I've known some of
them to lead a deuce thinking it was an ace and vice versa. But at that I
can fully recommend a good, sociable game of cards as the best way for a
doomed man to pass the few hours before the arrival of the fatal moment."
RIPPLES
It rains. People carry umbrellas. A great financier has promised me an
interview. The windows of his club look out on a thousand umbrellas. They
bob along like drunken beetles.
Once in a blue moon one becomes aware of people. Usually the crowds and
their endless faces are a background. They circle around one the way
ripples circle around a stone that has fallen into the water. The
torments, elation of others; the ambitions, defeats of others; the bedlam
of others--who the piano. A cornet, probably. Or a ukulele.
_Parbleu_, what creates in the plunge from youth to age.
Here, then, under the umbrellas outside the great financier's club, are
people. One must marvel. They pass one another without so much as a
glance. To each of them all the others--the bedlam of others--are ripples
emanating from themselves. The great quests and struggles going on and the
million agonies and tumults beating in the veins of the world--ripples.
Yes, vague and vaguer ripples which surround the fact that one is going to
buy a pair of suspenders; which circle the fact that one is invited out
for dinner this evening.
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