Page:The New Yorker 0001 1925-02-21.pdf/17

THE NEW YORKER I don’t know what I shall do, Amelia, when I think of you alone in Paris

Highlights

SPORTING Club on the East Side; the crowd mills at the door cap and sweater: policemen, uptown sportsmen, truck-drivers, debutantes, newsboys, longshoremen smelling of oil Orange and black posters with staring headlines and photographed pugilists in trunks cry the attractive bouts within

Steady roar of voices, cat-calls, laughter; shadowy hall, wooden benches, sawdust and peanut shells; vast barn cobbled with a thousand pale faces, upturned toward the arena Two boys fighting without passion, caged gamecocks Roped dais under clustered lights, dirty white canvas, sweating referee. White torsos dancing, round brown fists flaying Vivid jab, answering flow of blood; eager cries from many throats “—the eye! Get him in the eye, why doncha?” Second blow and a spatter of blood; red smears now like war paint wherever the soaked glove strikes “ya got him goin’, kid! Put him in the cellar, Georgie! Hay-makers, Georgie! Wipe off that smile, come on, bust him”

Scuffle, slaps, panting gasps, the squeak of resin soles on the canvas; a lady with iron-grey hair stops chewing gum to yell: “Kill him, Georgie!” Rippling backs take highlights, biceps swell, chests bunch with square muscle strike, parry, clinch, separate slugging toe to toe, blood, silk loin cloths spotted red Sudden leather, shuddering impact, sagging knees and the joyful screams. Hard as a heel the second glove kicks wet flesh the reeling canvas and the falling ceiling; prostrate, squirming fists clenched above him pawing to hit again  “five! six!” brute agony, straining to rise  “seven! eight!” pulpy face ground into the canvas  “nine! ten!” Beaten in Manly Art. —

Magic a la Mode (Being a Few Up-to-the-Minute Tricks for the Modern Supper Restaurant-Goer)

The Disappearing Highballs. The Fade Away Coin. The Elusive Waiter. The Diminishing Flask. The Multiplying Dancers. The Transparent Federal Agent. The Invisible Napkin. The Vanishing Overcoat. The Changed Hat. The Flying Taxi—C. G. S.

The Old Guard Passes

THOUGHT at first it was a funeral—this solemn procession of men pacing in single file up Fifth Avenue, led by a band playing Chopin’s “Funeral March.” Each member of this parade was wearing a crape arm hand. And to each was neatly tied a small can.

I recognized the first two men in line, They were Norman Hapgood and Mark Sullivan. Behind them came others, keeping the single file formation, and each wearing the crape and the tied-on can. They stretched away for blocks and blocks. At intervals came other bands, one playing “Good-bye Forever!” and another “He Walked Right In, and He Turned Around, and He Walked Right Out Again.”

After this procession had been passing my given point of vision for an hour and three quarters, I could endure my ignorance no longer.

“Who are they, anyhow?” I asked the Man Who Knows Everything.

“Don’t you know?” He smiled pityingly at my denseness, “Those are the various editors of Collier’s Weekly during recent years.”

“But why has each one got a can tied to him?”

“That’s symbolic.”

And now, after one hour and fifty-two minutes the parade was coming to an end. The last two in line I recognized as Richard Walsh and Loren Palmer. After a short interval came a lone figure wearing no crape nor can. The Man Who Knows Everything explained: “Chap named Chenery—the latest and present editor.”

He wore a perplexed but determined look and was preceded by a band playing “What’ll I Do?” My companion got from his hip a small flask and before drinking raised it aloft in a toast:—“To another brave man!” With similar respect I bared my head as he went by.—.

The Spiritist

“Scoffers! Unbelieving Dullards! I tell you with the utmost sincerity that I have pierced the hideous shroud of Death: that I bring you salvation from a fear older than man: that I have resolved an enigma as incomprehensible as life itself—and you stand there grinning at me!

“Cannot your narrow minds conceive the thought that I have a perception that is totally lacking in yourselves?

“Doubters! Enter this room with me: sit silent: and be awed while Julius Caesar upsets a table, and Cleopatra whistles through her teeth!”