"
"Don't you like this _filet mignon_?" said William. "Shucks, now, what's
the use to knock the town! It's the greatest ever. I couldn't sell
one automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O'Keefe's saloon, in
Sacramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sara Bernhardt
in 'Andrew Mack' yet?"
"The town's got you, Billy," said Jack.
"All right," said William. "I'm going to buy a cottage on Lake
Ronkonkoma next summer."
At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it. He caught his
breath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred times.
Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. The
irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep
gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long,
desert canons. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel,
enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this background
were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squares
through which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet and
purple depths ascended like the city's soul sounds and odors and
thrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety
unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know.
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