path through cigarettes; it is a lovely time. It is the time of the lures and snares of the wicked city and of the Great White Way; it is the time of pitfalls that await the innocent country girl with a whaleboned collar and a small waist; it is the time of Palaces of Sin or the Devil on Sunday; it is the time of the Tenderloin, of the nests of vice; it is the time of the gilded resorts with mirrors and soft carpets, where the mechanical piano played and you bought champagne, and of the High Class places and the Madam who would not stand for any ungentlemanly behaviour, the time of the girls who wore evening dresses and were Perfect Ladies.
It is the time of the opera and theatre parties, and the Horse Show, and of late jolly suppers in the walnut dining-rooms; it is the time of elegant ladies with long gloves on naked arms, and Welsh rarebit in the chafing-dish; it is the time of the Four Hundred, and the great names of the millionaires—the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Goulds—it is the time of the powdered flunkeys and the twenty-dollar favours; it is the time of Newport, and the canopied red-carpeted sidewalks, and the great mansions on Fifth Avenue, and the splendid gilt and plush marble halls, and the time of the fortune-hunting foreign noblemen (London papers please copy).
It is the time of the effeminate fop, and the lisping ass (Oh, Percy! I’ll slap you on your wrist, you rough, rude thing, you!); it is the time of the Damned Dude who wears English clothes and has cuffs on his trousers (Hey, mister! Is it raining in London?), and he never did anything in his life but spend his old man’s money, he never did an honest lick of work in his life, he’s not worth powder enough to kill him, and if the son of a bitch comes fooling around any sister of mine I’ll beat the everlasting tar out of him.
When the songs that they sang were old and sweet, when the songs that they sang were like beauty’s from afar, and when people sitting on their porches in the dusk could hear (O sweet and low!) the corner quartette sing, “Sweet Adeline”; when the songs that they sang were “Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer True.”
It is the time of the wharves and the tangled shipping, the horse-cars by the docks, of piled-up casks and kegs of rum and molasses. There are forgotten fume-flaws of bright smoke above Manhattan; where are the lost faces that came towards us over Brooklyn bridge, where are the parted ripples and the proud forgotten ships?
By the waters of life, before we knew that we must die, before we had seen
