jests pass between the emissaries
of the title company and the legal counsel of the seller, jests that
seem to bear upon the infirmity of human affairs and cause the
well-wishing adventurer to wonder whether he had ever sufficiently
pondered the strange tissue of mortal uncertainties that hides behind
every earthly venture ... there was, for instance, occasional reference
to a vanished gentleman who had once crossed the apparently innocent
proscenium of our estate and had skipped, leaving someone six thousand
dollars to the bad; this ingenious buccaneer was, apparently, the only
one who did not have to be "satisfied." At any rate, we thought that we,
who entered so modestly and obscurely into this whole affair, being only
the purchaser, would finally satisfy ourself, too, by seeing if the
property was still there.

Long Island and spring--the conjunction gives us a particular thrill.
There are more beautiful places than the Long Island flats, but it was
there that we earned our first pay envelope, and it was there that we
first set up housekeeping; and as long as we live the station platform
of Jamaica will move us strangely--not merely from one train to another,
but also inwardly. There is no soil that receives a more brimming
benison of sunshine than Long Island in late April. As the train moves
across the plain it seems to swim in a golden tide of light. Billboards
have been freshly painted and announce the glories of phonographs in
screaming scarlets and purples, or the number of miles that divide you
from a Brooklyn department store. Out at Hillside the stones that
demarcate the territory of an old-fashioned house are new and snowily
whitewashed. At Hollis the trees are a cloud of violent mustard-yellow
(the colour of a safety-matchbox label). Magnolias (if that is what they
are) are creamy pink. Moving vans are bustling along the road. Across
the wide fields of Bellaire there is a view of the brown woods on the
ridge, turning a faint olive as the leaves gain strength. Gus Wuest's
roadhouse at Queens looks inviting as of old, and the red-brown of the
copper beeches reminds one of the tall amber beakers. Here is the little
park by the station in Queens, the flag on the staff, the forsythia
bushes the colour of scrambled eggs.

Is it the influence of the Belmont Park race track? There seem to be, in
the smoking cars, a number of men having the air of those accustomed to
associate (in a not unprofitable way) with ho