinatown who have gathered in Billy Lee's place to wait for
something.

MEDITATION IN E MINOR

Well, well, well. The lady pianist will now oblige with something very
refined. When in the name of 750,000 gods of reason will I ever learn
enough to stay at home and go to bed instead of searching kittenishly for
diversion in neighborhood movie and vaudeville houses?

No. Wrong. The lady is not a pianist. She is merely an accompanist. She is
going to accompany something on cares? They are no more than the ripples
which one's ego a face! Two hundred and eighty-five years old, if a day.

Aha! His nobs. A fiddler. "Silver Threads Among the Gold," and something
fancy from the opera. And all dressed up in his wedding suit. The white
tie is a bit soiled and the white vest longs mutely for the laundryman.
And if he's going to wear a dress suit, if he insists upon wearing a dress
suit, why doesn't he press his pants?

But how did a man with a face like this ever happen to think he could
fiddle? An English nobleman. Or maybe a Swedish nobleman. Hm! A very
interesting face. A little bit touched with flabbiness. And somewhat
soiled, intangibly soiled. Like an English nobleman or a Swedish nobleman
who has stayed up all night drinking.

And he holds his fiddle in an odd way. Like what? Well, like a fiddler.
Like a marvelous fiddler. It hangs limply from his hand as if it were
nonexistent. Kreisler holds his fiddle like that. A close-cropped blond
mustache and the beginnings of a paunch. Nevertheless a very refined
gentleman, a baron somewhat the worse for a night of bourbon.

The idiotic orchestra, the idiotic orchestra! Did anybody ever hear such
an idiotic orchestra? Three violins, one cello, one cornet, one flute and
a drum all out of tune, all out of time. The prelude. And his nobs grins.
Poor fellow. But who taught him how to hold a fiddle like that?

We're off. An E minor chord from our friend at the piano. Hm, something
classical. Ho, ho! Viotti. Well, well, here's a howdeedo. His nobs is
going to play the concerto. Good-by, good luck and God bless him. If I was
in bed, if I was in bed, I wouldn't have to listen to a refined gentleman
with his swell pants unpressed murdering poor Viotti. A swell gentleman
with his eyes carefully made up. I didn't notice his eyes before. All set,
Paganini. Your turn. Let's go.

Ah, that was a note! Well, well, well, his nobs can play. Hm! A cadenza in
double stops! And the E minor scale in harmonics! Listen to the baron in
the dirty white vest. The man's a violinist. Observe--calisthenics on the
G string and in the second position. A very difficult position and easily
faked. And when did Heifetz ever take a run like that? Up, down and the
fingers hammering like thoroughbreds on a fast track. Pizzicato with the
left hand and obbligato glissando!

Hoopla! The fellow's showing off! And it isn't a Drdla souvenir or a
vaudeville Brahms arrangement. But twenty years of practice. Yes, sir,
there are twenty years and eight hours a day, every day for twenty years,
in these acrobatics. There are twenty years, twenty years, behind this
technique. And well-spent years.

But tell me, Cyril, for whom is our baron showing off--for whom? Our baron
with the soiled tie and the made-up eyes, fiddling coldly, elaborately for
a handful of annoyed flappers, amused shoe clerks and bored home lovers
sitting stolidly in the dark, waiting stolidly and defiantly to be
diverted?

Bravo! Five of us applaud. No, six. A gentleman in an upper box applauds
with some degree of violence. And there is the orchestra leader--a
dark-skinned, black-eyed, curly-headed youth, nodding and smiling.

Next on the program? Ah, a ballad. A thing the cabaret ladies sing, "Do
You Think of Me?" A faint smile on our baron's face. But the fiddle leaps
into position as if for another cold, elaborate attack. It takes twenty
years, twenty well-spent years to learn to hold a bow like that. Firmly,
casually, indifferently as one holds a pencil between one's fingers.

Admission 33 cents, including war tax. But this is worth--well, it is what
the novelists call an illuminating experience. This gentleman of music
whose fingers have for twenty years absorbed the souls of Beethoven and
Sarasate, Liszt and Moussorgski, this aristocrat of the catgut is
posturing sardonically before the three bored fates. He is pouring twenty
years, twenty well-spent years, into a tawdry little ballad. Ah, how our
baron's fiddle sings! And the darkened faces in front hum to themselves:
"When you're flirt-ing with another, do you ever think--of--me."

Yes, my tired-faced baron, there's a question. Do you? We, out front, all
have our little underworlds in which we live sometimes while music plays
and beautiful things come to our eyes. And yours? This tin-pan alley
ballad throbbing liquidly from the strings of your fiddle--"When you're
flirt-ing with another do you ever think--of--me?" Of the twenty years,
the twenty well-spent years? Of the soul that your fingers captured? Of
the dream that took form in your firm wrist?

And now the chorus once more. In double stops. In harmonics. With
arpeggios thrown in. And once more, largo. Sure and full. Sobbing organ
notes, whimpering grace notes. Superb, baron! And done with a half smile
at the darkened faces out front. The tired faces that blinked stolidly at
Viotti. A smile at the orchestra leader who stands with his mouth open
waiting as if the song were still in the air.

Applause. All of us this time. More applause. Say this guy can fiddle, he
can. Come on, baron, another tune. The tired faces yammer for another
ditty. "Träumerei." All right, let her go, Paganini. And after that the
"Missouri Waltz."

I will stay for the next show. I will stay for the three shows. And each
time this magnifico will come out and make music. But better than that. I
will go back stage and talk with him. I will ask him: "How does it happen,
sir, that a man who can fiddle like you, a man who could play a duet with
Kreisler--how does it happen you're fiddling in a neighborhood movie and
vaudeville house?"

And he will unfold a story. Yes, there's a story there. Something happened
to this nobleman of the soiled white vest and the marvelous fingers. There
was an occurrence in this man's life which would make a good climax for a
second act.

No, that would spoil the picture. To find out, to learn the clumsy
mechanism behind this charming spectacle would take away. Better like
this. The lady at the piano. Ah, indeed, the lady at the piano, a very
elderly lady with a thin nose and hair that was once extremely beautiful,
perhaps she had something to do with it? The orchestra pounds and scrapes
away. And the movie jumps around and the heroine weeps, but somebody saves
her. "Where there is no faith there cannot be true love," confesses the
hero, folding her in his well-pressed arms. And that's that.

Now our friend, the baron, again. No, better to leave. He has left his
smile in the wings this time. He is very serious or perhaps very tired.
Two times tonight to play. Too much--too much.

My hat, and I will walk out on his nobs. And, anyway, Huneker wrote the
story long ago. About a piano player in Coney Island that he called--what
was it? Oh, yes, "A Chopin of the Gutter."

TEN-CENT WEDDING RINGS

A gloomy day and the loop streets grimace behind a mist. The electric
signs are lighted. The buildings open like great fans in the half dark.

The streets invite a mood of melodrama. Windows glint evilly. Doorways
grin with rows of electric teeth. This, _Jonnerrvetter_! is the Great
City of the old-time ten-twenty-thirty thrillers. The devourer of
innocence, the strumpet of stone.

I walk along humming a bar of villainous music, the "skeeter scale" that
the orchestra used to turn turn turn taaaa-tum in the old Alhambra as the
two dockwallopers and the leering Chinaman were climbing in through little
Mabel's hall bedroom window to abduct her.

Those were happy days for the drama, when a scoundrel was a scoundrel and
wore a silk hat to prove it, and a hero was a two-fisted man, as anybody
could tell by a glance at his marcelled hair and his open-at-the-throat
shirt.

Tum tum tum tum taaaa-tum. Pizzicato pianissimo, says the direction on the
score. So we are all set for a melodrama. Here is the Great City
back-drop. Here are the grim-faced crowds shuffling by under the jaundice
glare of electric signs. And Christmas is coming. A vague gray snow
trickles out of the gloom.

A proper time for melodrama. All we need is a plot. Come, come now--a plot
alive with villains and weeping maidens. Halto! The window of the 5--and
10-cent store! a tumble of gewgaws and candies and kitchen utensils.
Christmas tree tinsel and salted peanuts, jazz music and mittens.

The curtain is up. Egad, what a masterly scene. A kitchen Coney Island. A
puzzle picture of isles, signs, smells, noises. Cinderella wandering
wistfully in the glass-bead section looking for a fairy godmother.

A clinking obbligato by the cash registers. The poor are buying gifts.
This garish froth of merchandise is the back ground of their luxuries.
This noisy puzzle-picture store is their horn of plenty. A sad thought and
we'll dismiss it. What we want is plot.

Perhaps the jazz-song booster singing out of the side of his mouth with
tired eyes leering at the crowd of girls: "Won't You Let Me Love You If I
Promise to Be Good?" And "Love Me, Turtle Dove." And "Lovin' Looie." And
"The Lovin' Blues."

All lovin'. Jazz songs, ballads, sad, silly, boobish nut songs--all about
love me--love me. All about stars and kisses, moonlight and "she took my
man away." There are telephones all over the walls and the song booster's
voice pops out over the salted-peanut section, over the safety-pin and
brassware section. A tinny, nasal voice with a whine and a hoarseness
almost hiding the words.

The cash registers clink, clink. "Are you waited on, madam? Five cents a
package, madam." The crowds, tired eyed, shabbily dressed, bundle-laden,
young, old--the crowds shuffle up and down, staring at gewgaws, and the
love-me love songs follow them around. Follow them to the loose-bead
counter where Madge with her Japanese puffs of hair, her wad of gum and
her black shirtwaist that she keeps straightening out continually by
drawing up her bosom and pressing down on her hips with her hands--where
Madge holds forth.

Tum tum tum tum taaaa-tum--halto! Here is our plot. Outside the pizzicato
of the crowds, the Great City, shining, dragon-eyed, through the mist--the
City That Has No Heart. And here under our nose, twinkling up at our eyes,
a huge tray full of 10-cent wedding rings. End of Act One.

Act Two, now--Madge, the sharp-tongued, weary-eyed young woman behind the
counter. Love-me love songs in her ear and people unraveling, faces
unraveling before her. Who buys these wedding rings, Madge? And did you
ever notice anything odd about your customers? And why do you suppose they
buy ten-cent wedding rings, Madge?

"Just a moment," says Madge. "What is it, miss? A ring? What kind? Oh,
yes. Ten cents. Gold or platinum just the same. Yes."

Two giggling girls move off. And Madge, chewing gently on her wad of gum
and smoothing her huge hair puffs out with the coyly stiffened palms of
her hands, talks.

"Sure, I get you. About the wedding rings. Sure, that's easy. We sell
about twenty or thirty of them every day. Oh, mostly to kids--girls and
boys. Sometimes an old Johnny comes in with a moth-eaten fur collar and
blows a dime for a wedding ring. But mostly girls.

