Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/215



HE endless processions of automobiles, with black tops shiny in an autumnal drizzle, filled the long avenues of Manhattan, and, creeping busily between quivering halts, were like armies of beetles on the march through gloomy ruts in wet stone. Not unlike detached smaller beetles upright and gesticulating to the greater were the traffic directors in gleaming black oilskin, while other imperious coleoptera stood at the awning entrances to apartment houses, and, as the electric lights came on in the late afternoon, outlined themselves in dark wet glitterings that became flashingly active when automobiles drew to the curb. At such times there seemed to be a deposit of larvae; the hard and darkly shining sides of the cars opened, emitting plastic beings to be taken in charge, apparently, by the attendant beetles at the awning ends, and, upon the fashionable avenues, the larvae were of a superior, tenderer kind;—delicate things, exquisitely swathed, they were