STOP LAMBING AT ONCE
6
Wander where one may this wide world over, one finds that the places to which tourists are drawn mostly are the markets. There one finds the richest reward for curiosity. The traveler in foreign lands, especially if he is alone and somewhat homesick, knows no pleasanter thrill than the sight upon the pier, amid cargoes from every known quarter of the globe, of a box of canned goods stamped in black-stenciled letters with the seven signs of bliss, "NEW YORK."
When lost in that good old town, it had never occurred to him that ships trail the seven seas carrying canned soups and fruits and vegetables to black-faced, sprawling-toed savages. But out there in the wide spaces of the globe he realizes how strikingly alike are the alimentary failings of mankind. Lost in reminiscences, when on Broadway again, he thinks himself forever cut off from romance, until he happens to turn into a side street, a public market, or even a small chain-store grocery. There he finds that in a way romance is not dead. The sedate housewife permits herself on occasion to flirt with the butcher or the baker; incidents the on-looker has not thought possible prevail here as well as in the markets of the Orient. And packages with the imprint of Japan, of China, coffee from South America, awaken in him memories irresistible. He goes away wishing he were again off there where New York seems like romance to him. The day will never come when silks and spices and marts will not conjure up in the minds of the most prosaic the very essence of romance.