"I sometimes take a second look at them. They usually giggle when they ask
for the ring. And they usually pretend it's for somebody as a joke they're
buying it. Or sometimes they walk around the counter for a half hour and
get me nervous as a cat. 'Cause I know what they want and they can't get
their gall up to come and ask for it. But finally they make the break and
come up and pick out a ring without saying a word and hand over ten cents.

"There was one girl no more than sixteen just this morning. She come here
all full of pep and kidded about things and said wasn't them platinum
wedding rings just too grand for words, and so on. Then she said she
wanted a half-dozen of them, and was there a discount when bought in such
quantity? I started wrapping them up when I looked at her and she was
crying. And she dropped her sixty cents on the counter and said: 'Never
mind, never mind. I don't want them. I can't wear them. They'll only make
it worse.'"

A middle-aged-looking man interrupts. "What is it, sir?" asks Madge.
"Anything in rings? What kind?" "Oh, just plain rings," says the man with
a great show of indifference, while his eyes ferret among the trinkets on
the counter. And then, very calmly: "Oh, these will do, I guess." Two
wedding rings, and he spent twenty cents. Madge follows him with her eyes.
"That's it," she whispers, "usually the men buy two. One for themselves
and one for the girl. Or if it's the girl that's buying them it's one for
herself and one for her girl chum who's going with her and the two fellas
on the party. Say, take it from me, these rings don't ever hear no wedding
marches."

Back into the gloomy street again. A plot in our head, but who's the
villain and who's the heroine and the hero? An easy answer to that. The
crowd here--sad faced, tired-walking, bundle-laden. The crowd continually
dissolving amid street cars and autos is the villain.

A crowd of shoppers buying slippers for uncle and shawls for mother and
mufflers for brother and some bars of soap for the bathroom. Buying
everything and anything that fill the fan-shaped buildings with their
glinting windows. Buying carpet sweepers and window curtains and linoleum.

Pizzicato, pianissimo, professor--little-girl gigglers and hard-faced dock
wallopers and slick-haired lounge lizards and broken-hearted ones--twenty
a day they sidle up to Madge's counter, where the love me, love me songs
razz the heavy air, and shoot a dime for a wedding ring.

WHERE THE "BLUES" SOUND

    "That St. Louis woman
      Wid her diahmond rings,
    Pulls mah man 'round
      By her apron strings--"

A voice screeches above the boom and hurrah of the black and white 35th
Street cabaret. The round tables rock. Waiters careen. Balanced trays
float at crazy angles through the tobacco smoke. Hats flash. Firecracker
voices explode. A guffaw dances across a smear of faces. Congo gleams,
college boy pallors, the smiles of black and white men and women
interlace. A spotlight shoots its long hypotenuse upon the floor. In its
drifting oval the entertainer, her shoulders back, her elbows out, her
fists clenched and her body twisting into slow patterns, bawls in a
terrifying soprano--

    "If it waren't foh her powdah
      And her stohe bought hair.
    The man Ah love
      Would not have gone nowhere--"

Listen for the tom-tom behind the hurrah. Watch for the torches of Kypris
and Corinth behind the glare of the tungstens. This is the immemorial
bacchanal lurching through the kaleidoscope of the centuries. Pan with a
bootlegger's grin and a checked suit. Dionysius with a saxophone to his
lips. And the dance of Paphos called now the shimmie.

Listen and watch and through the tumult, rising like a strange incense
from the smear of bodies, tables and waiters, will come the curious thing
that is never contained in the vice reports. The gleam of the devil
himself--the echo of some mystic cymbal note.

Later the music will let out a tinny blaze of sound. Men and women will
press together and a pack of bodies will sway on the dance floor. The
tungstens will go out and the spotlight will throw colors--green, purple,
lavender, blue, violet--and as the scene grows darker and the colors
revolve a howl will fill the place. But on the dance floor a silence will
fasten itself over the swaying bodies and there will be only the sound of
feet pushing. The silence of a ritual--faces stiffened, eyes rolling--a
rigid embrace of men and women creeping cunningly among the revolving
colors and the whiplike rhythms of the jazz band.

"Lost souls," says the vice reports, and the vice reports speak with a
calm and knowing voice. Women whose bodies and faces are like shells of
evil; vicious seeming men with a rasp in their laughter. These are among
those present. Aphrodite is a blousy wench in the 35th and State streets
neighborhood. And her votaries, although they offer an impressive
ensemble, are a sorry lot taken face by face.

Izzy, who is an old timer, sits at a table and takes it in. Izzy's eyes
and ears have learned to pick details in a bedlam. He can talk softly and
listen easily through the height of the cabaret racket. The scene hits
Izzy as water hits a duck's back.

"Well," he says, "it's a good night tonight. The slummers are out in full
force rubberin' at each other. Well, this is a funny world, take it from
me. Me? Huh, I come here every night or so to have a little drink and look
'em over for a while. Ain't nothing to see but a lot o' molls and a lot of
sucker guys. Them? Say, they never learn no better. Tough guys ain't no
different from soft guys, see? They all fall for the dames just as hard
and just as worse. There's many a good guy in this place that's been gave
a tumble by them, see?

"There, I got an idee he'd blow in tonight. He ain't missed a Saturday
night for months. And he usu'lly makes it four or five times a week. That
guy over there wit' the mop o' gray hair. Yeah, that's him. Well, he's the
professor. I spotted him in the district a year or so ago. He had a dame
wit' him who I know, see? A terrible broad. Say, maybe you've heard of
him. His name is Weintraub. I picked it up from the dame he's goin' wit',
see? He ought to be in your line. He was a reg'lar music professor before
he come down. The leader of a swell orchestra somewhere in the east or in
Europe, I guess. The dame don't know for sure, but she told me he was some
baby on music.

"Well, that's him there, see? He comes in like this and sits down near the
band. Look at him. Do you make him? The way he's movin' his hands? See,
he's leadin' the band. Sure"--Izzy laughed mirthlessly--"that's what the
guy's doin'. Nuts, see? Daffy. He comes in here like that and I always
watch him. He sits still and when the music starts up he begins wit' his
hands. Ain't he the berries?

"Now keep your eye on him. You'll see somethin' pretty quick. He's alone
tonight. I guess the dame has shook him for the evenin'. Look, he's still
conductin'. Ain't he rich? But he's got a good face, you might say. Class,
eh? You'd know he was a musician.

"I tell you I begin to watch him the first time I saw him. And from the
beginnin' he's always conductin' when the band starts in. The dame is
usu'lly wit' him and she don't like it. She tries to stop him, but he
don't see her for sour apples. He keeps right on like now, beatin' time
wit' his hands. Look, the poor nut's growin' excited. Daffy. Can you beat
it? There he goes. See? That's on account of Jerry. Jerry's the black one
on the end wit' the saxophone. Ha, Jerry always does it.

"I told Jerry about this guy and Jerry tried it on him the first night. He
pulled a sour one, you know, blew a mean one through the horn and his nobs
nearly fell out of his seat. Like now. See, he's through. He won't conduct
the band any more tonight. He's sore. No sir, he won't conduct such a lot
of no-good boilermakers like Jerry. Can you beat it?"

Izzy's eyes follow a stoop-shouldered gray-haired man from one of the
tables. A thin-faced man with bloodshot eyes. He walks as if he were half
asleep. The crowd swallows him and Izzy laughs again without mirth.

"He's done for the night. That's low down of Jerry. But Jerry says it gets
his goat to see this daffy guy comin' in here night after night and
leadin' the band from the table. So the smoke blows that sour note every
time his nobs gets started on his conductin' and it always knocks his nobs
for a gool. He never stays another minute, but lights out right away.

"Look, there's his dame. The one wit' the green hat, sittin' wit' the guy
with the cheaters over there. Yeah, that's her. I don't know why she ain't
wit' him tonight. Prob'ly a lovers' quarrel." And Izzy grinned. "She's a
tough one, take it from me. I don't know how she hooked the professor, but
she did. She used to be swelled up about him. And once she got him a job
in Buxbaum's old place, she told me, to work in the orchestra. But his
nobs kicked. Said he'd cut his throat before playin' in a roughneck
orchestra and who did she think he was to do such a thing? He says to her:
I'm Weintraub--Weintraub, d'ye understand?' And he hauls off and wallops
her one and she guve up tryin' to get him a job. It makes her sore to
watch him sittin' around like tonight and conductin' the orchestra. She
says it ain't because he's daffy, but on account of his bein' stuck up."

The woman with the green hat had left her table. Izzy's shrewd eyes picked
her out again--this time standing against a far wall talking to the
professor, and the professor was rubbing his forehead and saying "No, no,"
with his hands.

And now the entertainer was singing again:

    "Got de St. Louis Blues, jes' as blue as Ah can be,
    Dat man has a heart like a rock ca-ast in de sea,
    Or else he would not have gone so far away from me."

VAGABONDIA

Here they come. Five merry travelers in a snorting, dust-caked automobile.
Wanderers, egad! Bowling rakishly across the country. Dusters and goggles
and sunburn. Prairie nights have sung to them. Little towns have grinned
at them. Mountains, valleys, forests and stars have danced across their
windshield.

The newspaper man stood watching them haul up to the Adams Street curb.
His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows.
Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a
city with a swagger to their dust-caked wheels. And scooting out again.

The newspaper man thought, "The world isn't buried yet. There's still a
restlessness left. Things change from triremes to motor boats, from
Rosinante to automobiles. But adventure merely mounts a new seat and goes
on. Dick Hovey sang it once:

   "I am fevered with the sunset,
      I am fretful with the bay,
    For the wander thirst is on me
      And my soul is in Cathay."

The five merry travelers crawled out and stretched themselves. They doffed
their goggles and slipped off their linen dusters and changed forthwith
from a group of flying gnomes into five tired-looking citizens of
California. Two middle aged women. Two middle-aged men and a son.

One of the men said, "Well, we'll lay up here for awhile, I got a blister
on my hand from the wheel."

One of the women answered, "I must buy some hairpins, Martin."

The newspaper man said to himself, "What ho! I'll give them a ring. Why
not? A story of the modern wanderlust. Anyway, they're not averse to
publicity seeing they've got two 'coast to coast' pennants on the back of
their machine. What they've seen. Why they've journeyed. A tirade against
the monotony of business. And I'll stick in one of Hovey's stanzas, the
one that goes:

   "There's a schooner in the offing
      With her topsails shot with fire.
    And my heart has gone aboard her
      For the Islands of Desire."

"You can say," said the spokesman of the wanderers, "that this is Martin
S. Stevers and party. I am Mr. Stevers of the Stevers Linseed Oil Company
in San Francisco. Here's my card."

"Thanks," said the newspaper man, taking the card.

"And now," spake on the spokesman of the wanderers, "what can I do for
you?"

Newspaper men are perhaps the only creatures who as a type never learn how
to ask questions. An embarrassment caused by the stupidity of the gabby
great whom they interrogate daily puts a crimp into their tongues. Their
questions wince in anticipation of the banalities they are doomed to
elicit. Their curiosity collapses under the shadow of the inevitable,
impending bromide.

