"Brrr! that fellow got on my nerves," he said; and we made no further allusion to the matter.
But as the train, moving slowly, passed a gap which brought us again in sight of the town, we saw a tongue of flame stream into the sky.
THE SHAME DANCE[18]
By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
(From Harper's Magazine)
"Stories of New York life preferable."
Well, then, here is a story of New York. A tale of the night heart of the city, where the vein of Forty-Second touches the artery of Broadway; where, amid the constellations of chewing-gum ads and tooth paste and memory methods, rise the incandescent façades of "dancing academies" with their "sixty instructresses," their beat of brass and strings, their whisper of feet, their clink of dimes.—Let a man not work away his strength and his youth. Let him breathe a new melody, let him draw out of imagination a novel step, a more fantastic tilt of the pelvis, a wilder gesticulation of the deltoid. Let him put out his hand to the Touch of Gold.—
It is a tale of this New York. That it didn't chance to happen in New York is beside the point. Where? It wouldn't help you much if I told you. Taai. That island. Take an imaginary ramrod into Times Square, push it straight down through the center of the earth; where it comes out on the other side will not be very many thousand miles wide of that earth speck in the South Seas. Some thousands, yes; but out here a few thousand miles and a month or so by schooner make less difference than they do where the trains run under the ground.—