Ornaments change, and perhaps not for the best. The scherzo architecture
of Villon's Paris, the gabled caprice of Shakespeare's London, the Rip Van
Winkle jauntiness of a vanished New York, these are ghosts that wander
among the skyscrapers and dynamo beltings of modernity.
One by one the charming blunders of the past have been set to rights.
Highways are no longer the casual folderols of adventure, but the
reposeful and efficient arteries of traffic. The roofs of the town are no
longer a rumble of idiotic hats cocked at a devil-may-care angle. Windows
no longer wink lopsidedly at one another. Doorways and chimneys, railings
and lanterns have changed. Cobblestones and dirt have vanished, at least
officially.
Towns once were like improvised little melodramas. Men once wore their
backgrounds as they wore their clothes--to fit their moods. A cap and
feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a
turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend
Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones,
echoing stairways and bouncing milk carts.
* * * * *
These things have all been properly corrected. Today the city frowns from
one end to the other like a highly efficient and insanely practical
platitude. Mood has given way to mode. An essential evolution, alas!
D'Artagnan wore his Paris as a cloak. And perhaps Mr. Insull wears his
Chicago as a shirt front. But most of us have parted company with the
town. It is a background designed and marvelously executed for our
conveniences. The great metronomes of the loop with their million windows,
the deft crisscross of streets, the utilitarian miracles of plumbing,
doorways, heating systems and passenger carriers--these are monuments to
our collective sanity.
But if one is insane, if one has inherited one's grandfather's
characteristics as idler, loafer, lounger, dreamer, lover or picaroon,
what then? Eh, one stays at home and tells it to the typewriter or, more
likely, one gets run down, chewed up and bespattered while darting across
State Street in quest of an invigorating vanilla phosphate.
* * * * *
Nevertheless--there's a word that speaks innate optimism, nevertheless,
there are things which do not change as logically as do ornaments. Men and
women, for instance. And although the town wears its mask of deplorable
sanity and though Sunnyside Avenue seems suavely reminiscent of Von
Bissing's troops goose-stepping through Belgium--there are men and women.
One naturally inquires, where? Quite so, where are there men and women in
the city? One sees crowds. But men and women are lost. One observes crowds
answering the advertisements. The advertisements say, come here, go there.
And one sees men and women devotedly bent upon rewarding the advertisers.
Again, nevertheless, there are other observations to make. There are the
taxicabs. Here in the taxicabs one may still observe men and women.
Villon's Paris, Shakespeare's London and vanished New York, these are
crowded into the taxicabs. In the taxicabs men and women still wear the
furtive, illogical, questing, mysterious devil-may-care, wasterel
adventure masks of their grandfathers' yesterdays.
* * * * *
What ho! A devilishly involved argument, that, when the taxicab owners
plume themselves upon being the last word in the matter of deplorable
efficiency, the ultimate gasp in the business of convenience!
Nevertheless, although Mr. Hertz points with proper scorn to the sedan
chair, the palanquin, the ox cart and the Ringling Brothers' racing
chariots, we sweep a three-dollar fedora across the ground, raise our
eyebrows and smile mysteriously to ourselves.
For on the days when our insanities grow somewhat persistent there is a
solace in the spectacle of taxicabs that none of the advertisements of Mr.
Hertz or his; contemporaries can take away. For odds bodkins! gaze you
through the little windows of these taxicabs. Pretty gals leaning forward
eager-eyed, lips parted, with an air of piquing rendezvous to the parasols
clutched in their dainty hands. Plump, heavy-jowled dandies reclining like
tailored paladins in the leather cushions. Keen-eyed youths surrounded
with heaps of bags and cases on a carefully linened quest. Nervous old
women, mysteriously ragged creatures, rakish silk hats, bundles of
children with staring fingers, strangely mustachioed and ribald-necked
gentry.
* * * * *
A goodly company. A teasing procession for the eye and the thought. The
cabs shoot by, caracoling through the orderly lines of traffic; zigzags of
yellow, green, blue, lavender, black and white snorting along with a fine
disdain. They speak of destinations reminiscent of the postern gate and
the latticed window; of the waiting barque and the glowing tavern.
Of the crowds on the pavements; of the crowds in the passenger cars,
elevators, lobbies, one wonders little where they are going. Answering
advertisements, forsooth. Vertebrate brothers of the codfish. But these
others! Ah, one stands on the curb with the vanilla phosphate playing
havoc with one's blood and wonders a hatful.
These sybarites of the taxis are going somewhere. Make no doubt of that.
These insanely assorted creatures bouncing on the leather cushions are
launched upon mysterious and important enterprises. And these bold-looking
jehus, black eyed, hard mouthed--a fetching tribe! A cross between
Acroceraunian bandits and Samaritans. One may stare at a taxi scooting by
and think with no incongruity of Carlyle's "Night of Spurs"--with Louis
and his harried Antoinette flying the guillotine. And of other things
which our inefficient memory prevents us from jotting down at this moment.
But of other things.
Journalism is incomplete without its moral or at least its overtones of
morals. And we come to that now as an honest reporter should. Our moral is
very simple. Any good platitudinarian will already have forestalled it. It
is that the goodly company riding about in these taxicabs upon which we
have been speculating are none other than these codfish of the pavements.
The same, messieurs. A fact which gives us hope; briefly, hope for the
fact that the world is not as sane as it looks and that, despite all the
fine strivings of construction engineers, plumbers, advertisers and the
like, men and women still preserve the quaint spirit of disorder and
melodrama which once lived in the ornaments of the town.