Thus the newspaper man, wearily certain that regardless of what he asks or
how he asks it, he will hear for answers only the clumsy asininities
behind which the personalities, leaders and sacred white cows pompously
attitudinize, gets so that he mumbles a bit incoherently.

But here was a different case. Here were merry travelers with memories of
wind-swept valleys and star-capped mountains to chatter on. So the
newspaper man unearthed his vocabulary, tilted his hat a trifle and smiled
invitingly.

"Well," said he to the spokesman of the wanderers, "The kind of story I'd
like to get would be a story about five people wandering across the
country. You know. Hills, sunsets, trees and how those things drive away
the monotony that fills up the hearts of city folk. What you enjoyed on
the trip and the advantages of a rover over a swivel-chair statistician."

An eloquence was beginning to skip around on the newspaper man's tongue.
His heart, weary of tall buildings and the endless grimace of city
windows, began to warm under the visions his phrases aroused.

Then he paused. One of the women had interrupted. "Go on Martin, you can
tell him all that. And don't forget about the lovely hotel breakfast room
in Des Moines."

Martin, however, hesitated. He was a heavy-set, large-faced man with
expansive features almost devoid of expression. Suddenly his face lighted
up. His hands jumped together and he rubbed their palms enthusiastically.

"I see," he said with profundity. "I see."

"Yes," breathed the newspaper man.

"Well," said Mr. Stevers, "the first thing I'd like to tell you, young
man, is about the car. You won't believe this, but we've been making
twenty miles on a gallon, that is, averaging twenty miles on each and
every gallon, sir, since we left San Francisco. Pretty good, eh?"

On a piece of scratch paper the newspaper man obediently wrote, "twenty
miles, gallon."

"And then," went on the spokesman for the wanderers, "Our speed, eh? You'd
like to know that? Well, without stretching the thing at all, and you can
verify it from any of my party, we've averaged twenty-six miles an hour
all the time out. I tell you the old boat had to travel some to do that."

'"Twenty-six miles," scribbled the newspaper man, adding after it, "The
man's an idiot."

Mr. Stevers, unmindful, loosened up. The price of gasoline. The price of
breakfasts. The condition of the roads. How long a stretch they had been
able to do without a halt. How many hours a day he himself had stuck at
the wheel. When he had finished the newspaper man bowed and walked
abruptly away.

The newspaper man's thoughts form a conclusion.

"It's true, then," he thought, "the world's becoming as stupid as it
looks. People are drying up inside with facts, figures, dollar signs. This
man and his party would have got as much out of their cross-country trip
if they'd all been blindfolded and shot through a tunnel two thousand feet
under the ground. Man is like an audience and he has walked out on mystery
and adventure. The show kind of tired him. And got his goat. It would have
been a good yarn otherwise, the motor vagabonds. I'd have ended with
Hovey's verse:

   "I must forth again tomorrow,
      With the sunset I must be
    Hull down on the trail of rapture
      In the wonder of the sea."

Mumbling the lines to himself, the newspaper man strode on through the
crowded loop with a sudden swagger in his eyes.

NIRVANA

The newspaper man felt a bit pensive. He sat in his bedroom frowning at
his typewriter. About eight years ago he had decided to write a novel. Not
that he had anything particular in his mind to write about. But the city
was such a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies; such a crazy
monotone of streets and windows that it filled the newspaper man's thought
from day to day with an irritating blur.

And for eight years or so the newspaper man had been fumbling around
trying to get it down on paper. But no novel had grown out of the blur in
his head.

The newspaper man put on his last year's straw hat and went into the
street, taking his pensiveness with him. Warm. Rows of arc lights. A
shifting crowd. There are some streets that draw aimless feet. The blazing
store fronts, clothes shops, candy shops, drug-stores, Victrola shops,
movie theatres invite with the promise of a saturnalia in suspense.

At Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road the newspaper man paused. Here the
loneliness he had felt in his bedroom seemed to grow more acute. Not only
his own aimlessness, but the aimlessness of the staring, smiling crowd
afflicted him.

Then out of the babble of faces he heard his name called. A rouged young
flapper, high heeled, short skirted and a jaunty green hat. One of the
impudent little swaggering boulevard promenaders who talk like simpletons
and dance like Salomes, who laugh like parrots and ogle like Pierettes.
The birdlike strut of her silkened legs, the brazen lure of her stenciled
child face, the lithe grimace of her adolescent body under the stiff
coloring of her clothes were a part of the blur in the newspaper man's
mind.

She was one of the things he fumbled for on the typewriter--one of the
city products born of the tinpan bacchanal of the cabarets. A sort of
frontispiece for an Irving Berlin ballad. The caricature of savagery that
danced to the caricature of music from the jazz bands. The newspaper man
smiled. Looking at her he understood her. But she would not fit into the
typewritten phrases.

"Wilson Avenue," he thought, as he walked beside her chatter. "The wise,
brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler.
She's it. Selling her ankles for a glass of pop and her eyes for a fox
trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette."

Thus, the newspaper man thinking and the flapper flapping, they came
together to a cabaret in the neighborhood. The orchestra filled the place
with confetti of sound. Laughter, shouts, a leap of voices, blazing
lights, perspiring waiters, faces and hats thrusting vivid stencils
through the uncoiling tinsel of tobacco smoke.

On the dance floor bodies hugging, toddling, shimmying; faces fastened
together; eyes glassy with incongruous ecstasies.

The newspaper man ordered two drinks of moonshine and let the scene blur
before him like a colored picture puzzle out of focus. Above the music he
heard the childishly strident voice of the flapper:

"Where you been hiding yourself? I thought you and I were cookies. Well,
that's the way with you Johns. But there's enough to go around, you can
bet. Say boy! I met the classiest John the other evening in front of the
Hopper. Did he have class, boy! You know there are some of these fancy
Johns who look like they were the class. But are they? Ask me. Nix. And
don't I give them the berries, quick? Say, I don't let any John get moldy
on me. Soon as I see they're heading for a dumb time I say 'razzberry.'
And off your little sugar toddles."

"How old are you?" inquired the newspaper man abstractedly.

"Eighteen, nosey. Why the insult? I got a new job yesterday with the
telephone company. That makes my sixth job this year. Tell me that ain't
going good? One of the Johns I met in front of the Edgewater steered me to
it. He turned out kind of moldy, and say! he was dumb. But I played along
and got the job.

"Say, I bet you never noticed my swell kicks." The flapper thrust forth
her legs and twirled her feet. "Classy, eh? They go with the lid pretty
nice. Say, you're kind of dumb yourself. You've got moldy since I saw you
last."

"How'd you remember my name?" inquired the newspaper man.

"Oh, there are some Johns who tip over the oil can right from the start.
And you never forget them. Nobody could forget you, handsome. Never no
more, never. What do you say to another shot of hootch? The stuff's
getting rottener and rottener, don't you think? Come on, swallow. Here's
how. Oh, ain't we got fun!"

The orchestra paused. It resumed. The crowd thickened. Shouts, laughter,
swaying bodies. A tinkle of glassware, snort of trombones, whang of
banjos. The newspaper man looked on and listened through a film.

The brazen patter of his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin
coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her
dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly
through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of
classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. She liked dancing
and amusement parks. Automobile riding not so good. And besides you had to
be careful. There were some Johns who thought it cute to play caveman.
Yes, she'd had a lot of close times, but they wouldn't get her. Never, no,
never no more. Anyway, not while there was music and dancing and a
whoop-de-da-da in the amusement parks.

The newspaper man, listening, thought, "An infant gone mad with her dolls.
Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She's the symbol of new sin--the
unhuman, passionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the
cabarets."

They came back from a dance and continued to sit. The din was still
mounting. Entertainers fighting against the racket. Music fighting against
the racket. Bored men and women finally achieving a bedlam and forgetting
themselves in the artifice of confusion.

The newspaper man looking at his young friend saw her taking it in. There
was something he had been trying to fathom about her during her breathless
chattering. She talked, danced, whirled, laughed, let loose giggling
cries. And yet her eyes, the part that the rouge pot or the bead stick
couldn't reach, seemed to grow deader and deader.

The jazz band let out the crash of a new melody. The voices of the crowd
rose in an "ah-ah-ah." Waiters were shoving fresh tables into the place,
squeezing fresh arrivals around them.

The flapper had paused in her breathless rigmarole of Johns and memories.
Leaning forward suddenly she cried into the newspaper man's ear above the
racket:

"Say this is a dumb place."

The newspaper man smiled.

"Ain't it, though?" she went on. There was a pause and then the breathless
voice sighed. She spoke.

"Gee!"--with a laugh that still seemed breathless--"gee, but it's lonely
here!"

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MASTERPIECE

"You come with me to the Art Institute today," said Max Kramm. "My friend
Broun has an exhibition. You know Broun? Ah, I think he is today the
greatest living artist. No, we will walk. It is only four or five blocks.
And I tell you a story."

A story from Max Kramm is worth attention even though it is hot and though
the Boul Mich pavement feels like a stove griddle through the leather of
one's shoes. For the Dante-faced Max, in addition to being one of the
leading piano professors of the country, the billiard champion of the
Chicago Athletic Club and the most erudite porcelain connoisseur in Harper
Avenue, is one of the survivors of the race of raconteurs that flourished
in the time of nickel cigars and the free lunch.

"I have eight more lessons to administer today," sighed Max with a parting
glower at the premises of the Chicago Musical College, "But when my old
friend Broun has an exhibition I go."

"It was when we lived together in a studio in North Avenue," said Max. "Jo
Davidson, Walter Goldbeck and the bunch, we all roomed together in the
same neighborhood and we were poor, I can tell you. But young. And that
makes up for a lot of things.

"Broun and I, we room together in a little attic where I have a piano and
he paints. Even in those days we all knew Frank Broun would be a great
painter if he didn't starve to death first. And the chances looked even.

"Well, there was Schneider, of course. You never heard of him, I'll bet
you. No, he don't paint. And he don't sing and he don't play the piano. He
was somebody much more important than such things. Schneider was the
proprietor of a beer saloon in North Avenue. Where is he now, I wonder?
Well, in those days he saved our life twice a day regularly.

"Broun and I we keep alive for one whole year on Schneider's free lunch.
Herring, pickles, rye bread, pepper beef, boiled ham, onions, pretzels,
roast beef and a big jar full of fine cheese. And, I forgot, a jar full of
olives and a dish of crackers. Oh, there was food fit for a king in
Schneider's. You buy one glass beer, for five cents, and then you eat till
you bust--for nothing.

"You can't imagine what that meant to us in those days. Broun and I, we
sometimes have so much as ten cents a day between us and on this we must
live. So at noon we both go into Schneider's. Broun says, 'You want a
drink, Max? I say, 'No, Frank.' Then I engage Schneider in talk while
Broun makes away with a meal. Then Broun does the talking and it is my
turn.

