The Project Gutenberg EBook of Harlequin and Columbine, by Booth Tarkington

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Harlequin and Columbine

Author: Booth Tarkington

Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6401]
Posting Date: April 7, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE ***

Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer

HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE

By Booth Tarkington

I

For a lucky glimpse of the great Talbot Potter, the girls who caught it
may thank that conjunction of Olympian events which brings within the
boundaries of one November week the Horse Show and the roaring climax
of the football months and the more dulcet, yet vast, beginning of the
opera season. Some throbbing of attendant multitudes coming to the ears
of Talbot Potter, he obeyed an inward call to walk to rehearsal by way
of Fifth Avenue, and turning out of Forty-fourth Street to become
part of the people-sea of the southward current, felt the eyes of the
northward beating upon his face like the pulsing successions of an
exhilarating surf. His Fifth Avenue knew its Talbot Potter.

Strangers used to leisurely appraisals upon their own thoroughfares are
apt to believe that Fifth Avenue notices nothing; but they are mistaken;
it is New York that is preoccupied, not Fifth Avenue. The Fifth Avenue
eye, like a policeman's, familiar with a variety of types, catalogues
you and replaces you upon the shelf with such automatic rapidity that
you are not aware you have been taken down. Fifth Avenue is secretly
populous with observers who take note of everything.

Of course, among these peregrinate great numbers almost in a stupor so
far as what is closest around them is concerned; and there are those,
too, who are so completely busied with either the consciousness of being
noticed, or the hope of being noticed, or the hatred of it, that they
take note of nothing else. Fifth Avenue expressions are a filling meal
for the prowling lonely joker; but what will most satisfy his cannibal
appetite is the passage of the self-conscious men and women. For here,
on a good day, he cannot fail to relish some extreme cases of their
whimsical disease