He
would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no
hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the
Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan
chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown,
uptown, and downtown you may move without seeing her.
At the end of an hour's stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad,
smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old
hotel softly but brilliantly lit. Disconsolately, because he knew that
he must dine; and dining in that hotel was no venture. It was one of his
favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be the service and
so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the hunger that must be
appeased by the "dead perfection" of the place's cuisine. Even the music
there seemed to be always playing _da capo_.
Fancy came to him that he would dine at some cheap, even dubious,
restaurant lower down in the city, where the erratic chefs from all
countries of the world spread their national cookery for the omnivorous
American. Something might happen there out of the routine--he might come
upon a subject without a predicate, a road without an end, a question
without an answer, a cause without an effect, a gulf stream in life's
salt ocean.
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