A friend and I sat in an office. He has been dictating letters, but he stops and stares out of the window. His eyes grow speculative. He says:
"Wouldn't it be odd if it were always like this? I think I'd like it better, wouldn't you? But I suppose they'd invent lights able to penetrate mist and the town would be as garish as ever in a few years. But I like the fog because it slows things up. Things are too damn fast to suit me. I like 'em slow. Like they used to be a century ago."
We talk and my friend becomes reminiscent on the subject of stage coaches and prairie schooners and the days before there were railroads, telephones, electricity and crowds. He has never known such a time, but from what he has read and imagined about it—yes, it would be better.
* * * * *
When I come out it is mid-afternoon. The fog has gone. The city has popped back and sprawls triumphantly into space. For a moment it seems as if the city had sprung up in an hour. Then its sturdy walls and business windows begin to mock at the memory of the fog in my mind. "Fogs do not devour us," they say. "We are the ones who do the devouring. We devour fogs and people and days." Marvelous buildings.
Overhead the sky floats like a gray and white balloon, as if it were a toy belonging to the city.
DON QUIXOTE AND HIS LAST WINDMILL
Sherwood Anderson, the writer, and I were eating lunch in the back room of a saloon. Against the opposite wall sat a red-faced little man with an elaborate mustache and a bald head and a happy grin. He sat alone at a tilted round table and played with a plate of soup.
"Say, that old boy over there is trying to wigwag me," said Anderson. "He keeps winking and making signs. Do you know him?"
I looked and said no. The waiter appeared with a box of cigars.