"Well, it got so that the good Schneider finally points out to us one day.
'Max,' he says, 'and Frank, I tell you something. You boys owe me three
dollars and you come in here and eat all your meals and you don't even pay
for the one glass beer you buy any more. I am sorry, but your credit is
exhausted.'

"So you can imagine what Broun and I feel when we get home. No more
Schneider's, no more food, and eventually we see ourselves both starving
to death.

"'Max' says Broun, 'I have an idea.' And he did.

"Like all great ideas, it was simple. Broun figures that what we need to
do is to convince Schneider we have wonderful prospects and so Schneider
will give us back our credit. So Broun sits down that day and all day and
most of the night he paints. I think it was the last canvas he had in the
studio, too. And a big one. You know all of Broun's landscapes are big.

"Well, he paints and paints, and when he is finished we take the picture
to Schneider, the two of us carrying it. I tell Schneider that it is one
of the old masters which we just received from Berlin from my father's
studio. Then Broun says that Schneider must keep it in his place. It is
too valuable to hang in our attic. Schneider looks at the picture and, it
being so big, he half believes it.

"Then Broun and I go to the bank and draw out our $10 which we have saved
up for a rainy day. And we go down town and get the picture insured for
$2,000. You can imagine Schneider. We bring the insurance gink out there
and when he gives us the policy and we show it to Schneider--well, our
credit is re-established. Herring, rye bread, roast beef, pickles and
cheese once more. We eat.

"Schneider is more proud of that picture than a peacock. And every day we
drop in to see if it is all right and Broun always goes behind the bar and
dusts it off a little and draws himself another drink. There is never any
question any more of our credit. Don't we own a picture insured for
$2,000? The good Schneider is glad to have such affluent customers, you
can believe me.

"Well, things go on like this for some months. Then I am coming home one
night with Broun and the fire engines pass us. So Frank and I we go to the
fire.

"It is Schneider's beer saloon. We see it a block off. Frank turns pale
and he holds my arm and he whispers, 'Max, the picture! It is burning up!'

"I look at Broun and I suppose I tremble a little myself. Who wouldn't?
Two thousand dollars! 'Max,' says Broun, 'We go around the world together.
And I saw a suit today and a cane I must have.'

"But we couldn't talk. We walk slowly to the beer saloon. We walk already
like plutocrats, arm in arm, and our faces with a faraway look. We are
spending the two thousand, you can imagine.

"The saloon is burning fine. Everything is going up in smoke. Broun and I,
we hold on to each other. We see Jo Davidson running to the fire and we
nod at him politely. Money makes a big difference, you know.

"And then we hear a cry. I recognize Schneider and I see him break loose
from the crowd. He runs back into the burning saloon, a fireman after him.
Broun and I, we stand and watch. He is probably gone after one of his
kids. But I count the kids who are all in the street and they are all
there.

"Then Schneider comes out and the fireman, too. And they are carrying
something. Broun falls against the delicatessen store window and groans.
And I close my eyes. Yes, it is the picture.

"Schneider sees us and comes rushing. He is half burned up. But the
picture is not touched. He and the fireman hand us the picture. As for me,
I turn away and I lose command of the English language.

"'You boys trusted me,' says Schneider, 'and I remembered just in time. I
remembered your picture. I may not be an artist, but I don't let a
masterpiece burn up. Not in my saloon. So I save it. It is the only thing
I save out of the whole saloon.' And he wrings Broun's hand, and I say,
'thanks.' That night, all night long, I played Beethoven. The Ninth
Symphony is good for feelings such as mine and Broun's."

It is cooler in the Art Institute and Max, smiling in memory of other
days, looks at the Broun exhibition.

"I could finish the story by telling you excitedly that this landscape
here is the picture Schneider saved," he went on, pointing to one of the
large canvases. "But no. It wouldn't be the truth. I have the picture
home. It is not yet worth $2,000, but in a few years more, who knows?
Maybe I have cause to thank Schneider yet."

SATRAPS AT PLAY

The elfin-faced danseuse puts it over. Her voice sounds like a run-down
fifteen-cent harmonica. But that doesn't matter. Not at two a.m. in an
all-night cabaret. You don't need a voice to knock us out of our seats.
You need something else--pep.

"I wanna be--in Tennuhsee," the elfin-faced one squeaks. And the ladies of
the chorus grin vacuously and kick their pink tights. One, two, kick! One,
two, kick! I wanna be--in Tennuhsee. One, two, kick! The third one on the
other side looks all right. No, too fat. There's one. The one at the end.
Pretty, ain't she? Who? You mean the one with the long nose? No,
whatsamatter with you? The one with the eyes. See. She's bending over now.
Some kid.

Two a.m. outside. Dark streets. Sleepy chauffeurs dreaming of $10 tips.
All-night Greek restaurants. Twenty-second Street has gone to bed. But we
sit in the warm cabaret, devilishly proud of ourselves.  We're a part of
the gang that stays awake when the stars are out.

And the elfin-faced one cuts loose. Attaboy, girlie! Legs shooting through
the tobacco smoke. Eyes like drunken birds. A banjo body playing jazz
capers on the air. It ain't art. But who the devil wants art? What we want
are conniption fits. This is the way the soul of Franz Liszt looked when
he was writing music. Mumba Jumba had a dream that looked like this one
night when the jungle moon arched its back and spat at his black linen
face.

All right. Three a.m. Bring out the lions and the Christians now. The
master of ceremonies is a fat man with little, ineffectual hands and a
voice that bows and genuflects and throws itself politely worshipful at
our feet.

Amateur night, says the voice, and some ladies and gentlemen will seek to
entertain us with a few specialties for our amusement. And will the ladies
and gentlemen of the audience applaud according to the merit of each
performer? For the one who gets the most applause, he or she will win the
grand first prize of fifty bones.

Attaboy! Will we applaud? Say, bring 'em out I Bring 'em out! Ah, here she
is. A pale, trembling little morsel with frightened eyes and a worn blue
serge skirt. The floor is slippery. "Miss Waghwoughblngsz," says the
voice, "will sing for your entertainment."

A terrified little squeak. A Mae Marsh grimace of courage. Good! Say,
she's great! Look at her try to swing her body. And her arms have lost
their joints. And she's forgotten the words. Poor little tyke. Throw her
something. Pennies. While she's singing. See who can hit her.

So we throw her pennies and nickels and dimes. They land on her head and
one takes her on the nose. And her voice dies away like a baby bird
falling out of a nest. And she stands still--jerking her mouth and the
pennies falling all around her. And a cynical-looking youth bounces out
and picks them up. Bravo! She tried to bow and slipped. Another round of
applause for that. All right, take her away. What did she sing? What was
the song that mumbled itself through the laughter and the rain of pennies?

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sghsgbrszsg will endeavor to entertain you with
a ballad for your amusement. That's fine. After three a.m. outside. Cold
and dark. But nothing cold or dark about us. We're just getting started.
Bring 'em out. Bring out the ballad singer.

Ah, there's a lad for you. His shoes all shined and a clean collar on and
his face carefully shaved at home. But his hands wouldn't wash clean. The
shop grime lingers on his hands and in his broken nails. But his eyes are
blue and he's going to sing. The boys at the shop know his songs. The noon
hour knows them.

But his voice sounds different here under the beating tungstens. It
quavers. Something about Ireland. A little bit of heaven. He can't sing.
If he was in his shirt sleeves and the collar was off and his face didn't
hurt from the dull safety razor blade--it would sound better. But--pennies
for him. Hit the singing boy in the eye and win the hand-painted cazaza.

"A little bit of heaven called Ireland," is what he's singing. And the
noises start. The pennies and nickels rain. Finis! Not so good. He sang it
all the way through and his voice grew better and better. Take him away.
We didn't like the way his eyes blazed back at us when the pennies fell.
Not so good. Not so good.

Here she is. Little Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl. In the flesh. And
walking across the slippery dance floor with her French heeled patent
leathers wiggling under her. Bertha's the doodles. This is the way she
stood at the piano at Sadie's party. This is the way she smiled at the
errand boys and counter jumpers at Sadie's party. This is the way she
bowed and this is the song she sang to them that they applauded so much.

And this is too good to be true. Bravo six times. Dimes and quarters and a
majestic half dollar that takes Bertha on the ear. Bravo eleven times.
Bertha stands smirking and moving her shoulders and singing in a piping
little shop-girl voice. Encore, _cherie!_ Encore! And it goes to
Bertha's head. The applause and laughter, the lights and the pounding of
the pennies falling out of heaven around her feet--these are too much for
Bertha. She ends. Her arms make a gesture, a weak little gesture as if she
were embracing one of the errand boys in a vestibule, saying good-night. A
vague radiance comes over Bertha's face. Bravo twenty-nine times. The
grand prize of fifty bones is hers. Wait and see if it ain't.

More lions and more Christians. Bring 'em out. The sad-looking boy with
the harmonica. He forgets the tune all the time and we laugh and hit him
with pennies. The clerk with the shock of black hair who does an Apache
dance, and does it well. Too well. And the female impersonator who does a
can-can female dance very well. Much too well.

Nobody wants them. We want Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl. There was a
thrill to her. The way she looked when the applause grew loud. The way her
girl arms reached out toward something. As if we at the tables rolling
around in our seats and laughing our heads off and all dressed up and
guzzling sandwiches and ginger ale, as if we were something at a rainbow
end.

Bring her on again. Line 'em up. Now we'll applaud the one we liked the
best. For his nobs who gargled the Irish ballad, two bravos. If he hadn't
got mad at us. Or if he'd got madder and spat a little more behind the
music that came from him. But he didn't. The first gal who died on the
floor. Whose heart collapsed. Whose eyes went blank with terror. Nine
bravos for her. There was a thrill to her. Bravos for the rest of them,
too. But Bertha wins the hand-painted cazaza. Fifty bucks for Bertha. Here
you are, Bertha. You win.

Look, she's crying. That's all right, li'l girl. That's all right. Don't
cry. We just gave you the prize because you gave us a thrill. That's fair
enough. Because of all the geniuses who performed for our amusement and
whom we bombarded with pennies you were the only one who threw out your
arms and your eyes to us as if we were rainbow's end.

MRS. SARDOTOPOLIS' EVENING OFF

Mrs. Sardotopolis hurried along without looking into the store window. She
was carrying her baby home from the doctor's office. The doctor said,
"Hurry on. Get him home and don't buy him any ice cream on the way." Mrs.
Sardotopolis lived in a place above a candy, book and notion store at 608
South Halsted street.

It was late afternoon. Greeks, Jews, Russians, Italians, Czechs, were busy
in the street. They sat outside their stores in old chairs, hovered
protectingly over the outdoor knick-knack counters, walked lazily in
search of iced drinks or stood with their noses close together arguing.

