Page:When the movies were young - Arvidson - 1925.djvu/39

 Everything a bustle! People, and people, and people! Laughing, happy, chattering people who didn't seem to know and apparently didn't care what had happened to us out there by the bleak Pacific. I was so annoyed at them. Their life was still normal. Though I knew they had helped bounteously, I was annoyed.

But here comes! And we jumped into a cab—with a license, but no ring. In the unusual excitement that had been forgotten, so we had to turn back in the narrow street and find a jeweler. Then we drove to Old North Church, where Paul Revere had hung out his lantern on his famous ride (which Mr. Griffith has since filmed in "America"), and our names were soon written in the register.

The end of June, and New York! Just blowing up for a thunderstorm. I had never heard real thunder, nor seen lightning, nor been wet by a summer rain. What horrible weather! The wind blew a gale, driving papers and dust in thick swirling clouds. Of all the miserable introductions to the city of my dreams and ambitions, New York City could hardly have offered me a more miserable one!

We lived in style for a few days at the Hotel Navarre on Seventh Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, and then looked for a "sublet" for the summer. I'd never heard of a "sublet" before.

We ferreted around and found a ducky little place, so cheap—twenty-five dollars a month—on West Fifty-sixth Street, overlooking the athletic grounds of the Y. M. C. A., where I was tremendously amused watching the fat men all wrapped up in sweaters doing their ten times around without stopping—for reducing purposes.

But we had little time to waste in such observations.