... While here the very beggars
walked with heads unbowed, and men and women of happier estate laughed and
played and made love lightly in the scampering taxis that whisked them
homeward from restaurants of the feverish midnight.
A people at war, actually at grips with the Blond Beast, arrayed to
defend itself and all humanity against conquest by that loathsome incubus
incarnate, a people heedless, carefree, irresponsible, refusing to credit
its peril....
Here and there a recruiting poster, down the broad reaches of Fifth Avenue
a display of bunting, no other hint of war-time spirit and gravity....
Longacre Square, a weltering lake of kaleidoscopic radiance, even at this
late hour thronged with carnival crowds, not one note of sobriety in the
night....
Lanyard lifted a wondering gaze to the livid sky whose far, clear stars
were paled and shamed by the up-flung glare, like eyes of innocence peering
down into a pit of hell.
Inscrutable!
Yet one could hardly be numb to the subtle, heady intoxication of those
cool, immaculate, sea-sweet airs which swept the streets, instilling
self-confidence and lightness of spirit even in heads shadowed with the woe
of war-worn Europe.
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