Page:The Fun of It.pdf/34

22 dents in New York can get so much with so little if they really wish. The steps in the gallery of Car­negie Hall are really not uncomfortable and I enjoyed many a concert from that locality—after I got used to the smell of garlic. Even the Pali­sades across the river were good for hiking and the cost to get there by ferry is only a few cents.

I suppose I must have been fairly stalwart-look­ ing for on one of the periodic jaunts to the Pali­sades, the shopkeeper in a little store where three other hikers and I had stopped to buy sandwiches for lunch, eyed our small group and said,

“I bet you girls iss yust off the farm.”

It just happened that none of us had ever been on a farm at that time, but the man behind the counter was probably not used to city people’s spending their holidays as we were doing.

I was familiar with all the forbidden under­ground passageways which connected the different buildings of the University. I think I explored every nook and cranny possible. I have sat in the lap of the gilded statue which decorates the library steps, and I was probably the most frequent visitor on the top of the library dome. I mean the top.

I used my knowledge of how to get on the dome a few years later when I was again at Columbia. It proved an excellent vantage point for watching the eclipse of the sun in 1925. I stood there with a well known biologist and looked across at the angel trumpeting on the highest point of St. John’s