conduct her soul forth to meet the immensity of space.
"Bipeds," he said, solemnly. "See what they become even at the small elevation of 340 feet—mere crawling insects going to and fro at random." "Oh, they ain't anything of the kind," exclaimed Daisy, sud- denly—"they're folks! I saw an automobile. Oh, gee! are we that high up?"
"Walk over this way," said Dabster.
He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far be- low, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon lights of
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the winter afternoon. And then the bay and sea to the south and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky.
"I don't like it," declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes. "Say we go
down."
But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity. He would let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-nelson he had on the in- finite, and the memory he had for statistics. And then she would never- more be content to buy chewing gum at the smallest store in New York. And so he began to prate of the smallness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a removal from earth made man and his works look like one tenth part of a dollar thrice computed. And that one should consider the sidereal system and the maxims of Epictetus and be comforted. "You don't carry me with you," said Daisy. "Say, I think it's awful to be up so high that folks look like fleas. One of them we saw might have been Joe. Why, Jiminy! we might as well be in New Jersey! Say, I'm afraid up here!"
The philosopher smiled fatuously.
"The earth," said he, "is itself only as a grain of wheat in space. Look
up there."
Daisy gazed upward apprehensively. The short day was spent and the
stars were coming out above.
"Yonder star," said Dabster, "is Venus, the evening star. She is
66,000,000 miles from the sun."
"Fudge!" said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, "where do you think I come from—Brooklyn? Susie Price, in our store—her brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco—that's only three thousand miles."
The philosopher smiled indulgently.
"Our world," he said, "is 91,000,000 miles from the sun. There are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times further from us than the sun is. If one of them should be extinguished it would be three years before we would see its light go out. There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude. It takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the earth. With an eighteen-foot telescope we can see 43,000,000 stars, including those of the thirteenth magnitude, whose light takes 2,700 years to reach us. Each of these stars—"
"You're lyin'," cried Daisy, angrily. "You're tryin' to scare me. And you
have; I want to go down!"
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She stamped her foot.
"Arcturus—" began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was interrup- ted by a demonstration out of the vastness of the nature that he was en- deavoring to portray with his memory instead of his heart. For to the heart-expounder of nature the stars were set in the firmament expressly to give soft light to lovers wandering happily beneath them; and if you stand tiptoe some September night with your sweetheart on your arm you can almost touch them with your hand. Three years for their light to reach us, indeed!
Out of the west leaped a meteor, lighting the roof of the skyscraper al- most to midday. Its fiery parabola was limned against the sky toward the east. It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed.
"Take me down," she cried, vehemently, "you—you mental
arithmetic!"
Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it. She was wild-eyed,
and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating drop. Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the philosopher lost her. She vanished; and he stood, bewildered, without figures or statistics to aid him.
Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded in lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the attenuated stove.
The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, crying, scattering fruit
and candies, tumbled into his arms.
"Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper. Ain't it cozy and warm and homelike in here! I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me."
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A BIRD OF BAGDAD
Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. Quigg's restaurant is in Fourth Avenue—that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue—born and bred in the Bowery—staggers northward full of good resolutions.
Where it crosses Fourteenth Street it struts for a brief moment proudly in the glare of the museums and cheap theatres. It may yet become a fit mate for its high-born sister boulevard to the west, or its roaring, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east. It passes Union Square; and here the hoofs of the dray horses seem to thunder in unison, recalling the tread of marching hosts—Hooray! But now come the silent and terrible mountains—buildings square as forts, high as the clouds, shutting out the sky, where thousands of slaves bend over desks all day. On the ground floors are only little fruit shops and laundries and book shops, where you see copies of "Littell's Living Age" and G. W. M. Reynold's novels in the windows. And next—poor Fourth Avenue!—the street glides into a mediaeval solitude. On each side are shops devoted to "Antiques."
Let us say it is night. Men in rusty armor stand in the windows and menace the hurrying cars with raised, rusty iron gauntlets. Hauberks and helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gal- lants gleam dully in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner sa- loon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound citizens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live inclosed by these mortuary relics, and trod by these spectral citizens in whose sunken hearts scarce one good whoop or tra-la-la remained?
Not Fourth Avenue. Not after the tinsel but enlivening glories of the Little Rialto—not after the echoing drum-beats of Union Square. There need be no tears, ladies and gentlemen; 'tis but the suicide of a street. With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue dives headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth and is never seen again.
Near the sad scene of the thoroughfare's dissolution stood the modest restaurant of Quigg. It stands there yet if you care to view its crumbling red-brick front, its show window heaped with oranges, tomatoes, layer
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cakes, pies, canned asparagus—its papier-mâché lobster and two Maltese kittens asleep on a bunch of lettuce—if you care to sit at one of the little tables upon whose cloth has been traced in the yellowest of coffee stains the trail of the Japanese advance—to sit there with one eye on your um- brella and the other upon the bogus bottle from which you drop the counterfeit sauce foisted upon us by the cursed charlatan who assumes to be our dear old lord and friend, the "Nobleman in India."
