TEN-CENT WEDDING RINGS


A gloomy day and the loop streets grimace behind a mist. The electric
signs are lighted. The buildings open like great fans in the half dark.

The streets invite a mood of melodrama. Windows glint evilly. Doorways
grin with rows of electric teeth. This, _Jonnerrvetter_! is the Great
City of the old-time ten-twenty-thirty thrillers. The devourer of
innocence, the strumpet of stone.

I walk along humming a bar of villainous music, the "skeeter scale" that
the orchestra used to turn turn turn taaaa-tum in the old Alhambra as the
two dockwallopers and the leering Chinaman were climbing in through little
Mabel's hall bedroom window to abduct her.

Those were happy days for the drama, when a scoundrel was a scoundrel and
wore a silk hat to prove it, and a hero was a two-fisted man, as anybody
could tell by a glance at his marcelled hair and his open-at-the-throat
shirt.

Tum tum tum tum taaaa-tum. Pizzicato pianissimo, says the direction on the
score. So we are all set for a melodrama. Here is the Great City
back-drop. Here are the grim-faced crowds shuffling by under the jaundice
glare of electric signs. And Christmas is coming. A vague gray snow
trickles out of the gloom.

A proper time for melodrama. All we need is a plot. Come, come now--a plot