Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit ... right to life liberty and.... A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. “By Jesus I admit that I’m stumped,” he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears. Faces of Follies girls, glorified by Ziegfeld, smile and beckon to him from the windows. Ellie in a gold dress, Ellie made of thin gold foil absolutely lifelike beckoning from every window. And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you’ve got to do one of two things.... Please mister where’s the door to this building? Round the block? Just round the block ... one of two unalienable alternatives: go
away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what’s the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.
“How do you do Mr. Goldstein?” the reporter breezily chanted as he squeezed the thick flipper held out to him over the counter of the cigar store. “My name’s Brewster.... I’m writing up the crime wave for the News.”
Mr. Goldstein was a larvashaped man with a hooked nose a little crooked in a gray face, behind which pink attentive ears stood out unexpectedly. He looked at the reporter out of suspicious screwedup eyes.
“If you’d be so good I’d like to have your story of last night’s little ... misadventure ...”
“Vont get no story from me young man. Vat vill you do but print it so that other boys and goils vill get the same idear.”
“It’s too bad you feel that way Mr. Goldstein ... Will you give me a Robert Burns please...? Publicity it seems to me is as necessary as ventilation.... It lets in fresh air.” The reporter bit off the end of the cigar, lit it, and stood looking thoughtfully at Mr. Goldstein through a swirling ring of blue smoke. “You see Mr. Goldstein it’s this way,” he began impressively. “We are handling this matter from the human interest angle ... pity and tears ... you understand. A photographer was on his way out here to get your photograph.... I bet you it would increase your volume of business for the next couple of weeks.... I suppose I’ll have to phone him not to come now.”
“Well this guy,” began Mr. Goldstein abruptly, “he’s a welldressed lookin feller, new spring overcoat an all that and he comes in to buy a package o Camels.... ‘A nice night,’