“There was only one ‘Three Musketeers.’” “Sure.... The greatest romance ever written.... Sure.... All right, Barry....” That evening Annan made himself some black coffee and wrote his farewell article for Coltfoot. It took him only half an hour and it left him too much keyed up for sleep. He called his article: “The Great American Ass.” “September flowers gone to seed,” it began, deceptively; “withering leaves and dry dirt--the Park and Fifth Avenue at their shabbiest. Streets torn up, piles of sand, escaping steam, puddles of mortar, red flag and red lantern crowning the débris, and the whole mess stinking of illuminating gas: heat, dirt, noise--unnecessary, incessant, hellish noise--seven million sweating people milling like maggots in the midst--your New York, fellow citizens, on an unwashed platter! “_Of_ the metropolis itself there is scarcely any beauty--a church here, an office-building there, one or two statues, a few dwellings: “_In_ the metropolis there is more beauty than anywhere else in the world. It is to be found in the faces and figures of its women and children. “For the beauty of woman is as usual in New York as it is rare in the capitals of Europe. Without the charm, symmetry, vivacity of the faces of her women, New York would be, indeed, the ugliest, dingiest, and stupidest metropolis in the world. “Flower-like her pretty women bloom all over the arid, treeless agglomeration of mortar and metal, serene amid the asinine clamour; smiling, piquant, nourished by suffocating heat, flourishing in arctic cold, hardy, healthy, wonderful in the vast abiding place of the Great American Ass,--New York. “Here is his stronghold and he runs it to suit himself. Any woman manages her own flat far better. “For your New Yorker comes of an untidy race, knowing neither civic nor national pride in the proper sense. “His forefathers cleared forests and lived among charred stumps. He is aware of no inborn necessity for beauty. “New York is the wastrel among states. Her sons pollute streams; her country roads are vistas of bill-boards; even the ‘eternal’ hills that line the Hudson crumble daily into cement. Here the Great American Ass found a Paradise and created a Dump. He ravages, stamps out, obliterates the lovely face of nature,--digs, burns, crushes, tramples. Hundreds of miles of ghastly, charred forests mark the trail of the Great American Ass among his mountains. Filthy sea-waves dash his refuse upon his shores. “Loud, wanton, strident, and painted his metropolis sprawls, unbuttoned, on the island leering at ugliness and devastation. And, in her dirty ears, the ceaseless and complacent braying of the Great American Ass. Her lover, Bottom, the eternal New Yorker. “Any woman’s kitchen is cleaner and her household run with greater economy.