Page:The Voice of the City (1908).djvu/152

 along plenty of blankets, so as not to be upset with the cold and discomforts of sleeping outdoors. By building fires of the shade trees and huddling together in the bridle paths, and burrowing under the grass where the ground was soft enough, the likes of 5,000 head of people successfully battled against the night air in Central Park alone.

“Ye know I live in the elegant furnished apartment house called the Beersheba Flats, over against the elevated portion of the New York Central Railroad.

“When the order come to the flats that all hands must turn out and sleep in the park, according to the instructions of the consulting committee of the City Club and the Murphy Draying, Returfing and Sodding Company, there was a look of a couple of fires and an eviction all over the place.

“The tenants began to pack up feather beds, rubber boots, strings of garlic, hot-water bags, portable canoes and scuttles of coal to take along for the sake of comfort. The sidewalk looked like a Russian camp in Oyama’s line of march. There was wailing and lamenting up and down stairs from Danny Geoghegan’s flat on the top floor to the apartments of Missis Goldsteinupski on the first.

“‘For why,’ says Danny, coming down and raging in his blue yarn socks to the janitor, ‘should I be turned out of me comfortable apartmints to lay in