Harlequin and Columbine

Booth Tarkington




I


For a lucky glimpse of the great Talbot Potter, the girls who
caught it may thank that conjunction of Olympian events which
brings within the boundaries of one November week the Horse
Show and the roaring climax of the football months and the more
dulcet, yet vast, beginning of the opera season. Some throbbing
of attendant multitudes coming to the ears of Talbot Potter, he
obeyed an inward call to walk to rehearsal by way of Fifth
Avenue, and turning out of Forty-fourth Street to become part
of the people-sea of the southward current, felt the eyes of
the northward beating upon his face like the pulsing
successions of an exhilarating surf. His Fifth Avenue knew its
Talbot Potter.

Strangers used to leisurely appraisals upon their own
thoroughfares are apt to believe that Fifth Avenue notices
nothing; but they are mistaken; it is New York that is
preoccupied, not Fifth Avenue. The Fifth Avenue eye, like a
policeman's, familiar with a variety of types, catalogues you
and replaces you upon the shelf with such automatic rapidity
that you are not aware you have been taken down. Fifth Avenue