And
where was the Rotary Club? Not a sign of the Rotary Club. One billboard
would have saved me; the admonitions that "work is man's duty to his
nation," that my country needed me as much in peace as in war, would have
scattered the insidious spell of this street and sent me back to the
typewriter with at least a story of some waiter in a loop beanery who was
once a reigning prince of Patagonia.
But there was no sign, no billboard to inspire me with a sense of duty. So
we strutted--the long procession of us--a masquerade of leisure and
complacency. Here was a street in which a shave and a haircut, a shine and
a clean collar exhilarated a man with a feeling of power and virtue. As if
there were nothing else to the day than to decorate himself for the
amusement of others.
There were beggars in the street but they only add by way of contrast to
the effulgence of our procession. And, besides, are they beggars? Augustus
Caesar attired himself in beggar's clothes one day each year and asked
alms in the highways of Rome.
* * * * *
I begin to notice something. An expression in our faces as we drift by the
fastidious ballyhoos of the shop windows. We are waiting for
something--actors walking up and down in the wings waiting for their cues
to go on.
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