"Where there is no faith there cannot be true love," confesses the
hero, folding her in his well-pressed arms. And that's that.
Now our friend, the baron, again. No, better to leave. He has left his
smile in the wings this time. He is very serious or perhaps very tired.
Two times tonight to play. Too much--too much.
My hat, and I will walk out on his nobs. And, anyway, Huneker wrote the
story long ago. About a piano player in Coney Island that he called--what
was it? Oh, yes, "A Chopin of the Gutter."
TEN-CENT WEDDING RINGS
A gloomy day and the loop streets grimace behind a mist. The electric
signs are lighted. The buildings open like great fans in the half dark.
The streets invite a mood of melodrama. Windows glint evilly. Doorways
grin with rows of electric teeth. This, _Jonnerrvetter_! is the Great
City of the old-time ten-twenty-thirty thrillers. The devourer of
innocence, the strumpet of stone.
I walk along humming a bar of villainous music, the "skeeter scale" that
the orchestra used to turn turn turn taaaa-tum in the old Alhambra as the
two dockwallopers and the leering Chinaman were climbing in through little
Mabel's hall bedroom window to abduct her.
Those were happy days for the drama, when a scoundrel was a scoundrel and
wore a silk hat to prove it, and a hero was a two-fisted man, as anybody
could tell by a glance at his marcelled hair and his open-at-the-throat
shirt.
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