darkness; and above the layer of darkness enormous moving images of
things in electricity--a mastodon kitten playing with a ball of thread,
an umbrella in a shower of rain, siphons of soda-water being emptied
and filled, gigantic horses galloping at full speed, and an incredible
heraldry of chewing-gum.... Sky-signs! In Europe I had always inveighed
manfully against sky-signs. But now I bowed the head, vanquished. These
sky-signs annihilated argument. Moreover, had they not been made
possible by the invention of a European, and that European an intimate
friend of my own?...

"I suppose this is Broadway?" I ventured.

It was. That is to say, it was one of the Broadways. There are several
different ones. What could be more different from this than the
down-town Broadway of Trinity Church and the crowded sky-scrapers? And
even this Broadway could differ from itself, as I knew later on an
election night.... I was overpowered by Broadway.

"You must not expect me to talk," I said.

We drew up in front of a huge hotel and went into the bar, huge and
gorgeous to match, shimmering with white bartenders and a variegated
population of men-about-town. I had never seen such a bar.

"Two Polands and a Scotch highball," was the order. Of which
geographical language I understood not a word.

"See the fresco," my particular friend suggested. And from his tone, at
once modestly content and artificially careless, I knew that that
nursery-rhyme fresco was one of the sights of the pleasure quarter of