ner. The cops take kids up, women across, and men in. I went up to him.
“If I’m not exceeding the spiel limit,” I said, “let me ask you. You see New York during its vocative hours. It is the function of you and your brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There must be a civic voice that is intelligible to you. At night during your lonely rounds you must have heard it. What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting? What does the city say to you?”
“Friend,” said the policeman, spinning his club, “it don’t say nothing. I get my orders from the man higher up. Say, I guess you’re all right. Stand here for a few minutes and keep an eye open for the roundsman.”
The cop melted into the darkness of the side street. In ten minutes he had returned.
“Married last Tuesday,” he said, half gruffly. “You know how they are. She comes to that corner at nine every night for a—comes to say ‘hello!’ I generally manage to be there. Say, what was it you asked me a bit ago—what’s doing in the city? Oh, there’s a roof-garden or two just opened, twelve blocks up.”
I crossed a crow’s-foot of street-car tracks, and skirted the edge of an umbrageous park. An artificial Diana, gilded, heroic, poised, wind-ruled, on the tower, shimmered in the clear light of
[7]
