l Fifth Avenue!--saw this:

HAIL, NEW YORK!

WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE

SALUTE YOU!

There followed another gap of thirty feet, so that the valedictorian of
the doomed might be seen of all. Then came eighty-odd sandwich-bearers,
appositely legended. From time to time the valedictorian would stagger
as you have seen horses do on their last trip to the glue-factory.
Whereupon a couple of the non-descripts behind him would shuffle up and
endeavor to uphold him. And the others slouched on, deep-eyed, gaunt,
famine-stricken, rum-ravaged, disease-smitten--ex-bookkeepers, and
superannuated mechanics, and disgraced yeggmen, and former
merchants--and former men, too!

At Thirty-ninth Street a young woman dressed richly but in perfect taste
stood on the very corner. Her hair had glints of sunshine and her eyes
were like twin heavens, clean, and clear, and blue, and infinitely deep.
And the Madonna face saw the Death face, looked at the thing that had
been a man, and read his salutation. And in one of the pauses of the
"Funeral March" a thousand people heard her laugh, and heard her exclaim
with a contagious relish, spiced with undisguised admiration:

"_If that ain't the limit!_"

New York had spoken!

And the chauffeurs near her laughed in sympathy. And gray heads stuck
out of limousine windows, and millionaires and their female stood up in
their snail-moving touring-cars, and top-hatted coachmen turned
impassive heads on neck-hinges long since rusted with the arrogance of
menials. And upon their faces and along the ranks that lined both sides
of the great avenue a slow grin spread--uncertain, hesitating, dubious!
The great American sense of humor was trying to assert itself. Hendrik's
joke was not labeled "Joke" plainly enough. Otherwise the spectators
would have shown much earlier their ability to laugh at death, hunger,
disease, misery, drunkenness, honesty, despair--anything, so long as it
was the death, hunger, disease, misery, drunkenness, honesty, and
despair of others.

But at Tiffany's corner the traffic policeman stopped the leader of the
band; and he stopped the band; and the band stopped Rutgers; and Rutgers
stopped his army; and that stopped all traffic on the Avenue up to
Forty-second Street.

Hendrik Rutgers hurried forward and explained, calmly: "Here, officer. I
am the secretary of the National Street Advertising Men's Association.
We have a permit from the Mayor. Here it is."

"Oh, advertisin