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Page 15
Then up into the garden stumbled the man from Topaz City, Nevada. The
gloom of the solitary sightseer enwrapped him. Bereft of joy through
loneliness, he stalked with a widower's face through the halls of
pleasure. Thirst for human companionship possessed him as he panted in
the metropolitan draught. Straight to the New Yorker's table he steered.
The New Yorker, disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmosphere of a
roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life's traditions. He
resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil, impulsive, hair-brained act
the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his existence. Carrying
out this radical and precipitous inspiration he nodded slightly to the
stranger as he drew nearer the table.
The next moment found the man from Topaz City in the list of the New
Yorker's closest friends. He took a chair at the table, he gathered two
others for his feet, he tossed his broad-brimmed hat upon a fourth, and
told his life's history to his new-found pard.
The New Yorker warmed a little, as an apartment-house furnace warms when
the strawberry season begins. A waiter who came within hail in an
unguarded moment was captured and paroled on an errand to the Doctor Wiley
experimental station. The ballet was now in the midst of a musical
vagary, and danced upon the stage programmed as Bolivian peasants, clothed
in some portions of its anatomy as Norwegian fisher maidens, in others as
ladies-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette, historically denuded in other
portions so as to represent sea nymphs, and presenting the tout ensemble
of a social club of Central Park West housemaids at a fish fry.
"Been in the city long?" inquired the New Yorker, getting ready the exact
tip against the waiter's coming with large change from the bill.
"Me?" said the man from Topaz City. "Four days. Never in Topaz City, was
you?"
"I!" said the New Yorker. "I was never farther west than Eighth Avenue.
I had a brother who died on Ninth, but I met the cortege at Eighth. There
was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker mentioned the
incident to avoid mistake. I cannot say that I am familiar with the West."
"Topaz City," said the man who occupied four chairs, "is one of the finest
towns in the world."
"I presume that you have seen the sights of the metropolis," said the New
Yorker, "Four days is not a sufficient length of time in which to view
even our most salient points of interest, but one can possibly form a
general impression. Our architectural supremacy is what generally strikes
visitors to our city most forcibly. Of course you have seen our Flatiron
Building. It is considered --"
"Saw it," said the man from Topaz City. "But you ought to come out our
way. It's mountainous, you know, and the ladies all wear short skirts for
climbing and --"
"Excuse me," said the New Yorker, "but that isn't exactly the point. New
York must be a wonderful revelation to a visitor from the West. Now, as
to our hotels --"
"Say," said the man from Topaz City, "that reminds me -- there were
sixteen stage robbers shot last year within twenty miles of --"
"I was speaking of hotels," said the New Yorker. "We lead Europe in that
respect. And as far as our leisure class is concerned we are far --"
"Oh, I don't know," interrupted the man from Topaz City. "There were
twelve tramps in our jail when I left home. I guess New York isn't so --"
"Beg pardon, you seem to misapprehend the idea. Of course, you visited
the Stock Exchange and Wall Street, where the --"
"Oh, yes," said the man from Topaz City, as he lighted a Pennsylvania
stogie, "and I want to tell you chat we've got the finest town marshal
west of the Rockies. Bill Rainer he took in five pickpockets out of the
crowd when Red Nose Thompson laid the cornerstone of his new saloon.
Topaz City don't allow --"
"Have another Rhine wine and seltzer," suggested the New Yorker. "I've
never been West, as I said; but there can't be any place out there to
compare with New York. As to the claims of Chicago I --"
"One man," said the Topazite -- "one man only has been murdered and robbed
in Topaz City in the last three --"
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