Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/124

 a five-thousand-word special about the standard subject of Civic Reforms. He walked down Broadway into Ludlow Street and strolled out on the Central Bridge.

The bridges were a favourite resort of Urleigh. Standing against the rail of any of these bridges, the Ohio River, up or down, brought him many fleeting notions to store or forget. He had seen the river in great floods and in low water. The perpendicular difference between the two stages was five or six stories—and he could just remember that day in February, 1884, when the Ohio went to seventy-one feet above low-water mark.

Year after year, school boy, office boy, reporter, and free lance, he had gone down to the bridges to enjoy the strange sensations he had while on them. Looking down stream his mind's eye conjured up visions that would have done credit to any magician's crystal, but he felt that his most vivid efforts were as nothing compared to the realities.

"Some day," he had said for years and years, "I'll just go down clear to N'Orleans."

"N'Orleans." A strange port to the thought when one considers that it is at the trunk of a dozen empires.

He had in his pocket the latest editions of the evening newspapers, and as he walked with his quick, nervous stride down the streets, he seemed to glance