discussing, and then we all took
comfortable chairs. Cigars and tall glasses with ice and decanters and
things that fizz were produced, and, as Jimmie said, "we had such a
hammerfest on the City of New York as the old town hadn't experienced
in many a long day."

But then, when you come to think of it, didn't she deserve it?

In New York the elevated trains thundering over your head and darkening
the street, surface electric cars beneath them being run at lightning
speed, the street paved with cobblestones over which delivery carts are
being driven at a pace which is cruelty to animals, form a combination
of noises compared to which a battery of artillery in action is a
lullaby, and which I defy any other city in the world to equal. A hen
crossing a country lane in front of a carriage, squawking and
wild-eyed, is a picture of my state of mind whenever I have a street to
cross. Yesterday there were two street-car accidents and one runaway,
which I saw with my own eyes in an hour's outing, and I had no sooner
locked myself in my sixth-floor apartment with a sigh of relief at
being saved from sudden death when a crash came in the street below,
and by hanging out of the window I saw that an electric car had struck
a plate-glass delivery wagon in the rear, upset it, smashed the glass,
thrown the horse on his side, and so pushed them, horse, cart, and all,
for a quarter of a block before the car could be stopped. I shrieked
loud and long, but in the noise of the city no one heard me, and all
the good it did was to ease my own mind.

New York is a good place to come to, to be amused, or to spend money,
but as a city of terrific and unnecessary noises, there is not one in
the world which can compare to it.

Scissors-grinders are allowed to use a bugle--a bugle, mind you, well
known to be the most far-reaching sound of all sounds, and intended to
carry over the roar of even artillery, else why is it used in a battle?
So this bugling begins about seven in the morning, and penetrates the
most hermetically sealed apartments. Then the street-cleaners, the
"White Wings," garbage and ash-can men begin their deadly rounds, and
the clang of dashing empty metal cans on the stone-paved courts and
areas reverberates between high buildings until one longs for the
silence of the grave.

The noise and shock of blasting rock is incessant. They are blasting
all along the Hudson shore and in Central Park. It sounds like
cannonading