The store windows glittered with crude colors and careless peasants'
clothes. It was at such times as this, hurrying home from a doctor's
office or a grocery store, that Mrs. Sardotopolis enjoyed herself. Her
little eyes would take in the gleaming arrays of tin pans, calico
remnants, picture books, hair combs and things like that with which the
merchants of Halsted Street fill their windows.

But this time Mrs. Sardotopolis had seven blocks to go to her home and
there was no time for looking at things. Despite the heat she had
carefully wrapped the baby in her arms in a shawl.

When Mrs. Sardotopolis got home there would be eight other children to
take care of. But that was a simple matter. None of them was sick. When
the eight children weren't sick they tumbled, shrieked and squealed in the
dark hallway or in the street. Anywhere. Mrs. Sardotopolis only listened
with half an ear. As long as they made noise they were healthy. So from
day to day she listened not for their noise but to hear if any of them
grew quiet.

Joe had grown quiet. Joe was the baby, a year and a half, and quite a
citizen. After several days Mrs. Sardotopolis couldn't stand Joe's quiet
any more. His skin, too, made her feel sad. His skin was hot and dry. So
she had hurried off to the doctor.

There was hardly time in her day for such an errand. Now she must get home
quickly. Mr. Sardotopolis and his three brothers would be home before it
got dark. In the kitchen in the big pot she had left three chickens
cooking.

A gypsy leaned out of a doorway. She was dressed in many red, blue and
yellow petticoats and waists. Beads hung from her neck and her withered
arms were alive with copper bracelets.

"Tell your fortune, missus," she called.

Mrs. Sardotopolis hurried by with no more than a look. Some day she would
let the gypsy tell her fortune. It cost only twenty-five cents. But now
there was no time. Too much to do. Her arms--heavy, tireless arms that
knew how to work for fifteen hours each day--clung to the bundle Joe made
in his shawl.

But the doctor was a fool. What harm could ice cream do? When anybody was
sick ice cream could make them well. So Mrs. Sardotopolis lifted Joe up
and turned her eyes toward an ice cream stand. She stopped. If Joe said,
"Wanna," she would buy him some. But Joe didn't seem to know what she was
offering, although usually he was quite a citizen. So she said aloud,
"Wanna ice cream, Joe?"

To this Joe made no answer except to let his head fall back. Mrs.
Sardotopolis grew frightened and walked fast.

As she came near her home Mrs. Sardotopolis was leaning over the bundle in
her arms, crying, "Joe! Joe! Do you hear, Joe?"

The streets swarmed with the early evening crowds of men and women going
home. In the cars the people stood packed as if they were sardines.

A few feet from her door beside the candy and notion store Mrs.
Sardotopolis stopped. Her heavy face had grown white. She raised the
bundle closer to her eyes and looked at it.

"Joe!" she repeated. "What's a matter, Joe?"

The bundle was silent. So Mrs. Sardotopolis pinched it. Then she stared at
the closed eyes. Then she seized the bundle and crushed it desperately in
her heavy arms, against her heavy bosom.

"Joe!" she repeated. "What's a matter, Joe?"

The glazier sitting in front of his glassware store stood up and blinked.

"Whatsamatter?" he asked.

Mrs. Sardotopolis didn't answer, but stood in front of her house, holding
the bundle in her arms and repeating its name. A small crowd gathered. She
addressed herself to several women of her race.

"I knew, before it come," she said. "He didn't want no ice cream."

Mrs. Sardotopolis walked upstairs and laid the bundle down on the table.
It lay without moving and Mrs. Sardotopolis stood over it without moving.
Then she sat down in a chair beside it and began to cry.

When Mr. Sardotopolis and his three brothers came home from driving the
wagon they found her still crying.

"Joe is dead," she said.

The other children were all properly noisy. Mr. Sardotopolis said, "I will
call my sisters and mother." He went over, looked at the child that lay
dead on the table and stroked its head.

The sisters and mothers arrived. They took charge of the big pot with the
three chickens in it, of the eight squalling little ones and of the silent
bundle on the table. There were four sisters. As it grew dark Mrs.
Sardotopolis found that she was sitting alone in a corner of the room. She
felt tired. There was no use hugging the baby any more. Joe was dead. In a
few days he would be buried. Tears. Yes, particularly since in a few
months he would have had a smaller brother. Now Mrs. Sardotopolis was
frightened. Joe was the first to die.

She walked out of the house, down the dark hallway into the street. "It
will do her good," said her mother-in-law, who watched her.

In the street there was nothing to do. There were no errands to make. She
could just walk. People were just walking. Young people arm in arm. It was
a summer night in Halsted Street. Mrs. Sardotopolis walked until her eyes
grew clearer. She took a deep breath and looked about her nervously. There
was a gypsy leaning out of the doorway. Mrs. Sardotopolis stared at her.

"Tell your fortune, missus," called the gypsy.

Mrs. Sardotopolis nodded and entered the hallway. Her head felt dizzy. But
there was nothing to do until tomorrow, when they buried Joe. With a
curious thrill under her heavy bosom, Mrs. Sardotopolis held out her
work-coarsened palm to the gypsy.

THE GREAT TRAVELER

Alexander Ginkel has been around the world. A week ago he came to Chicago
and, after looking around for a few days, located in one of the less
expensive hotels and started to work as a porter in a well-known
department store downtown.

A friend said, "There's a man living in my hotel who should make a good
story. He's been around the world. Worked in England, Bulgaria, Russia,
Siberia, China and everywhere. Was cook on a tramp steamer in the south
seas. A remarkable fellow, really."

In this way I came to call on Ginkel. I found him after work in his room.
He was a short man, over 30, and looked uninteresting. I told him that we
should be able to get some sort of story out of his travels and
experiences. He nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I've been all around the world."

Then he became silent and looked at me hopefully.

I explained, "People like to read about travelers. They sit at home
themselves and wonder what it would be like to travel. You probably had a
lot of experiences that would give people a vicarious thrill. I understand
you were a cook on a tramp steamer in the south seas."

"Oh, yes," said Ginkel, "I've been all over. I've been around the world."

We lighted pipes and Ginkel removed a book from a drawer in the dresser.
He opened it and I saw it was a book of photographs--mostly pictures taken
with a small camera.

"Here are some things you could use," he said. "You wanna look at them."

We went through the pictures together.

"This one here," said Ginkel, "is me in Vladivostok. It was taken on the
corner there."

The photograph showed Ginkel dressed just as he was in the hotel room,
standing near a lamp post on a street corner. There was visible a part of
a store window.

"This one is interesting," said Ginkel, warming up. "It was taken in the
archipelago. You know where. I forget the name of the town. But it was in
the south seas."

We both studied it for a space. It showed Ginkel standing underneath
something that looked like a palm tree. But the tree was slightly out of
focus. So were Ginkel's feet.

"It is interesting," said Ginkel, "But it ain't such a good picture. The
lower part is kind of blurred, you notice."

We looked through the album in silence for a while. Then Ginkel suddenly
remembered something.

"Oh, I almost forgot," he said. "There's one I think you'll like. It was
taken in Calcutta. You know where. Here it is."

He pointed proudly toward the end of the book. We studied it through the
tobacco smoke. It was a photograph of Ginkel dressed in the same clothes
as before and standing under a store awning.

"There was a good light on this," said Ginkel, "and you see how plain it
comes out."

Then we continued without comment to study other photographs. There were
at least several hundred. They were all of Ginkel. Most of them were
blurred and showed odds and ends of backgrounds out of focus, such as
trees, street cars, buildings, telephone poles. There was one that finally
aroused Ginkel to comment:

"This would have been a good one, but it got light struck," he said. "It
was taken in Bagdad."

When we had exhausted the album Ginkel felt more at ease. He offered me
some tobacco from his pouch. I resumed the original line of questioning.

"Did you have any unusual adventures during your travels or did you get
any ideas that we could fix up for a story," I asked.

"Well," said Ginkel, "I was always a camera bug, you know. I guess that's
what gave me the bug for travelling. To take pictures, you know. I got a
lot more than these, but I ain't mounted them yet."

"Are they like the ones in the book."

"Not quite so good, most of them," Ginkel answered. "They were taken when
I hadn't had much experience."

"You must have been in Russia while the revolution was going on, weren't
you?"

"Oh, yes. I got one there." He opened the book again. "Here," he said.
"This was in Moscow. I was in Moscow when this was taken."

It was another picture of Ginkel slightly out of focus and standing
against a store front. I asked him suddenly who had taken all the
pictures.

"Oh, that was easy," he said. "I can always find somebody to do that. I
take a picture of them first and then they take one of me. I always give
them the one I take of them and keep the one they take of me."

"Did you see any of the revolution, Ginkel?"

"A lot of monkey business," said Ginkel. "I seen some of it. Not much."

The last thing I said was, "You must have come in for a lot of sights. We
might fix up a story about that if you could give me a line on them." And
the last thing Ginkel said was:

"Oh, yes, I've been around the world."

THUMBS UP AND DOWN

Later the art jury will sit on them. The art jury will discuss tone and
modelling, rhythm and chiaroscuro and perspective. And in the light of
these discussions and decisions the art jury will sort out the
masterpieces that are to be hung in the Chicago artists' exhibition and
the masterpieces that are not to be hung.

Right now, however, Louis and Mike are unwrapping them. Every day between
nine and five Louis and Mike assemble in the basement of the Art
Institute. The masterpieces arrive by the bushel, the truckload, the
basketful. Louis unwraps them. Mike stacks them up. Louis then calls off
their names and the names of geniuses responsible for them. Mike writes
this vital information down in a book.

Art is a contagious business. Perfectly normal and marvelously
wholesome-minded people are as likely to succumb to it as anybody else. It
is significant that the Purity League meeting in the city a few weeks ago
discussed the dangers which lay in exposing even decent, law-abiding
people to art, any kind of art.

The insidious influence of art cannot, as a matter of fact, be
exaggerated. I personally know of a number of very fine and highly
respected citizens who have been lured away from their very business by
art.

However, this is no place to sound the alarm. I will some day talk on the
subject before the Rotary Club. To return to Louis and Mike. After Mike
writes the vital information down in a book Louis carts the canvas over to
a truck and it is ready for the jury room.

When they started on the job Louis and Mike were frankly indifferent. They
might just as well have been unwrapping herring cases. And they were
exceedingly efficient. They unwrapped them and catalogued them as fast as
they came.

In three days, however, the workmanlike morale with which Louis and Mike
started on the job has been undermined. They have grown more leisurely.
They no longer bundle the pictures around like herring cases. Instead they
look at them, try them this way and that way until they find out which way
is right side up. Then they pass judgment.

Louis unwraps them. I was standing by in the basement with Bert Elliott,
who has submitted a modernistic picture of Michigan Avenue, the Wrigley
Building and the sky, called "Up, Straight and Across."

"'The Home of the Muskrat,'" Louis called. Mike wrote it down. "Wanna look
at it, Mike?"

"Yeah, let's see." Time out for critical inspection. "Say, this guy never
saw a muskrat house. That ain't the way."

