“Attractive little Rose....” “What a devil of a dream ...” the avid belles would exclaim when he walked abroad, while impassioned widows would whisper “Peach!”
One evening, towards sundown, just as the city lifts its awnings, and the deserted streets start seething with delight, he left his home to enjoy the grateful air. It had been a day of singular oppressiveness, and not expecting overmuch of the vesperal breezes, he had borrowed his mother’s small Pompadour fan.
Ah, little did that nigger boy know as he strolled along what novel emotions that promenade held in store!
Disrelishing the dust of the Avenida, he directed his steps towards the Park.
He had formed already an acquaintanceship with several young men, members, it seemed, of the University, and these he would sometimes join, about this hour, beneath the Calabash-trees in the Marcella Gardens.
There was Abe, a lad of fifteen, whose father ran a Jazz Hall on the harbour-beach, and Ramon, who was destined to enter the Church, and the intriguing Esmé, whose dream was the Stage, and who was supposed to be “in touch” with Miss Maxine Bush, and there was Pedro, Pedro ardent and obese, who seemed to imagine that to be a dress-designer to foreign Princesses would yield his several talents a thrice-blessed harvest.
Brooding on these and other matters, Charlie found himself in Liberty Square.
Here, the Cunan Poet, Samba Marcella’s effigy arose—that “sable singer of Revolt.”
Aloft, on a pedestal, soared the Poet, laurel-crowned, thick-lipped, woolly, a large weeping Genius, with a bold taste for draperies, hovering just beneath; her one eye closed, the other open, giving her an air of winking confidentially at the passers-by: “Up Cunans, up! To arms, to arms!” he quoted, lingering to watch the playful swallows wheeling among the tubs of rose-oleanders that stood around.