Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/229

 V. Went to the Animals' Fair

, the word stuck in her throat when she tried to say it

"It's terrible to think of, terrible," George Baldwin was groaning. "The Street'll go plumb to hell They'll close the Stock Exchange, only thing to do."

"And I've never been to Europe either A war must be an extraordinary thing to see." Ellen in her blue velvet dress with a buff cloak over it leaned back against the cushions of the taxi that whirred smoothly under them. "I always think of history as lithographs in a schoolbook, generals making proclamations, little tiny figures running across fields with their arms spread out, facsimiles of signatures." Cones of light cutting into cones of light along the hot humming roadside, headlights splashing trees, houses, billboards, telegraph poles with broad brushes of whitewash.