"'Isle of Dreams,'" called Louis. "Hm! You can't tell which is right side
up. I guess it goes like this."

"No. The other," said Mike. "Try it on its side. There, I told you so.
'Isle of Dreams.' I don't see no isle."

"Here's a cuckoo," called Louis, suddenly. "'Mist.'"

"What?"

"'Mist,' it says, only 'Mist,' Mike. I'll say he missed. It ain't no
picture at all. That's a swell idee. Draw a picture in a fog and have the
fog so heavy you can't see nothing, then you don't have to put any picture
in. Can you beat it?"

"Go on. Try another."

"All right. Here's one. 'The Faithful Friend.' Now there's what I call a
picture. I knowed a guy who owned a dog that looked just like this. A
setter or something."

"Go on. That ain't a setter. It's a spaniel."

"You're cuckoo, Mike. Tell me it's a spaniel! Let's put it up ahead. It's
probably one of the prize winners. Here's a daffy one. 'At Play.' What's
at play? I don't see nothin' at play. Take a look, Mike."

"It's a sea picture. There's the sea, the gray part."

"You're nuts. Hennessey has a sea picture over the bar with some gals on
the rocks. You know the one I mean. And if this is a sea picture I'm a
orang-outang."

"Well, Louis, it's probably a different sea. Can you imagine anybody
sending a thing like that in? It ain't hardly worth the work of unwrapping
it. Hurry up, Louis, we're way behind."

"Well, take this, then. 'Children of the Ice.' Hm, I don't see no kids. I
suppose this stuff here is the ice. But where's the kids?"

"He probably means the birds over there, Louis."

"If he means the birds why don't he say birds instead of children? Why
don't he say 'birds of the ice'? What's the sense of saying 'children of
the ice' when he means birds?"

"Go on, Louis. Don't argue with me. Hurry up."

"Here's some photographs."

"Them ain't photographs, you nut. They're portraits."

"Well, they look almost as good as photographs. 'My Favorite Pupil.' It's
pretty good, Mike. See, there's the violin. He's a violin pupil. You can
tell. Got it?"

"Yeah. Bring on the next."

A silence came over Louis. He stood for several minutes staring at
something.

"Hurry up," called Mike. "It's getting late."

"This is a mistake," called Louis. "Here's one that's a mistake."

"How come, Louis?"

"Well, look at it. You can see for yourself. The guy made a mistake."

"What does it read on the back? Hurry, we can't waste no more time."

"It reads 'Up, Down and Across' or something. It's a mistake though."
Louis remained eyeing the canvas raptly. "It ain't finished, Mike. We
ought to send it back."

"Let's see, Louis." Time out for critical inspection. "You're right. It is
a mistake. 'Up, Down and Across,' you said. Well, we'll let it ride. It's
not our fault. What's the name of the guy?"

"Bert Elliott," called Louis. A laugh followed. Louis turned to me and my
friend.

"You see this?" he said. "I get it now. That's the Wrigley Building over
there. What do you know about that?"

Louis seized his sides and doubled up. Mr. Elliott, beside me, cleared his
throat and glanced apprehensively at his canvas.

"I'll say it's the first one he laughed at," said Mr. Elliott, pensively.
"He didn't laugh at any of the others. Look, he's still looking at it.
That's longer than he looked at any of the others."

"All right, Louis," from Mike. "Come on."

"Ho, ho," Louis went on, "I'd like to see this guy Elliott. Anybody who
would draw a picture like that. Hold your horses, Mike, here's another.
'The Faun." What's a faun, Mike? I guess he means fern. It looks like a
fern."

"It does that, Louis. But we'll have to let it go as a faun. It's probably
a foreign word. Most of these artists are foreigners, anyway."

Mr. Elliott and I left, Mr. Elliott remarking on the way down the
Institute steps, "Ho, hum."

ORNAMENTS

Ornaments change, and perhaps not for the best. The scherzo architecture
of Villon's Paris, the gabled caprice of Shakespeare's London, the Rip Van
Winkle jauntiness of a vanished New York, these are ghosts that wander
among the skyscrapers and dynamo beltings of modernity.

One by one the charming blunders of the past have been set to rights.
Highways are no longer the casual folderols of adventure, but the
reposeful and efficient arteries of traffic. The roofs of the town are no
longer a rumble of idiotic hats cocked at a devil-may-care angle. Windows
no longer wink lopsidedly at one another. Doorways and chimneys, railings
and lanterns have changed. Cobblestones and dirt have vanished, at least
officially.

Towns once were like improvised little melodramas. Men once wore their
backgrounds as they wore their clothes--to fit their moods. A cap and
feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a
turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend
Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones,
echoing stairways and bouncing milk carts.

These things have all been properly corrected. Today the city frowns from
one end to the other like a highly efficient and insanely practical
platitude. Mood has given way to mode. An essential evolution, alas!
D'Artagnan wore his Paris as a cloak. And perhaps Mr. Insull wears his
Chicago as a shirt front. But most of us have parted company with the
town. It is a background designed and marvelously executed for our
conveniences. The great metronomes of the loop with their million windows,
the deft crisscross of streets, the utilitarian miracles of plumbing,
doorways, heating systems and passenger carriers--these are monuments to
our collective sanity.

But if one is insane, if one has inherited one's grandfather's
characteristics as idler, loafer, lounger, dreamer, lover or picaroon,
what then? Eh, one stays at home and tells it to the typewriter or, more
likely, one gets run down, chewed up and bespattered while darting across
State Street in quest of an invigorating vanilla phosphate.

Nevertheless--there's a word that speaks innate optimism, nevertheless,
there are things which do not change as logically as do ornaments. Men and
women, for instance. And although the town wears its mask of deplorable
sanity and though Sunnyside Avenue seems suavely reminiscent of Von
Bissing's troops goose-stepping through Belgium--there are men and women.

One naturally inquires, where? Quite so, where are there men and women in
the city? One sees crowds. But men and women are lost. One observes crowds
answering the advertisements. The advertisements say, come here, go there.
And one sees men and women devotedly bent upon rewarding the advertisers.

Again, nevertheless, there are other observations to make. There are the
taxicabs. Here in the taxicabs one may still observe men and women.
Villon's Paris, Shakespeare's London and vanished New York, these are
crowded into the taxicabs. In the taxicabs men and women still wear the
furtive, illogical, questing, mysterious devil-may-care, wasterel
adventure masks of their grandfathers' yesterdays.

What ho! A devilishly involved argument, that, when the taxicab owners
plume themselves upon being the last word in the matter of deplorable
efficiency, the ultimate gasp in the business of convenience!
Nevertheless, although Mr. Hertz points with proper scorn to the sedan
chair, the palanquin, the ox cart and the Ringling Brothers' racing
chariots, we sweep a three-dollar fedora across the ground, raise our
eyebrows and smile mysteriously to ourselves.

For on the days when our insanities grow somewhat persistent there is a
solace in the spectacle of taxicabs that none of the advertisements of Mr.
Hertz or his; contemporaries can take away. For odds bodkins! gaze you
through the little windows of these taxicabs. Pretty gals leaning forward
eager-eyed, lips parted, with an air of piquing rendezvous to the parasols
clutched in their dainty hands. Plump, heavy-jowled dandies reclining like
tailored paladins in the leather cushions. Keen-eyed youths surrounded
with heaps of bags and cases on a carefully linened quest. Nervous old
women, mysteriously ragged creatures, rakish silk hats, bundles of
children with staring fingers, strangely mustachioed and ribald-necked
gentry.

A goodly company. A teasing procession for the eye and the thought. The
cabs shoot by, caracoling through the orderly lines of traffic; zigzags of
yellow, green, blue, lavender, black and white snorting along with a fine
disdain. They speak of destinations reminiscent of the postern gate and
the latticed window; of the waiting barque and the glowing tavern.

Of the crowds on the pavements; of the crowds in the passenger cars,
elevators, lobbies, one wonders little where they are going. Answering
advertisements, forsooth. Vertebrate brothers of the codfish. But these
others! Ah, one stands on the curb with the vanilla phosphate playing
havoc with one's blood and wonders a hatful.

These sybarites of the taxis are going somewhere. Make no doubt of that.
These insanely assorted creatures bouncing on the leather cushions are
launched upon mysterious and important enterprises. And these bold-looking
jehus, black eyed, hard mouthed--a fetching tribe! A cross between
Acroceraunian bandits and Samaritans. One may stare at a taxi scooting by
and think with no incongruity of Carlyle's "Night of Spurs"--with Louis
and his harried Antoinette flying the guillotine. And of other things
which our inefficient memory prevents us from jotting down at this moment.
But of other things.

Journalism is incomplete without its moral or at least its  overtones of
morals. And we come to that now as an honest reporter should. Our moral is
very simple. Any good platitudinarian will already have forestalled it. It
is that the goodly company riding about in these taxicabs upon which we
have been speculating are none other than these codfish of the pavements.
The same, messieurs. A fact which gives us hope; briefly, hope for the
fact that the world is not as sane as it looks and that, despite all the
fine strivings of construction engineers, plumbers, advertisers and the
like, men and women still preserve the quaint spirit of disorder and
melodrama which once lived in the ornaments of the town.

THE WATCH FIXER

The wooden counter in front of Gustave is littered with tiny pieces of
spring, tiny keys, almost invisible screws and odd-looking tools. Gustave
himself is a large man with ponderous eyebrows and a thick nose. He stands
behind his counter in the North Wells Street repair shop looking much too
large for the store itself and grotesquely out of proportion with the
springs, keys, screws and miniature tools before him.

Attached to Gustave's right eye is a microscope. It is fastened on by aid
of straps round his large head. When he works he moves the instrument over
his eye and when he rests he raises it so that it sticks out of his
eyebrow.

Gustave is a watchmaker. When he was young he made watches of curious
design. But for years he has had to content himself with repairing
watches. Incased in his old-fashioned leather apron that hangs from his
shoulders, the venerable and somewhat Gargantuan Gustave stands most of
the day peering into the tiny mechanisms of watches brought into the old
furniture shop. Gustave's partner is responsible for the furniture end of
the business. As Gustave grows older he seems to lose interest in things
that do not pertain to the delicate intricacies of watches.

I had a watch that was being fixed. Gustave said it would be ready in a
half-hour. He slipped the microscope over his eye and, bending in his
heavy round-shouldered way above the small watch, began to pry with his
thick fingers. A pair of tiny pincers, a fragile-looking screwdriver and a
set of things that looked like dolls' tools occupied him.

We talked, Gustave answering and evading questions and offering comments
as he worked.

"Not zo hard ven you ged used to it," he said. "Und I am used to it.
Vatches are my friends. I like to look into dem und make dem go. Yes, I
have been vorking on vatches for a long time. Years und years.

