"How—why—" I faltered at last.
It was all Considine needed—perhaps more than he needed—to set him going.
"I came here under contract, as you know. I was behindhand in my work, but I hoped that the inspiration I would receive from the society of my fellow authors would give me an impetus I lacked in the country. There I often have to spur myself to my work. Here I hoped to work more steadily and with less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around the apartment. "Ye gods! What fallacies we provincials believe! I was in heaven on my farm and didn't know it! And from that celestial paradise of peace and quiet and tranquillity of nature, I deliberately came to this—with a view of bettering my surroundings! When I think of it—when I consider the money I have spent and the time I have lost—" he stopped by reason of choking.
"Why, do you know," he began again, squaring around on the Angel, "I've spent twenty thousand dollars on that apartment of mine, trying to make it sound-proof so that I could make ten thousand by writing! I rented the apartment below me—had to, in order to get a fellow out whose son was learning the violin. I've bribed, threatened, enjoined, and at the last a subway explosion of dynamite broke all the double windows and mirrors, knocked down my Italian chandeliers, and—people tell me I have no redress! Now they have started some kind of a drilling machine in the next block that runs all night, and I can't sleep. New York to live in? New York to work in? Why, I'd rather be a yellow dog in Louisville than to be Mayor of New York!"
But before he could go the bell rang and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie walked in, so then Considine came back for ten minutes, and stayed two hours.
We told them what we had been discussing, and then we all took comfortable chairs. Cigars and tall glasses with ice and decanters and things that fizz were produced, and, as Jimmie said, "we had such a hammerfest on the City of New York as the old town hadn't experienced in many a long day."
But then, when you come to think of it, didn't she deserve it?
In New York the elevated trains thundering over your head and darkening the street, surface electric cars beneath them being run at lightning speed, the street paved with cobblestones over which delivery carts are being driven at a pace which is cruelty to animals, form a combination of noises compared to which a battery of artillery in action is a lullaby, and which I defy any other city in the world to equal. A hen crossing a country lane in front of a carriage, squawking and wild-eyed, is a picture of my state of mind whenever I have a street to cross. Yesterday there were two street-car accidents and one runaway, which I saw with my own eyes in an hour's outing, and I had no sooner locked myself in my sixth-floor apartment with a sigh of relief at being saved from sudden death when a crash came in the street below, and by hanging out of the window I saw that an electric car had struck a plate-glass delivery wagon in the rear, upset it, smashed the glass, thrown the horse on his side, and so pushed them, horse, cart, and all, for a quarter of a block before the car could be stopped. I shrieked loud and long, but in the noise of the city no one heard me, and all the good it did was to ease my own mind.
New York is a good place to come to, to be amused, or to spend money, but as a city of terrific and unnecessary noises, there is not one in the world which can compare to it.
Scissors-grinders are allowed to use a bugle—a bugle, mind you, well known to be the most far-reaching sound of all sounds, and intended to carry over the roar of even artillery, else why is it used in a battle? So this bugling begins about seven in the morning, and penetrates the most hermetically sealed apartments. Then the street-cleaners, the "White Wings," garbage and ash-can men begin their deadly rounds, and the clang of dashing empty metal cans on the stone-paved courts and areas reverberates between high buildings until one longs for the silence of the grave.