seeing[Pg 44] a rather attractive bargain table off at one end of the middle aisle, in the innocence of my young heart, I tried to get to it. It contained a lot of mighty nice, useful presents that one could give to his friends and relatives and at the same time look his creditors in the face—pretty little cakes of pink soap made of rose leaves for five cents for three; lacquered boxes of hairpins at seven cents apiece; silver-handled toothpicks at two for five; French-gilt hatpins, with plate-glass amethysts and real glue emeralds set in their heads for ten cents a pair, and so on. Seen from the floor above, from which I looked down upon that busy hive, that bargain table was quite the most attractive thing you ever saw. It fairly glittered with temptation, and I went to it; or at least I tried to go to it. I had been so attracted by the giddy lure of the objects upon that table that I[Pg 45] failed to notice the maelstrom of humanity that was whirling about it—or perhaps I would better say the fe-maelstrom of humanity that was eddying about its boundaries, for it was made up wholly of women, as I discovered to my sorrow a moment later when, caught in the swirl, I was tossed to and fro, whirled, pirouetted, revolved, twisted, turned, and generally whizzed about, like a cork on the surface of the Niagara whirlpool. What with the women trying to get to the table, and the women trying to get away from the table, and the women trying to get around the table, I haven't seen anything to beat it since the day I started to take a stroll one afternoon out in Kansas, and was picked up by a cyclone and landed down by the Alamo in San Antonio ten minutes later." [Pg 44] [Pg 45] "You ought to have known better than to try to get through such a crowd[Pg 46] as that these days," said the Doctor. "How are your ribs—" [Pg 46] "Know better?" retorted the Idiot. "How was I to know any better? There the thing was ready to do business, and nothing but a lot of tired-looking women about it. It looked easy enough, but after I had managed to get in as far as the second layer from the outside I discovered that it wasn't; and then I struggled to get out, but you might as well struggle to get away from the tentacles of an octopus as to try to get out of a place like that without knowing how. I was caught just as surely as a fox with his foot in a trap, and the harder I struggled to get out the nearer I was carried in toward the table itself. It required all my strategy to navigate my face away from the multitude of hatpins
Prev.
Back
Top