"No, I vas vunce in the manufagturing business. Long ago. It vas ven I vas
married und had children. I come over from the old country den und I start
in. Preddy soon ve had money to spare. Ve came oud here to Chicago und got
a house. A very nice house.

"My vife was a danzer in the old country. Maybe you have heard of her. But
never mind. I had dis vatch factory over here by the river. Dat vas thirty
years ago. Und we had a barn und horses.

"But you know how it is! Vat you have today you don't have tomorrow. Not
so? My vife first. The nice house und the children vasn't enough for her.
She must danze also. I vas younger und my head vas harder den. Und I said,
'No.' Alzo she vent avay. Yes, she vent avay. Und der vas two kids. My
youngest a girl und my oldest a boy."

The microscope fastened itself closely to the inanimate springs and keys
and screws. Gustave's thick fingers reached for a pair of baby pincers.
And he continued now without the aid of questions in a low, gutteral
voice:

"Vell, business got bad und I gave up the factory. Und I starded in
someding else. Den my youngest she died. Yes, dat's how it goes. First vun
ding und den anoder ding. Und preddy soon you have nodings.

"I tried to find my vife, but she vas hiding from me. Perhaps I vas hard
headed in dem days. Ven you are young you are like dat. Now id is
diff'rend. She iss dead und I am alive. Und if she had been my vife righd
along she vould still be dead now. Alzo vat matter does it make?

"Dat vas maybe tventy years ago or maybe more. Maybe tventy-five years
ago. Dings got all mixed up and my businesses got vorse und vorse. Und den
my son ran avay und wrides me he become a sailor. So I vas alone."

"Dis vatch," sighed Gustave, "is very hard to figx. It iss an old vatch
und not much good to begin vit. But I figx him. Vat vas ve talking aboud?
Oh, my business. Yes, yes. It goes like dat. I don't hear from my vife und
I don't hear from my son. Und my liddle vun iss dead. Und so I lose my
fine house und the horses und everyding.

"Preddy soon I got no job even und preddy soon I am almost a bum. I hang
around saloons und drink beer und do noding but spend a little money I
pick up now un den by doing liddle jobs. Ah, now I have it. It vas de
liddle spring. See? Zo. Most of dese vatches iss no good vatsoever. Dey
make vatches diff'rend now as dey used to. Chust vun minute or two more
und I have him figxed so he don'd break no more for a vile. Und vat vas we
talking aboud?

"Ah, yes. Aboud how I drink beer und vas a bum. Dat's how it goes. Ven you
are young you have less sense den ven you are old. Und I used to go around
thinking I vould commit suicide. Yes, at night ven I vas all alone I used
to think like dat. Everyding vas so oopside down und so inside oud. Vat's
de use of living und vy go on drinking beer und becoming a vorse und
bigger bum?

"Yes, it goes like dat. Ven I vas rich und happy und had my factory und my
vife und children und horses und fine house I used to think vat a fine
place the vorld vas und how simple it vas to be happy. Und den ven
everyding vent avay I vas chust as big a fool und I used to think how
terrible the vorld vas und how unhappiness vas all you could get.

"Yes, ten years ago, it vas. I started in again. I started in on vatches
again. I got a job figxing vatches und a friend says he vould give me a
chance. Und here I am. Still figxing vatches. Dey are my friends. Inside
dey are all broken. Dey have liddle tings wrong vid dem und are inside oud
und oopside down und I figx dem.

"I don' know vy, but figxing vatches made a new man from me. I don' think
no more aboud my troubles und how oopside down and impozzible everyding
is. But I look all de time into vatches und make dem go again. Yes, it iss
like you say, a delicate business, und my fingers iss getting old for it,
maybe. But I like dese liddle tools und all dese liddle things aboud a
vatch I like to look at und hold und figx up.

"Because it iss so simple. Ezpecially ven you get acquainted vid how dey
run und vy dey stop. Und der are zo many busted vatches. Zo nice outside
und zo busted inside. I can'd explain maybe how it iss. But it iss like
dat. Ven I hold de busted vatches under the micgrozcope, I feel happy I
don' know. Some time maybe somebody pick me up like I vas a busted vatch
und hold me under a micgrozcope und figx me up until I go tick tick again.
Maybe dat's vy. Here. All done."

Gustave shifted the microscope up over his eyebrow and smiled ponderously
across the counter.

"Put it on," he said, "but be careful. Dat's how vatches iss busted
alvays. By bumping und paying no attention to dem."

SCHOPENHAUER'S SON

Life, alas, is an intricate illusion. God is a pack of lies under which
man staggers to his grave. And man--ah, here we have Nature's only
mountebank; here we have Nature's humorous and ingenuous experiment in
tragedy. And thought--ah, the tissue-paper chimera that seeks forever to
devour life.

It is the cult of the pessimist, the gentle malice of disillusion. And,
like all other cults, it sustains its advocates. Thus, the city has no
more debonairly-mannered, smiling-souled citizen to offer than Clarence
Darrow. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been gently disproving the
intelligence of man, the importance of life, and the necessity of thought.
For years and years Mr. Darrow has been whimsically deflating the
illusions in which man hides from the purposelessness of the cosmos. God,
heaven, politics, philosophies, ambition, love--Mr. Darrow has deflated
them time and again--charging from $1 to $2 a seat for the spectacle.

This is nothing against Mr. Darrow--that he charges money sometimes. For
years and years Mr. Darrow has been enlivening the intellectual purlieus
of the city with his debates. And Mr. Darrow's debates have been always
worth $1, $2 and even $5--for various reasons. It is worth at least $5 to
observe at first hand what a cheering and invigorating effect Mr. Darrow's
pessimism has had upon Mr. Darrow after these innumerable years.

The story concerns itself with a funeral Mr. Darrow attended a few years
ago. It is at funerals that Mr. Darrow's gentle malice finds itself
crowned by circumstances. For to this son of Schopenhauer death is a weary
smile that is proof of all his arguments.

This time, however, Mr. Darrow was curiously stirred. For there lay dead
in the coffin a man for whom he had held a deep affection. It was Prof.
George B. Foster, the brilliant theologian of the University of Chicago.

During his life Prof. Foster had been a man worthy the steel of Mr.
Darrow. Not that Prof. Foster was an unscrupulous optimist. He was merely
an intellectual whose congenital tendencies were idealistic, just as Mr.
Darrow's psychic and subconscious tendencies were anti-idealistic. And
apart from this divergence of congenital tendencies Mr. Darrow and Prof.
Foster had a great deal in common. They both loved argument. They both
doted upon seizing an idea and energizing it with their egoism. They were,
in short, ideal debaters.

Whenever Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster debated on one of the major issues of
reason a flutter made itself felt in the city--even among citizens
indifferent to debate. Indifferent or not, one felt that a debate between
Prof. Foster and Mr. Darrow was a matter of considerable importance.
Things might be disproved or proved on such an occasion.

They were to have debated on "Is There Immortality?" when Prof. Foster's
death canceled the engagement. This was one of the favorite differences of
opinion between the two friends. Mr. Darrow, of course, bent all his
efforts on disproving immortality. Prof. Foster bent all his on proving
it. Considerable excitement had been stirred by the coming debate. The
death of the brilliant theologian put an end to it.

Instead of the debate there was a funeral. Thousands of people who had
admired the intellect, kindness and humanitarianism of Prof. Foster came
to the memorial services held in one of the large theaters of the loop.
Mr. Darrow came, his head bowed and grief in his heart. Friends like
George Foster never replace themselves. Death becomes not a triumphant
argument--an aloof clincher for pessimism, but a robber.

There were speakers who talked of the dead man's virtues, his love for
people, scholarship and the arts, his keen brain and his genius. Mr.
Darrow sat listening to the eulogy of his dead friend and tears filled his
eyes. Poor George Foster--gone, in a coffin; to be buried out of sight in
a few hours. Then some one whispered to Mr. Darrow that a few words were
expected of him.

It was Mr. Darrow's good-bye to his dear friend. He stood up and his loose
figure and slyly malicious face wore an unaccustomed seriousness. The
audience waited, but the facile Mr. Darrow was having difficulty locating
his voice, his words. His eyes, blurred with tears, were still staring at
the coffin. Finally Mr. Darrow began. His dear friend. Dead. So charming a
man. So brilliant a mind. Dead now. He had been so amazingly alive it
seemed incredible that he should be dead. It was as if part of
himself--Mr. Darrow--lay in the coffin.

The eulogy continued, quiet, sincere, stirring tears in the audience and
filling their hearts with a realization of the grief that lay in Mr.
Darrow's heart. Then slowly the phrases grew clearer.

"We were old friends and we fought many battles of the mind," said Mr.
Darrow. "And we were to have debated once more next week--on 'Is There
Immortality?' It was his contention," whispered Mr. Darrow, "that there is
immortality. He is gone now, but he speaks more eloquently on the subject
than if he were still with us. There lies all that remains of my friend
George Burman Foster--in a coffin. And had he lived he would have argued
with me on the subject. But he is dead and he knows now, in the negation
and darkness of death, that he was wrong--that there is no immortality--"

Mr. Darrow paused. He had after many years won his argument with Prof.
Foster. But the victory brought no elation. Mr. Darrow's eyes filled again
and he turned to walk from the stage. But before he left the mourners
sitting around him heard him murmur:

"I wish poor George Foster had been right. There would be nobody happier
than I to realize that his soul had survived--that there was still a
George Foster. But--if he could come  back now after the proof of death he
would admit--yes, admit that--that there is no immortality."

And Mr. Darrow with his head bowed yielded the platform to his
inarticulate and vanquished friend and debater.

WORLD CONQUERORS

The hall is upstairs. A non-committal sign has been tacked over the street
entrance. It discloses that there is to be a discussion this night on the
subject of the world revolution. The disclosure is made in English,
Yiddish and Russian.

A thousand people have arrived. They are mostly west siders, with a
sprinkling of north and south side residents. There seem to be two types.
Shop workers and a type that classifies as the intelligentsia. The workers
sit calmly and smoke. The intelligentsia are nervous. Dark-eyed women,
bearded men, vivacious, exchanging greetings, cracking jokes.

The first speaker is a very bad orator. He is a working-man. An intensity
of manner holds the audience in lieu of phrases. He says nothing. Yet
every one listens. He says that workingmen have been slaves long enough.
That there is injustice in the world. That the light of freedom has
appeared on the horizon.

This, to the audience, is old stuff. Yet they watch the talker. He has
something they one and all treasured in their own hearts. A faith in
something. The workingmen in the audience have stopped smoking. They
listen with a faint skepticism in their eyes. The intelligentsia, however,
are warming up. For the moment old emotions are stirring in them.
Sincerity in others--the martyr spirit in others--is something which
thrills the insincerity of all intelligentsia.

Suddenly there is a change in the hall. Our stuttering orator with the
forceful manner has made a few startling remarks. He has said, "And what
we must do, comrades, is to use force. We can get nowhere without force.
We must uproot, overthrow and seize the government."

