Family -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions -- Fiction
Men and women, girls and boys by thousands passed him, pushing, hurrying,
shuffling by. Girls tittering and nudging and darting quick side glances.
Bobbing heads and figures, vigorous steps and dancing eyes. Life bubbling
over everywhere, in laughter, in sharp angry tones, in glad expectant
chatter. Deborah's big family. Across the street was a movie between two
lurid posters, and there was a dance hall overhead. The windows were all
open, and faintly above the roar of the street he could hear the piano,
drum, fiddle and horn. The thoroughfare each moment grew more tumultuous to
his ears, with trolley cars and taxis, motor busses, trucks and drays. A
small red motor dashed uptown with piles of evening papers; a great black
motor hearse rushed by. In a taxi which had stopped in a jam, a man was
kissing a girl in his arms, and both of them were laughing. The smart
little toque of blue satin she wore was crushed to one side. How red were
her lips as she threw back her head....
"Silk or cotton, boss? Which you like?" Roger glanced at the shoe strings
and pondered.
"Silk," he grunted in reply. Idly for a moment he watched this busy little
man. From whence had he come in far away Greece? What existence had he
here, and what kind of life would he still have through those many years to
come? A feeling half of sadness crept into Roger's heavy eyes as he looked
at the man, at his smiling face and then at other faces in the multitudes
sweeping past. The moment he tried to single them out, how doubly chaotic
it became. What an ocean of warm desires, passions, vivid hopes and
worries. Vaguely he could feel them pass. Often in the midst of his life,
his active and self-centered life, Roger had looked at these crowds on the
street and had thought these faces commonplace. But now at the end it was
not so.
A woman with a baby carriage stopped directly in front of him and stood
there anxiously watching for a chance to cross the street. And Roger
thought of Deborah. Heavily he climbed down from his seat, paid the man and
bade him good-night, and went home to see Deborah's baby.
For a long time he sat by the cradle. Presently Deborah joined him, and
soon they were laughing heartily at the astonishing jerks and kicks and
grimaces of the tiny boy. He was having his bath and he hated it. But safe
at last on his mother's lap, wrapped to his ears in a big soft towel, he
grew very gay and contented and looked waggishly about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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