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Hecht, Ben, 1894-1964

"A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago"

C. treadmill. And now they are
again passengers. Going to work. Going home to go to work again tomorrow.
It is easy to think that this is the secret of the sad little grimace the
lake brings to the eyes of the train riders.
* * * * *
This discourse is becoming a bit dolorous. But the subject rather requires
an andante treatment. The city's press agents will tell you quite another
story about the lake--about the "city's playground" and how conducive it
is to healthful sport and joyous recreation. But, on the other hand, there
is this other side, so to speak, of the lake. For the lake belongs to
those familiar things that surprise people into uncomfortable silences.
One could as easily write about the sky in this vein, since the lake, like
the sky, challenges the monotony of people's lives with another
monotony--the monotony of nature that seems to engulf, obliterate, reduce
to puny proportions the routine by which people live and which,
fortunately, they delude themselves into admiring.
There is also the question of beauty. This is a delicate issue to
introduce into one's daily reading and the reader's pardon is solicited
with proper humiliation. And yet, there is a question of beauty, of soul
states and aesthetic nuances involved in the consideration of the lake.


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