Scandal! A murmur races around the hall. The residents from the north and
south sides who have favored this discussion of world revolution with
their uplifting presence are uneasy. Somebody should stop the man. It's
one thing to be sincere, and another thing to be too sincere and tell them
that they should use force.

Now, what's the matter? The orator has grown violent.

It is somebody in the back of the hall. Heads turn. A policeman! The
orator swings his arms, and in his foreign tongue, goes on. "They are
stopping us. The bourgeoisie! They have sent the polizei! But we stand
firm. The police are powerless against us. Even though they drive us from
this hall."

The orator is all alone in his excitement. The audience has, despite his
valorous pronouncements, grown nervous. And the policeman walking down the
aisle seems embarrassed. He arrives at the platform finally. He hands a
card to the orator. The orator glances at the card and then waves it in
the air. Then he reads it slowly, his lips moving as he spells the words
out. The audience is shifting around, acting as if it wanted to rise and
bolt for the door.

"Ah," exclaims the orator, "the policeman says that an enemy of the
revolution has smashed an automobile belonging to one of the audience that
was standing in front of the hall. The number of the automobile is as
follows." He recites the number slowly. And then: "If anybody has an
automobile by that number standing downstairs he better go and look after
it."

A substantial looking north sider arises and walks hurriedly through the
hall. The orator decides to subside. There is a wait for the chief
speaker, who has not yet arrived. During the wait an incident develops.
There are two lights burning at the rear of the stage. A young woman calls
one of the officials of the meeting.

"Look," she says, "those lights make it impossible for us to see the
speaker who stands in front of them. They shine in our eyes."

The official wears a red sash across the front of his coat. He is one of
the minor leaders among the west side soviet radicals. He blinks. "What do
you want of me?" he inquires with indignation. "I should go and turn the
lights out? You think I'm the janitor?"

"But can't you just turn the lights off?" persists the young woman.

"The janitor," announces our official with dignity, "turns the lights on
and he will turn them off." Wherewith the Tarquin of the proletaire
marches off. Two minutes later a man in his short sleeves appears,
following him. This man is the janitor. The audience which has observed
this little comedy begins to laugh as the janitor turns off the offending
lights.

The chief speaker of the evening has arrived. He is a good orator. He is
also cynical of his audience. A short wiry man with a pugnacious face and
a cocksure mustache. He begins by asking what they are all afraid of. He
accuses them of being more social than revolutionary. As long as
revolution was the thing of the hour they were revolutionists. But now
that it is no longer the thing of the hour, they have taken up other
hobbies.

This appears to be rather the truth from the way the intelligentsia take
it. They nod approval. Self-indictment is one thing which distinguishes
the intelligentsia. They are able to recognize their faults, their
shortcomings.

Now the speaker is on his real subject. Revolution. What we want, he
cries, is for the same terrible misfortune to happen in this country that
happened in Russia. Yes, the same marvelous misfortune. And he is ready.
He is working toward that end. And he wishes in all sincerity that the
audience would work with him. Start a reign of terror. Put the spirit of
the masses into the day. The unconquerable will to overthrow the tyrant
and govern themselves. He continues--an apostle of force. Of fighting. Of
shooting, stabbing and barricades that fly the red flag. He is sardonic
and sarcastic and everything else. And the audience is disturbed.

There are whispers of scandal. And half the faces of the intelligentsia
frown in disapproval. They came to hear economic argument, not a call to
arms. The other half is stirred.

It is almost eleven. The hall empties. The streets are alive. People
hurry, saunter, stand laughing. Street cars, store fronts, mean houses,
shadows and a friendly moon. These are part of the system. Three hours ago
they seemed a powerful, impregnable symbol. Now they can be overthrown.

The security that pervades the street is an illusion. Force can knock it
out. A strange force that lies in the masses who live in this street.

The audience moves away. The intelligentsia will discuss the possibility
of a sudden uprising of the proletaire and gradually they will grow
cynical about it and say, "Well, he was a good talker."

The orator finally emerges from the building. He is surrounded by friends,
questioners. For two blocks he has company. Then he is alone. He stands
waiting for a street car. Some of the audience pass by without recognizing
him.

The street car comes and the orator gets on. He finds a seat. His head
drops against the window and his eyes close. And the car sweeps away,
taking with it its load of sleepy men and women who have stayed up too
late--including a messiah of the proletaire who dreams of leading the
masses out of bondage.

THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY

"You'll not use my name," he said, "because my family would be exceedingly
grieved over the notoriety the thing would bring them."

Fifty or sixty or seventy--it was hard to tell how old he was. He looked
like a panhandler and talked like a scholar. Life had knocked him out and
walked over him. There was no money in his pocket, no food in his stomach,
no hope in his heart. He was asking for a job--some kind of writing job.
His hands were trembling and his face twitched. Despair underlay his
words, but he kept it under. Hunger made his body jerked and his eyes
shine with an unmannerly eagerness. But his words remained suave. He
removed a pair of cracked nose-glasses and held them between his thumb and
forefinger and gestured politely with them. Hungry, dirty, hopeless, his
linen gone, his shoes torn, something inside his beaten frame remained
still intact. There was no future. But he had a past to live up to.

He was asking for a job. What kind of job he didn't know. But he could
write. He had been around the world. He was a cosmopolite and a rhymester
and a press agent and a journalist. He pulled himself together and his
eyes struggled hard to forget the hunger of his stomach.

"In the old days," he said, enunciating in the oracular manner of a day
gone by--"ah, I was talking with Jack London about it before he died. Dear
Jack! A great soul. A marvelous spirit. We were in the south seas
together. Yes, the old days were different. Erudition counted for
something. I was Buffalo Bill's first press agent. Also I worked for dear
P. T. Barnum. I was his publicity man.

"Doesn't the world seem to have changed, to you?" he asked. "I was talking
to George Ade about this very thing. Strange, isn't it? George and I are
old friends. Who? Dickie Davis of the Sun? Certainly--a charming fellow.
Stephen Crane? Genius, my friend, genius was his. That was the day when O.
Henry was in New York. There was quite a crowd of us. We used to
foregather in some comfortable grog shop and discuss. Ah, life and letters
were talked about a great deal in those days."

His voice had the sound of a man casually relating incidents of his past.
But his eyes continued to shine eagerly. And between sentences there were
curious pauses. The pauses asked something.

"A most curious thing occurred the other evening," he smiled. "I had to
pay for my oysters by writing a rhyme for the waiter." An anecdote by a
dilettante, a gracefully turned plea worthy of M'sieur Bruinrmell. "You
know, it grows more and more difficult to obtain employment. My wardrobe
is practically gone." He glanced with apparent amusement at his
weary-willie makeup. His hand moved tremblingly to his neck. "My collar is
soiled," he murmured, apologizing with eyes that managed to smile, "and
the other evening I lost my stick."

Then the hunger and the hopelessness of the man broke through the shell of
his manner. He needed a job, a job, a job! Something to do to get him food
and shelter. His fingers tried to place the cracked nose-glasses back in
position.

"I would--pardon me for mentioning this--I would much rather sit with a
man like you and discuss the phases of life and literature of interest to
both of us. But I would write almost anything. I have written a great
deal. And I have managed money. There was a time--" A look of pain came
into his eyes. This was being vulgar and not in line with the tradition
that his enunciation boasted.

"I have known a great many people. I don't desire to bore you with talk of
celebrities and all that. But I assure you, I have been somebody. Oh,
nothing important or perhaps very worth while. I dislike this sort of
thing, you know." Another smile twisted his lips. "But, when one is down
to the last--er--to the last farthing, so to speak, one swallows a bit of
his pride. That's more than an aphorism with me. To go on, I have handled
great sums of money. I have traveled all over the world, I have eaten and
spoken with men of genius all my life. My youth was a very interesting one
and--and perhaps we could go somewhere for dinner and--and I could tell
you things of writing men of the past that--that might appeal to you.
Marvelous fellows. There was O. Henry and London and Davis and Phillips
and Stevie Crane. I dislike imposing myself on you this way, but--if I
didn't think you would be interested in a discussion with a man who--who
admires the beautiful things of life and who has lived a rather varied
existence I would not--"

The cracked nose-glasses were back in place and he had stopped short.
Despair and hunger now were talking out of his eyes. They had come too
close to his words. They must never come into his words. That would be the
one defeat that would drive too deeply into him. Of the past, of the
easygoing, charmingly garrulous past, all that was left to this nomad of
letters was its manner. He could still sit in his rags as if he were
lounging in the salon of an ocean liner, still gesture with his
nose-glasses as if he were fixing the attention of a Richard Harding
Davis across a bottle of Chateau Yquem.

So he remained silent. Let his eyes and the twitching of his face betray
him. His words never would. His words would always be the well-groomed,
carefully modulated, nicely considerate words of a gentleman. He resumed:

"So you have nothing. Ah, that's rather--rather disturbing. Just a
moment--please. I don't mean to impose on you. Won't you sit down--so I
will feel more at ease? Thank you, sir. Perhaps there is something in the
way of a--of another kind of job. Anything about a theater, a newspaper
office, a magazine, a circus, an hotel. I know them all. And if you could
only keep an eye open for me. Thank you, sir. I am glad to see that men of
letters are still considerate of their fellow craftsmen. Ah, you would
have liked Jack London. Did you know him? You know, we live in an age of
jazz. Yes, sir, the tempo is fast. Life has lost its andante. Materialism
has triumphed. There is no longer room for the spirit to expand. Machines
are in the way. Noises invade the sanctity of meditative hours."

It was cold outside the cigar store. The man from yesterday stepped into
the street. He stood smiling for a moment and for the moment in the
courteous friendliness of his rheumy eyes, in the mannerly tilt of his
head there was the picture of a sophisticated gentleman of the world
nodding an adieu outside his favorite chophouse. Then he turned. The
mannerly tilt vanished. There was to be seen a man--fifty, sixty or
seventy, it was hard to tell how old--shuffling tiredly down the street,
his body huddled together and his shoulders shivering.

THUMBNAIL LOTHARIOS

Here's the low down, gentlemen. The Miserere of the manicurist. Peewee,
the Titian-haired Aphrodite of the Thousand Nails has been inveigled into
submitting her lipstick memoirs to the public eye.

Peewee is the melting little lady with the vermilion mouth and the cooing
eyes who manicures in a Rialto hotel barber shop. She is the one whose
touch is like the cool caress of a snowflake, whose face is as void of
guile as the face of the Blessed Damosel.

There are others, scissor-Salomes and nail-file Dryads. Mr. Flo Ziegfeld
has nothing on George, the head barber, when it comes to an eye for color
and a sense for curve. But they are busy at the moment. The hair-tonic
Dons and the mud-pack Romeos are giving the girls a heavy play. Peewee
alone is at leisure. Therefore let us gallop quickly to the memoirs.

"H'm," says Peewee, "I'll tell you about men. Of course what I say doesn't