Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

To this insinuation, founded on an implied lie as far as the Hawtry was concerned, Mr. Farraday made no reply, but turned to greet with fitting applause the great dancer, on whose account one of the American artistic bright lights had been extinguished forever, and in ten seconds was inwardly thanking Vandeford for extracting Miss Adair before she had felt the blighting smirch of the big number. While Mr. Farraday watched the exhibition before him, Mr. Vandeford was amusing the child of their joint solicitude by letting her look at the white lights. While waiting at the curb before the Big Show for the large dignitary in uniform to summon Valentine, he had directed that worthy to have a message sent in to Miss Hawtry that they would join her at supper. Then upon the arrival of his car, he had carefully inserted Miss Adair before he had said to the puzzled Valentine:

"Drive slowly down around the circle and down Broadway, so that you can come back just while the theater crowd is on."

Some instinct had led Mr. Vandeford to choose exactly the panacea to soothe Miss Adair's shock—the lights of Broadway.

"It's like fairy-land," she gasped, as they rolled down past Forty-seventh Street. "Oh, look at the kitten chasing the spool, all in electric lights!"

"Wait a minute, and I'll show you an eagle flop his wings," promised Mr. Vandeford, and he was surprised that he seemed for the first time to feel the actual glory of the electric signs on his great Broadway, which is as much of an all-American institution as the shipyards in Brooklyn.

"All the world is on fire, and everybody is going to it," Miss Adair exclaimed, as Valentine made his return just as the theaters were pouring their crowds out into the seething maelstrom of the great scintillating cañon. She watched as the big car stood motionless before a stream of humanity that poured across its front wheels and then bounded forward as blue-coated arms stemmed the tide on the edges of both sidewalks for a few brief minutes in which they were allowed to progress to a street beyond, where they were again halted, wedged in with other impatient, purring cars.

In a limousine next her Miss Adair saw a boy in a top hat, with white gloves upon his hands, smother in an eager and unabashed embrace a white-shouldered girl, whose arms went around his neck regardless of "mother" assiduously looking the other way. In a car on the other side a richly garbed gentleman dozed upon his cushions in triumphant inebriety. Also, while she and Vandeford waited, she saw a guardian spinster shoo a bevy of school-girls across in front of the cars, and turn in the middle of the street to reprove a college boy for a laughing word tossed to the combined bevy, while the blue arms on both sidewalks waved her into haste so that they might unleash their restrained monster motors. Everywhere protective men had women's arms fastened within their own and were shoving through the throng, while other men and women jostled along by themselves, or in companies of twos and threes, with laughing good nature. Fakirs were crying many wares, and in and out squirmed newsboys calling war extras in words that seemed to imply that New York was being shelled from the sea, but did not make that exact statement.

"It's all the world, and I'm a part of it," Miss Adair again said, and Mr. Vandeford was again surprised at himself that he was not surprised to find tears glinting in the sea-gray eyes raised to his.

"This is the Big Show," he said with a little answering thrill in his own voice, as the enormity of the scene he had witnessed night after night broke on him for the first time.

"They all live here and sleep here and eat here and work here and—and—love here," she said softly, and smiled, for again the limousine with the embracing lovers had paused by the side of Valentine's car, and the embrace still held.