one of the great problems of the day."

Suddenly the Colonel broke into a terrifying smile. "This novelist of
whom we have just been speaking," he said, "somewhere remarked in an
interview that it was too bad about poor George Gissing--where she
picked up Gissing, God only knows--as, writing away all his life at
stuff people didn't care for, he was one of the tragedies of
literature. Well, Gissing may be dead and gone, but his works stick
on. I could tell her"--the Colonel glared as he pawed his enormous
hand through his mane--"of a more profound tragedy of literature."




XI

THE DESSERT OF LIFE

Birds of a feather flock together, you can tell a dog by its spots, a
man is known by the company he keeps--and all that sort of thing.

It is quite astonishing that nobody has before been struck by what I
have in my eye. People go round all the while writing about Old
Greenwich Village, the harbour, the Ghetto, the walk uptown. Coney
Island, the Great White Way, the subway ride, Riverside Drive, the
spectacle of Fifth Avenue, the Night Court, the "lungs" of the
metropolis, the "cliff dwellers," "faith, hope, and charity" on
University Heights--a cathedral, a university, and a hospital, "lobster
palace society," the "grand canons" of lower Manhattan, and about every
other part of and thing in New York except this most entertaining