ppressive sense that first Youth was already
fled. For one of them, in fact, it was positively his thirtieth
birthday; poor soul, how decrepitly he flitted in front of motor trucks.
As for the other, he was far decumbent in years, quite of a previous
generation, a perfect Rameses, whose senile face was wont to crack into
wrinklish mirth when his palsied cronies called him the greatest poet
born on February 2, 1886.

It was a day--well, it is fortunate that some things do not have to be
described. Suppose one had to explain to the pallid people of the
thither moon what a noonday sunshine is like in New York about the Nones
of May? It could not be done to carry credence. Let it be said it was a
Day, and leave it so. You have all known that gilded envelopment of
sunshine and dainty air.

These pitiful creatures arose from the subway at Fourteenth Street and
took the world in their right hands. From this revolving orb, said they,
they would squeeze a luncheon hour of exquisite satisfactions. They
gazed sombrely at Union Square, and uttered curious reminiscences of the
venerable days when one of them had worked, actually toiled for a
living, upon the shores of that expanse. Ten years had passed (yes, at
least ten--_O edax rerum!_). Upon a wall these observant strollers saw a
tablet to the memory of William Lloyd Garrison. Strange, said they, we
never noticed this before. Ah, said one, this is hallowed ground. It was
near here that I used to borrow a quarter, the day before pay-day, to
buy my lunch. The other contributed similar recollections. And now,
quoth he, I am grown so prosperous that when I need money I can't afford
to borrow less than two hundred dollars.

They lunched (one brushes away the mist of time to recall the details)
where the bright sunlight fell athwart a tablecloth of excellent
whiteness. They ate (may one be precise at so great a distance?)--yes,
they ate broiled mackerel to begin with; the kind of mackerel called
(but why?) Spanish. Whereupon succeeded a course of honeycomb tripe,
which moved Dactyl to quoting Rabelais, something that Grangousier had
said about tripes. Only by these tripes is memory supported and made
positive, for it was the first time either had tackled this dish.
Concurrent with the tripes, one inducted the other into the true mystery
of blending shandygaff, explaining the first doctrine of that worthy
draught, which is that the beer must be poured into the beaker before
the ginge