Risks are ignored, so that present ease be assured. A lurid morrow there may be, but it lies on the lap of gods who have always been kind to America! It is New York that sets the pace for the continent. Here notions are born with abrupt caprice that alters a woman's gown or the income of her man. Or even the too orderly topography of the trees, which are torn up and pulled down with uproarious glee. There were no new aliens, as it chanced-no Ellis Island Americans to witness the moneyed invasion which marked the New York of 1916-17. Nothing like it was ever known, even in a land of freak spending and mushroom millions. Of course, it was war money. October promised a fairish season without any hint of the orgy ahead. Giant hotels, lavish restaurants, and cabarets made ready for the election crowds; for dancers and skaters, for lovers of the theatre and music-hall, who sup at two in the morning and cry, "What's a hundred dollars?" with their whole heart. Those election throngs remained in the city, and to them were added visitors from all the States, until New York swelled and sang with carnival. Families from Buenos Aires piled in; from Rio, Havana, and the Central American capitals. For Paris was now an unattainable goal. There were also the idle rich who are, I must say, a diminishing caste; there are signs of penal laws against them. There were brokers and speculators, celebrating a revival with "any-price" dinners and Neronic gifts to the ladies. There were quite new types seen in this invasion: families from the Central West, farmers, contractors, and manufacturers intent upon circulating some of the money which deluged America, and now taxed even New York wits to devise new ways of melting it. The city's floating population was more than doubled. Seven hundred thousand "purses' came into New York, asking for genial robbery and a good time therewith. The hotels overflowed; a mattress in a bath-tub fetched five dollars a night; rich men lay on the floors or sat contorted in the corridors awaiting the dawn of new delights. Gradually guests were driven out of the city. They might sup on Broadway, or in Fifth or Madison Avenues; but for beds they were billeted afar off-in Yonkers or in Newark, in dingy Hoboken, or Long Island City, and the other "nowheres" of New York. It is not possible to exaggerate the nightly riot, nor the outrageous prices asked and gaily paid for food and wine, amusements, and souvenirs bought in shops which in normal times are the most expensive in the world. Money appeared to have lost its value. There were yellow-back tips (of $100) for the bowing maître d'hôtel, five dollars for the boy that "boosted" an overcoat and handed out a hat from the cloakroom. Two dollars was paid to enter a noisy cabaret; here one sat down exhausted to a supper-dish of eggs at one dollar a plate. Champagne poured freely as ice-water on a sultry night. The men who speculate in theatre tickets got fifty dollars for a stall. Beggars of yesteryear were now telephoning madly to order banquets in princely suites at ten dollars a plate. . . . The manager would put the receiver down and dwell with wonder on the meteoric rise of men whom no fate could floor, since they "came back" with unquenchable élan to astonish the natives-an all but impossible feat in sated New York. I am bound to deal with this tiresome phase; it was a phenomenal reflex of the Great War, and one which American thinkers would be glad to forget. Moreover, New York, though voted un-American by all, is yet America's playground, and therefore an index to flush or tight times throughout the continent. Above all others this city is sensitive to the drift of European affairs. Dramatic events of the war were calmly received elsewhere; only New York was really excited in the early days, and crowded to the bulletin-boards debating belligerent chances the whole night long. This is the American metropolis. Washington, the political capital-the Westminster of the United States-is 220 miles away in the south. It is a beautiful, uncommercial city of sleepy avenues and broad sunlit leisure, contrasting sharply with New York. The Federal seat, in its brief and vivid season, is a wholly delightful centre of sets and cliques and aristocracies. Washington is, in fact, America's "Court," at once informal and prim-not to say rigid in rule; hospitable, witty, and sown with American salons of surprising and diverting range. If it were possible to unite New York and Washington, the result would be a capital of unique allurement and zest for a brief stay. The note of New York is impermanence; it never is, but always to be blest with civic and architectural perfection. Last season's hotel, with an amusement-annex that cost a fortune, is this year already under a cloud. For another is projected-one of fifteen hundred rooms and the soaring splendour of eclipse. It will cost fifteen million dollars. Before it opens a still more attractive palace is planned and talked of-not necessarily largerbut with novelties that take the town and are flashed for thousands of miles to maintain the siren fame which has been New York's since Revolutionary times. It is a city of noise, of course, with electric railways borne upon iron pillars over tram-laid streets paved with granite blocks. The passion for altering is everywhere seen. Great pits yawn here and there-perhaps for the leg-rests of yet another skyscraper. Or the hole may be part of a city tube. Bombs explode; there is quarrying in the building lots-erection, demolition, carting away of débris, and the dumping of new and costly materials. The "Great American Novel," so long expected and discussed, lies here ready made, expansed for every nation to read, each in its own tongue. The glamour of New York invades the prairie farm; it fires young ambition in the cross-roads store thousands of miles away in the Oregon sage or Nevada sands. There is but one Fifth Avenue, only one Broadway, and no room in either for the ill-dressed or glum; they would be out of place as a bully would be in the nursery. New York is a city of late hours, a temple of airy intoxication, where the drunken man is a rare bird indeed. Extravagance is a game in this place, haply encouraged in the young folks by dad, who beams amid the nightly glitter recalling the day he landed at Castle Garden with all his worldly goods in a ragged handkerchief. Quaint tales are told of spendthrift "stunts" that vied with one another, until folly fell exhausted for a space of new germination. There was the hostess who bought boxes for three plays, that her guests might choose according to their after-dinner mood. There was Mrs. So-and-So's ball with costly jewels for cotillion favours; the banquet with dancers on the table, and stocks and bonds folded in the serviettes as little gifts. There were ballets on the Long Island lawns brought en masse from the Metropolitan Opera, with Caruso himself to sing "Hail Columbia" at the close. There was the special train from Los Angeles to New York which enabled young love to keep its tryst; there were the famous monkey-and-horseback dinners, with many another prank and curvet to outshine all the revellers from Caligula to Louis Quatorze : "Why should the gods have put me at my case The answer is that today this riot is voted bad form. It is a crudity of jaded senses which the best people leave to the unsophisticated newly-rich who block Broadway at night with a tangle of sumptuous cars. It is for her invaders that New York displays electric signs so glaring that the native citizen cultivates blindness, hoping to save his soul alive and keep his limbs from the mercy of Broadway joy-riders. For here night shineth as the day. There is blazing publicity for all manner of wares. Ebullient rainbows leap and race, flicker and flash, as for a Fourth of July that never ends. Fabulous glow-worms crawl up and down. Zigzag lightnings strike an acre of signboard-and reveal a panacea for overeating! A four-storey Highlander dances a whisky-fling; another pours out a highball, with a hundred feet between. his bottle and the glass. Household words race with invisible pen across a whole city block. An electric kitten plays with a mighty spool of Somebody's silk, then jumps at a bound to the top of a skyscraper. The man does not live who could clearly record his impressions of New York's phantasmagoria. "More light" is the city's motto; the blaze of it is another form of idealism which dispels the gloom of life. It is certain that restaurants, theatres, and shops have been dragged out of ruin by sheer glare. "Do it electrically" is now a familiar exhortation, and the thing is done with ferocious glee-not alone on the Great White Way, but also in countless homes that cook and clean at five cents per kilowatt-hour. New York has a mania for this unseen force. Her missionary fervour carried an Electrical Week into fifty-nine other cities, passing thence to the farms, where 108 new applications of electricity were speedily found. Thus the milkmaid is an electrician; the prairie goodwife runs a mysterious churn and chats at her work with a lonely neighbour twenty miles off by means of a telephone visor on her head. It is a country |