o! I like Paris. I like the theatres and the
vaudeville shows in the Champs-Elysees, and I like Longchamps. I like
the boys who hang around Henry's Bar. They're good sports all right, all
right! But, by golly, I want to go home! Put me off at the corner of
Forty-second Street and Broadway, and I'll ask no more. Set me down at 7
P.M., right there on the corner outside the Knickerbocker, for that's
where I would live and die." There came into the lad's somewhat strident
voice a softness that was almost pathetic. "You don't know Broadway,
Coira, do you? Nix! of course not. Little girl, it's the one street of
all this large world. It's the equator that runs north and south instead
of east and west. It's a long, bright, gay, live wire!--that's what
Broadway is. And I give you my word of honor, like a little man, that
it--is--not--slow. No-o, indeed! When I was there last it was being
called the 'Gay White Way.' It is not called the 'Gay White Way' now. It
has had forty other new, good names since then, and I don't know what
they are, but I do know that it is forever gay, and that the electric
signs are still blazing all along the street, and the street-cars are
still killing people in the good old fashion, and the news-boys are
still dodging under the automobiles to sell you a _Woild_ or a _Choinal_
or, if it's after twelve at night, a _Morning Telegraph_. Coira, my
girl, standing on that corner after dark you can see the electric signs
of fifteen theatres, not one of them more than five minutes' walk away;
and just round the corner there are more. I want to go home! I want to
take one large, unparalleled leap from here and come down at the corner
I told you about. D'you know what I'd do? We'll say it's 7 P.M. and
beginning to get dark. I'd dive into the Knickerbocker--that's the hotel
that the bright and happy people go to for dinner or supper--and I'd
engage a table up on the terrace. Then I'd telephone to a little friend
of mine whose name is Doe--John Doe--and in about ten minutes he'd have
left the crowd he was standing in line with and he'd come galloping up,
that glad to see me you'd cry to watch him. We'd go up on the terrace,
where the potted palms grow, for our dinner, and the tables all around
us would be full of people that would know Johnnie Doe and me, and
they'd all make us drink drinks and tell us how glad they were to see us
aboard again. And after dinner," said young Arthur Benham, with wide and
smiling eyes-