The Voice of the City | Page 6

were
hers.
One moment yet of sententiousness and the story moves.
In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner
and thrust the rib of your um- brella into the eye of your old friend
from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in the
park - and lo! bandits attack you - you are am- bulanced to the hospital
- you marry your nurse; are divorced - get squeezed while short on U. P.
S. and D. 0. W. N. S. - stand in the bread line - marry an heiress, take
out your laundry and pay your club dues - seemingly all in the wink of
an eye. You travel the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a
handkerchief is dropped for you, a brick is dropped upon you, the

elevator cable or your bank breaks, a table d'hote or your wife disagrees
with you, and Fate tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened
by an un-feed waiter. The City is a sprightly young- ster, and you are
red paint upon its toy, and you get licked off.
John Hopkins sat, after a compressed dinner, in his glove-fitting
straight-front flat. He sat upon a hornblende couch and gazed, with
satiated eyes, at Art Brought Home to the People in the shape of "The
Storm " tacked against the wall. Mrs. Hop- kins discoursed droningly
of the dinner smells from the flat across the ball. The flea-bitten terrier
gave Hopkins a look of disgust, and showed a man-hating tooth.
Here was neither poverty, love, nor war; but upon such barren stems
may be grafted those essentials of a complete life.
John Hopkins sought to inject a few raisins of conversation into the
tasteless dough of existence.
"Putting a new elevator in at the office," he said, discarding the
nominative noun, "and the boss has turned out his whiskers."
"You don't mean it! commented Mrs. Hopkins.
"Mr. Whipples," continued John, "wore his new spring suit down
to-day. I liked it fine It's a gray with - " He stopped, suddenly stricken
by a need that made itself known to him. "I believe I'll walk down to
the corner and get a five-cent cigar,"he concluded.
John Hopkins took his bat aid picked his way down the musty halls and
stairs of the flat-house
The evening air was mild, and the streets shrill with the careless cries
of children playing games con- trolled by mysterious rhythms and
phrases. Their elders held the doorways and steps with leisurely pipe
and gossip. Paradoxically, the fire-escapes sup- ported lovers in couples
who made no attempt to fly the mounting conflagration they were there
to fan. The corner cigar store aimed at by John Hopkins was kept by a
man named Freshmayer, who looked upon the earth as a sterile
promontory.
Hopkins, unknown in the store, entered and called genially for his
"bunch of spinach, car-fare grade." This imputation deepened the
pessimism of Fresh- mayer; but be set out a brand that came perilously
near to filling the order. Hopkins bit off the roots of his purchase, and
lighted up at the swinging gas jet. Feeling in his pockets to make
payment, he found not a penny there.

"Say, my friend," he explained, frankly, "I've come out without any
change. Hand you that nickel first time I pass."
Joy surged in Freshmayer's heart. Here was cor- roboration of his belief
that the world was rotten and man a peripatetic evil. Without a word he
rounded the end of his counter and made earnest onslaught upon his
customer. Hopkins was no man to serve as a punching-bag for a
pessimistic tobacconist. He quickly bestowed upon Freshmayer a
Colorado- maduro eye in return for the ardent kick that be received
from that dealer in goods for cash only.
The impetus of the enemy's attack forced the Hopkins line back to the
sidewalk. There the con- flict raged; the pacific wooden Indian, with
his carven smile, was overturned, and those of the street who delighted
in carnage pressed round to view the zealous joust.
But then came the inevitable cop and imminent convenience for both
the attacker and attacked. John Hopkins was a peaceful citizen, who
worked at rebuses of nights in a flat, but be was not without the
fundamental spirit of resistance that comes with the battle-rage. He
knocked the policeman into a gro- cer's sidewalk display of goods and
gave Freshmayer a punch that caused him temporarily to regret that he
had not made it a rule to extend a five-cent line of credit to certain
customers. Then Hopkins took spiritedly to his heels down the
sidewalk, closely fol- lowed by the cigar-dealer and the policeman,
whose uniform testified to the reason in the grocer's sign that read: