Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/364

 comes down, but not for weeks, months. Spring rich in gluten.

He went into a lunchroom, ordered bacon and eggs, toast and coffee, sat eating them happily, tasting thoroughly every mouthful. His thoughts ran wild like a pasture full of yearling colts crazy with sundown. At the next table a voice was expounding monotonously:

"Jilted and I tell you we had to do some cleaning. They were all members of your church you know. We knew the whole story. He was advised to put her away. He said, *No I'm going to see it through'."

Herf got to his feet. He must be walking again. He went out with a taste of bacon in his teeth.

Express service meets the demands of spring. O God to meet the demands of spring. No tins, no sir, but there's rich quality in every mellow pipeful Socony. One taste tells more than a million words. The yellow pencil with the red band. Than a million words, than a million words. "All right hand over that million Keep him covered Ben." The Yonkers gang left him for dead on a bench in the park. They stuck him up, but all they got was a million words "But Jimps I'm so tired of book-talk and the proletariat, cant you understand?"

Chockful of golden richness, spring.

Dick Snow's mother owned a shoebox factory. She failed and he came out of school and took to standing on streetcorners. The guy in the softdrink stand put him wise. He'd made two payments on pearl earings for a blackhaired Jewish girl with a shape like a mandolin. They waited for the bankmessenger in the L station. He pitched over the turnstile and hung there. They went off with the satchel in a Ford sedan. Dick Snow stayed behind emptying his gun into the dead man. In the deathhouse he met the demands of spring by writing a poem to his mother that they published in the ''Evening Graphic. ''

With every deep breath Herf breathed in rumble and grind and painted phrases until he began to swell, felt him-