CHAPTER XI
THE sky was black, and the stars dimmed by the street-lights. Stars and street-lights seemed to be weary. The electric acrobats had knocked off work, and hung lifeless upon their frames like burned-out fireworks.
A grown-up newsboy, choosing a soft tone as if afraid to waken the sleeping town, murmured confidentially:
"Morn' paper? Joinal, Woil, Hurl, Times, Sun, Tolegraf? Paper, boss?"
Forbes bought one to enjoy the paradox of reading to-morrow's paper last night.
He entered the brightly lighted lobby of the hotel. It was deserted save by two or three scrubwomen dancing a "grizzly bear" on all fours. They looked to be grandmothers. Perhaps their granddaughters were still dancing somewhere.
Once in his room, Forbes stared from his window across the slumbrous town. The very street-lamps had the droning glimmer of night lights in a bedroom. The few who were abroad wore the appearance of prowlers or watchmen or hasteners home. New York was not so lively all night as he had been taught to believe.
While he peeled off his clothes he glanced at his newspaper. The chief head-lines were given, not to the epochal event of the first parliament in the new republic of China, nor to the newest audacity in the Amazonian insurrection in London, but to an open letter sent by the mayor of New York to the police commissioner of New York, calling upon him "to put an end to all these vulgar orgies" of the "vulgar, roistering, and often openly immodest" people who "indulge in lascivious dancing." The mayor announced that one o'clock in the morning was none too soon for reputable people to stop dancing. He instructed the commissioner to see to it that at that hour thereafter every dance-hall was empty, if he had to take the food and drinks from the very lips of the revelers and put them in the street.
Forbes was amazed. The great, the wicked city still had a Puritan conscience, a teacher to punish its naughtiness and send it to bed—and at an hour that many farmers and villagers would consider early for a dance to end. Forbes was startled to realize that he was included in the diatribe, and that those ferocious words were applied to Persis, too.