The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 41: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HAMPTON OF from the river I was a conspicuous object, bedraggled and half drowned; an over- solicitous person or a policeman would have stopped at nothing short of an ambu- lance. I didn’t want to be written up in the papers. Then, when I was wearing borrowed clothes I was likely to attract at- tention. If any one had seen me here yes- terday and reported it to Delroy he would have been curious about my identity. Just now, however, I am in disguise.” “What!” cried Jerry, laughing incredu- lously. - “My flannels and my white shoes make me look like anything but a wanderer,” explained Exmoor; “I might have stepped off the tennis court, or out of a Washing- ton Heights apartment a moment ago. This rig makes me look casual, you know; a part of the local atmosphere. My beard is a perfectly good one, growing according to nature’s designs, but it’s a disguise, for I never wore one before. “Delroy has never seen me with a beard, and I think he would look at me for some time before he recognized me. After all, if I should be recognized, if Delroy should. discover me, it would be no great disaster. It would hamper me somewhat, but it couldn’t stop me. So you see, we may as well take a walk.” Jerry agreed a little reluctantly, more mystified than ever, and they passed out to St. Nicholas Avenue and strolled down- town. As they came into the miniature “White Way” of the One Hundred and Eighty-First Street section, where movie theatres, chop-houses, lunch-rooms, chop- suey palaces and confectioners’ shops unite in making a brave glare of light, Jerry was for turning aside to the protect- ing shadows of Audubon or Wadsworth Avenue, but Exmoor would have none of it. “No, we won’t skulk,” he said. ‘“‘When you are over-cautious, it’s ten to one that you'll meet your man in a dark alley while you are shunning the open streets. Crowds are a wonderful protection, you know, and there is certainly a crowd here. It looks like another city holiday making,” THE HEIGHTS. 31 “Tt might as well be another city as far as the local life goes,” said Hampton. “You know that the subdivisions of New York are not only political and geograph- ical; they are psychological. Manhattan people and Brooklyn people are as differ- ent as though they had an ocean between them instead of the East River. But the Washington Heights folks have no Man- hattan feeling whatever; they don’t re- gard themselves as Manhattanites or Har- lemites. The altitude has isolated them; they are ‘on the heights,’ and they hold their breath when they are down-town, to save their lungs for the rarefied air of their chosen country.” Exmoor laughed appreciatively. “You've evidently made a study of your Greater New York,” he observed. “Not at all,” protested Jerry; “that’s unnecessary. You see it and hear it and feel it. These men go down-town to busi- ness, but they hurry home to see the sun set over the Palisades, and their social world is bounded by the Hudson and Har- lem rivers and One Hundred and Thirty- Fifth Street. In two or three minutes you can cross Washington Bridge and be in the Bronx, but you might as well have crossed the Gulf of Mexico; you’re in a far country. Sometimes a family unaccount- ably emigrates to the Bronx, but it takes courage to do that; once across the bridge, you are déclassé. There are some beauti- ful districts and garden spots over there, and plenty of charming people, but it’s the Bronx! They give the word a deprecatory inflection on Washington Heights, in much the same way that the Manhattan resident mumbles ‘Brooklyn’ under his breath.” They had walked by this time to the plaza at One Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street, where Broadway and St. Nicholas Avenue suddenly conflict, refuse disdain- fully to cross each other, and shoot off at new angles to put as much space between them as the map will permit. At Jerry’s suggestion they turned toward the river and sauntered northward again, and he pointed out the spots of historical interest which fairly litter the landscape. COMMICLOOOLK Gc (S@)