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Page 85
"I'm free," said North, "and I have my light car outside. I suppose,
since you've been converted to the town, that your idea of rural sport
is to have a little whirl between bicycle cops in Central Park and
then a mug of sticky ale in some stuffy rathskeller under a fan that
can't stir up as many revolutions in a week as Nicaragua can in a
day."
"We'll begin with the spin through the Park, anyhow," I said. I was
choking with the hot, stale air of my little apartment, and I wanted
that breath of the cool to brace me for the task of proving to my
friend that New York was the greatest--and so forth.
"Where can you find air any fresher or purer than this?" I asked, as
we sped into Central's boskiest dell.
"Air!" said North, contemptuously. "Do you call this air?--this muggy
vapor, smelling of garbage and gasoline smoke. Man, I wish you could
get one sniff of the real Adirondack article in the pine woods at
daylight."
"I have heard of it," said I. "But for fragrance and tang and a joy
in the nostrils I would not give one puff of sea breeze across the
bay, down on my little boat dock on Long Island, for ten of your
turpentine-scented tornadoes."
"Then why," asked North, a little curiously, "don't you go there
instead of staying cooped up in this Greater Bakery?"
"Because," said I, doggedly, "I have discovered that New York is the
greatest summer--"
"Don't say that again," interrupted North, "unless you've actually got
a job as General Passenger Agent of the Subway. You can't really
believe it."
I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to my friend. The
Weather Bureau and the season had conspired to make the argument
worthy of an able advocate.
The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above the furnaces of
Avernus. There was a kind of tepid gayety afoot and awheel in the
boulevards, mainly evinced by languid men strolling about in straw
hats and evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags
up, looking like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. The hotels
kept up a specious brilliancy and hospitable outlook, but inside one
saw vast empty caverns, and the footrails at the bars gleamed brightly
from long disacquaintance with the sole-leather of customers. In the
cross-town streets the steps of the old brownstone houses were
swarming with "stoopers," that motley race hailing from sky-light room
and basement, bringing out their straw doorstep mats to sit and fill
the air with strange noises and opinions.
North and I dined on the top of a hotel; and here, for a few minutes,
I thought I had made a score. An east wind, almost cool, blew across
the roofless roof. A capable orchestra concealed in a bower of
wistaria played with sufficient judgment to make the art of music
probable and the art of conversation possible.
Some ladies in reproachless summer gowns at other tables gave
animation and color to the scene. And an excellent dinner, mainly
from the refrigerator, seemed to successfully back my judgment as to
summer resorts. But North grumbled all during the meal, and cursed
his lawyers and prated so of his confounded camp in the woods that I
began to wish he would go back there and leave me in my peaceful city
retreat.
After dining we went to a roof-garden vaudeville that was being much
praised. There we found a good bill, an artificially cooled
atmosphere, cold drinks, prompt service, and a gay, well-dressed
audience. North was bored.
"If this isn't comfortable enough for you on the hottest August night
for five years," I said, a little sarcastically, "you might think
about the kids down in Delancey and Hester streets lying out on the
fire-escapes with their tongues hanging out, trying to get a breath of
air that hasn't been fried on both sides. The contrast might increase
your enjoyment."
"Don't talk Socialism," said North. "I gave five hundred dollars to
the free ice fund on the first of May. I'm contrasting these stale,
artificial, hollow, wearisome 'amusements' with the enjoyment a man
can get in the woods. You should see the firs and pines do skirt-
dances during a storm; and lie down flat and drink out of a mountain
branch at the end of a day's tramp after the deer. That's the only
way to spend a summer. Get out and live with nature."
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