The Voice of the City | Page 4

I can't talk for publication.' No other city acts in that way.
Chicago says, unhes- itatingly, 'I will;' I Philadelphia says, 'I should;'
New Orleans says, ' I used to;' Louisville says, 'Don't care if I do;' St.
Louis says, 'Excuse me;' Pittsburg says, 'Smoke up.' Now, New York -
"
Aurelia smiled.
"Very well," said I, "I must go elsewhere and find out."
I went into a palace, tile-floored, cherub-ceilinged and square with the
cop. I put my foot on the brass rail and said to Billy Magnus, the best
bartender in the diocese:
Billy, you've lived in New York a long time what kind of a
song-and-dance does this old town give you? What I mean is, doesn't
the gab of it seem to kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you in a
sort of amalgamated tip that bits off the burg in a kind of an epigram
with a dash of bitters and a slice of - "
"Excuse me a minute," said Billy, "somebody's punching the button at
the side door."
He went away; came back with an empty tin bucket; again vanished
with it full; returned and said to me:
"That was Mame. She rings twice. She likes a glass of beer for supper.
Her and the kid. If you ever saw that little skeesicks of mine brace up in
his high chair and take his beer and - But, say, what was yours? I get
kind of excited when I bear them two rings -was it the baseball score or
gin fizz you asked for?"
"Ginger ale," I answered.
I walked up to Broadway. I saw a cop on the cor- ner. The cops take
kids up, women across, and men in. I went up to him.
If I'm not exceeding the spiel limit," I said, "let me ask you. You see
New York during its vocative hours. It is the function of you and your
brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There must be a civic
voice that is intelligible to you. At night during your lonely rounds you
must have beard it. What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting?
What does the city say to you?
"Friend," said the policeman, spinning his club, "it don't say nothing. I
get my orders from the man higher up. Say, I guess you're all right.
Stand here for a few minutes and keep an eye open for the roundsman."
The cop melted into the darkness of the side street. In ten minutes be

had returned.
"Married last Tuesday," be said, half gruffly. "You know bow they are.
She comes to that corner at nine every night for a - comes to say ' hello!
' I generally manage to be there. Say, what was it you asked me a bit
ago - what's doing in the city? Oh, there's a roof-garden or two just
opened, twelve blocks up."
I crossed a crow's-foot of street-car tracks, and skirted the edge of an
umbrageous park. An artificial Diana, gilded, heroic, poised,
wind-ruled, on the tower, shimmered in the clear light of her namesake
in the sky. Along came my poet, hurry- ing, hatted, haired, emitting
dactyls, spondees and dactylis. I seized him. "Bill," said I (in the
magazine he is Cleon), "give me a lift. I am on an assignment to find
out the Voice of the city. You see, it's a special order. Ordi- narily a
symposium comprising the views of Henry Clews, John L. Sullivan,
Edwin Markham, May Ir- win and Charles Schwab would be about all.
But this is a different matter. We want a broad, poetic, mystic
vocalization of the city's soul and meaning. You are the very chap to
give me a hint. Some years ago a man got at the Niagara Falls and gave
us its pitch. The note was about two feet below the lowest G on the
piano. Now, you can't put New York into a note unless it's better
indorsed than that. But give me an idea of what it would say if it should
speak. It is bound to be a mighty and far-reaching utterance. To arrive
at it we must take the tremendous crash of the chords of the day's traffic,
the laughter and music of the night, the solemn tones of Dr. Parkhurst,
the rag-time, the weeping, the stealthy bum of cab-wbeels, the shout of
the press agent, the tinkle of fountains on the roof gardens, the
hullabaloo of the strawberry vender and the covers of Everybody's
Magazine, the whispers of the lovers in the parks - all these sounds,
must go into your Voice - not combined, but mixed, and of the mixture
an essence made; and of the es- sence an extract - an audible