cross-town over to Eighth Avenue and
get into the heart of it at once."

"That's an unlucky number," said Indiman, as we boarded a car. "Sixteen
hundred and twenty-four--the sum of the units is equal to thirteen."

"You're going to lose some money," I suggested.

"The tip points that way," he replied.

VIII

The Tip-top Tip

Do you know Abingdon Square? It is a small, irregularly shaped triangle
of asphalt situated on the lower West Side, and at the
intersecting-point of Eighth Avenue and Hudson Street. The houses that
front upon it have seen better days. Many of them are now the quarters
of cheap political clubs or centres of foreign revolutionary
propaganda. It is a neighborhood that has finally lost all semblance to
gentility and has become frankly and unreservedly shabby. A square,
mind you, and not a park, for there is neither blade of grass nor tree
in all of its dreary expanse. Half a block to the north lies a minute
gore of land surrounded by an iron fence, and here are flowers and
greenery upon which the eye may rest and be satisfied. But in Abingdon
Square proper there is only the music-stand, that occupies the middle
of the miniature plaza, a hideous wooden structure in which one of the
city bands plays on alternate Sunday afternoons during the summer.
However, open space counts in the city, and the air circulates a trifle
more freely through the square than it does in the side streets--at
least, that is the opinion of the neighborhood people, and they flock
there on a hot night like seals at a blow-hole. Even the submerged
tenth must come up to breathe now and then. During the dreadful passage
of a hot wave from the West one may count them by the dozens, coatless
and even shirtless wretches, lying prone on the flag-stones like fish
made ready for the grid. Occasionally, a street-cleaning "White Wings"
will be compassionate enough to open a fire-hydrant, under pretence of
flushing the gutters, and then, for a few minutes, there is joy in
Abingdon Square. Women line the curb, cooling their feet in the rushing
flood; the men light their pipes and contentedly watch the children as
they paddle about. There is the echo of mountain brooks in the gush of
the water as it roars from the hydrant. With eyes tight closed one may
conjure up the phantasma of green leaves waving and of meadows
knee-deep with lush grasses and starred with ox-eyes. Such is Abingdon
Square on a night in early August when first t