her--cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me--she'd marry _you_,
if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you was broke, she'd
have about as much use for you as Chicago's got for St. Louis."




CHAPTER XV.

Some Light With a Few Side-lights


The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted
the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by
unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into
not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned
soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city
vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the
fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien.

For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous
awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles
of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the
city-pent must wait until mid-October.

This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint
captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the
gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the
time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of
surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where