song-and-dance does this old town give you? What I mean is, doesn't
the gab of it seem to kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you
in a sort of amalgamated tip that hits off the burg in a kind of an
epigram with a dash of bitters and a slice of--"

"Excuse me a minute," said Billy, "somebody's punching the button at
the side door."

He went away; came back with an empty tin bucket; again vanished with
it full; returned and said to me:

"That was Mame. She rings twice. She likes a glass of beer for
supper. Her and the kid. If you ever saw that little skeesicks
of mine brace up in his high chair and take his beer and-- But,
say, what was yours? I get kind of excited when I hear them two
rings--was it the baseball score or gin fizz you asked for?"

"Ginger ale," I answered.

I walked up to Broadway. I saw a cop on the corner. The cops take
kids up, women across, and men in. I went up to him.

"If I'm not exceeding the spiel limit," I said, "let me ask you. You
see New York during its vocative hours. It is the function of you and
your brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There must
be a civic voice that is intelligible to you. At night during your
lonely rounds you must have heard it. What is the epitome of its
turmoil and shouting? What does the city say to you?"

"Friend," said the policeman, spinning his club, "it don't say