A policeman arrived and inquired sympathetically what was wrong. Jan
brushed himself mechanically as the policeman spoke. Then he answered:
"Nothing, I fell down." The policeman went away and Jan turned back to
catch a Milwaukee Avenue street car.
He stood on the corner waiting and fingering his bruised chin. He seemed
to be getting impatient as the car failed to appear. Finally he thrust his
hand inside his pocket and drew out the letter again. He held it without
reading for an instant and then tore it up.
When the car came Jan was still tearing up the letter, his thick fingers
trying vainly to divide it into tinier bits.
CORAL, AMBER AND JADE
There are no gold and scarlet lanterns bobbing like fat little oriental
Pierrots over this street. No firecracker colors daub its sad walls. Walk
the whole length and not a dragon or a thumbnail balcony or a pigtail will
you see.
Instead, a very efficient, very conservative Chinatown and a colony of
very efficient and very matter-of-fact Chinamen who have gradually taken
possession of a small district around Twenty-second Street and Wentworth
Avenue. A rather famous district in its way, where once the city's
tenderloin put forth its red shadows.
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