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DARKNESS VISIBLE

reflectors along the top and bottom of the pane. There is the bleak moonshine of tiled and enameled restaurants, where they lose much lightness by having everything too white. If (for instance) the waitresses would only wear scarlet or black dresses, how much more brilliant the scene would be. There is the pale lilac and lavender of the arcs, and the vicious green glare of mercury vapor tubes in the ten minute photograph studios that are always full of sailors. Over all soars the orange disc of the City Hall clock, which has been hailed by so many romantic wastrels as the rising or setting moon. And the fierce light that is said to beat upon a throne is twilight compared to that which shimmers round our jewelled soda fountains.

The long, musty corridor of the postoffice on Ninth street is an interesting place about 8 o'clock in the evening. Particularly in these last weeks, when movies, saloons and theatres have been closed on account of the influenza epidemic, the postoffice has become a trysting place for men in uniform and young ladies. The gloomy halls at each end of the corridor are good ground for giggling colloquy; light love (curiously) approves the dusk. Through the little windows one catches glimpses of tiers of pigeonholes packed with letters, and wonders what secrets of the variable human heart are there confided to the indulgent secrecy of Uncle Sam. If a novelist of imaginative sympathy might spend a week in reading through those pigeonholes, what a book he could make of