The Project Gutenberg EBook of Felix O'Day, by F. Hopkinson Smith

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Title: Felix O'Day

Author: F. Hopkinson Smith

Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5229]
Posting Date: March 28, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FELIX O'DAY ***

Produced by Duncan Harrod

FELIX O'DAY

By F. Hopkinson Smith

Chapter I

Broadway on dry nights, or rather that part known as the Great White
Way, is a crowded thoroughfare, dominated by lofty buildings, the
sky-line studded with constellations of colored signs pencilled in fire.
Broadway on wet, rain-drenched nights is the fairy concourse of the
Wonder City of the World, its asphalt splashed with liquid jewels afloat
in molten gold.

Across this flood of frenzied brilliance surge hurrying mobs, dodging
the ceaseless traffic, trampling underfoot the wealth of the Indies,
striding through pools of quicksilver, leaping gutters filled to the
brim with melted rubies--horse, car, and man so many black silhouettes
against a tremulous sea of light.

Along this blinding whirl blaze the playhouses, their wide
portals aflame with crackling globes, toward which swarm bevies of
pleasure-seeking moths, their eyes dazzled by the glare. Some with heads
and throats bare dart from costly broughams, the mountings of their
sleek, rain-varnished horses glittering in the flash of the electric
lamps. Others spring from out street cabs. Many come by twos and threes,
their skirts held high. Still others form a line, its head lost in
a small side door. These are in drab and brown, with worsted shawls
tightly drawn across thin shoulders. Here, too, wedged in between shabby
men, the collars of their coats muffling their chins, their backs to the
grim policeman, stand keen-eyed newsboys and ragged street urchins, the
price of a gallery seat in their tightly closed fists.

Soon the swash and flow of light flooding the street and sidewalks
shines the clearer. Fewer dots and lumps of man, cab, and cart now cross
its surface. The crowd has begun to thin out. The doors of the theatres
are deserted; some flaunt signs of "Standing Room Only." The cars still
follow their