Fifth Avenue stands serene and still, but it cannot hold the virgin
morning forever. Its windows may be blank, its sidewalks vacant. Behind
the walls there is a magnet drawing back its human life.
"Give us this day our daily bread." A saintly venerable horse seems to
know the injunction. Emerging from nowhere, ambling to nowhere, it
usurps the innocent morning in answer to the Lord.
And not by bread alone. There is nothing in the prayer about clams, but
some one in Mount Vernon is destined to have them quickly. Out of the
mysterious south, racing against time, a little motor flits onward with
gaping barrels of clams. At a decent interval comes a heavier load of
fish. Great express wagons follow, commissarial giants. The honest uses
of Fifth Avenue begin.
Butchers and bakers are out before fine ladies. The grocer and the
greengrocer are early on their rounds. But an empty American News truck
confesses that eternal vigilance is the price of circulation. Its gait
is swifter than the gait of milkman or fruit-and-vegetable man. Dust and
dew are on the florist's wheels: he has come whistling by the swamps of
Flushing. His flimsy automobile runs lightly past the juggernauts that
crush down.
Uncle Sam is in haste at six in the morning. His trucks hurl from Grand
Central to make the substations. But his is not the pride of place. Nor
is it coal or farmers' feed that appropriates the middle of the street.
The noblest wagons, a long parade of them, announce the greater glory of
beer. The temperance advocate may shudder at the desecration of the
morning. He may observe "Hell Gate Brewery" and nod his sickly nod. But
there is something about this large preparedness for thirst that stills
the carping worm of conscience. It is good to see what solid, ample
caravans are required to replenish man with beer. It is not the single
glass that is glorious. It is not even the single car-load. It is the
steady, deliberate, ponderous procession that streams through the early
hours. Once it seemed as if Percherons alone were worthy of beer-wagons.
It satisfied the faith that there was Design in creation, but the
Percheron is not needed. There is the same institutional impressiveness
about a motor-truck piled to the sky with beer.