The Tragedy of New York

CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

THEY were speaking of New York—that long serpent which spreads itself out at evening, hideous yet beautiful; an endless chain of diamonds and pearls; a gorgeous necklace that some barbaric queen has thrown carelessly on the velvet of night.

"Ah!" she said, as she sipped her yellow liqueur at the Ritz, "how wonderful it is, and how tragic!"

"Yes," he "answered, lighting a long cigar, and watching the pale smoke curl upward. "I pity the poor, don't you? That is the tragedy of New York. Don't you think so?"

"Or the hordes of sick," she observed. "Just think how many hospitals there must be in this great city."

"I often think of the tenements, crowded and filthy; and of factories, unsanitary and unclean on the lower East Side; of working girls with just enough to eke along on; of tired men in boiler rooms where the temperature is frightful. And oh, the lonely soldiers and sailors on the streets! But then, what can one do about it all? It's too-bad; but life is life. Ah, me!" And he, too, languidly sipped a yellow chartreuse.

"Do you know," she went on, after an impressive pause, "New York gets on my nerves sometimes. When I think of all the sorrow here—the poverty—I almost go mad. But, as you so cleverly said only a moment ago, what can one do about it? For life is life. Ah, me!" And "Ah, me!" he echoed.

And they sipped their yellow poison, and looked, once in a long, long while, into each other's tired eyes.

It never seemed to dawn on them that they were the tragedy of New York.