“I am not dining yet,” I said to him. “You will excuse me. I am going to find my Man About Town this night if I have to rake New York from the Battery to Little Coney Island.” I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type gave a pleasant savour of life and interest to the air I breathed. I was glad to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leisurely and with something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige. I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos-Dumont. When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said aloud: “Hasn’t it passed yet?” A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my brow that was not at all fevered. A young doctor came along, grinned, and handed me a morning newspaper. “Want to see how it happened?” he asked cheerily. I read the article. Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night before. It closed with these lines: “—Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not serious. He appeared to be a typical Man About Town.” THE COP AND THE ANTHEM On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. A dead leaf fell in Soapy’s lap. That was Jack Frost’s card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready. Soapy’s mind became cognisant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigour. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench. The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable.