He engaged a room there, drawing on the
general store for his expenses. I showed New York to him, and he did
not mention how much narrower Broadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea.
This seemed a good sign, so I put the final test.
"Suppose you try your hand at a descriptive article," I suggested,
"giving your impressions of New York as seen from the Brooklyn
Bridge. The fresh point of view, the--"
"Don't be a fool," said Pettit. "Let's go have some beer. On the
whole I rather like the city."
We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. Every day and night
we repaired to one of those palaces of marble and glass and tilework,
where goes on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself
could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which
we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with
snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and
bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing
recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like
banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register--it
was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening,
soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and emblematic life. And the beans
were only ten cents. We wondered why our fellow-artists cared to dine
at sad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restaurants; and
we shuddered lest they should seek out our resorts and make them
conspicuous with their presence.
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