Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/289

 Romance. The automobiles throb with it. The great, roaring elevated trains go hustling full of it. There's Romance-Romance-Romance from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn again. The sweetness of the day-blooming sunshine, the mad ness of the night-blooming electric lights, the crowds, the colors, the music, the perfume why, the city is Romance-mad! If you stop anywhere for even half an instant to get your breath, Ro mance will run right over you. It's whizzing past you in the air. It's whizzing past you in the street. It's whizzing past you in the sensuous, ornate the aters, in the jaded department stores, in the calm, gray churches. Romance ? Love ?

"The only trouble about New York Romance lies just in the fact that it is so whizzingly prema- ture. You've simply got to grab Love the minute before you've made up your mind because the minute after you've made up your mind, it won't be there. Grab it or lose it. Grab it or lose it. That s the whole Heart-Motto of New York. Sinner or Saint RUSH RUSH RUSH like Hell!"

"Grab-it or lose it. Grab it, or l-o-s-e it." Like the impish raillery of a tortured devil, the vio- lin s passionate, wheedling tremolo seemed to catch up the phrase, and mouth it and mock it, and tear it and tease it, and kiss it and curse it-and