Books › Blue Book v018 n04 [1914-02], 1914 › scan 68
Scan 68
Blue Book v018 n04 [1914-02], 1914
17 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1A New Year Silhouette
2The gay New Year's Eve revels on the streets of New York form the background of this engaging little romance—wherein one learns how consummately important may be so slight a thing as the shadow of a man and woman cast upon a window shade.
4By ELIZABETH PAYNE
6ON New Year's Eve, Ferguson was diligently persuading himself that he felt an unqualified relief at having no jollification on hand. A sinister commiseration was his for those unfortunates who were at this moment plowing tortuous ways through sharp-elbowed throngs on Broadway, dodging assaults of idiotic "ticklers" and ear-splitting tin horns, or guzzling themselves into a sick to-morrow in stifling restaurants.
8He jabbed savagely at the cannel in the grate, and a flare of flame shooting upward revealed his thin, strongly lined face with discontented gaze fixed on the coals, an ancient pipe, cold and unsavory, gripped in the accustomed groove of his teeth.
10Those who were going to celebrate the passing of the year were gathering now in the restaurants. Longacre Square, despite the storm, would be ablaze with light. Taxies would be dashing recklessly into the riotous thoroughfare from quiet side streets. Head waiters would be importantly hectoring swarms of black-coated subordinates with distracted eyes and anticipative palms. Acres of white-damasked tables would be neatly ranged in rows with chairs suggestively tipped forward against them. Armies of gold-capped champagne bottles would be lying in icy ambush, ready to advance in cohorts of destruction upon the mad and merry multitude.
12Oh, well! A year ago he had been celebrating too—he and she—shut away felicitously in the semi-seclusion of a palm-embowered corner; his back to the forgotten revelry beyond; her eyes, now dancing at some outrageous breach of conventionality behind his shoulders, now softening consciously at the message of his own eyes, the while a sentimental chorus of the hour wailed itself sensuously from the violins.
14Ferguson kicked back the leather chair and strode across to his heaped writing table. Switching on the electric light, he jerked open a brass-knobbed drawer and from the innermost recesses thereof drew forth a lumpy package. Within the wrapping was a gaudy paper motto—a tawdry thing of silver lace and glittering fringe, its torn cover loosely wrapped around a folded bit of green and pink tissue which, unfolded, revealed itself as an absurdity of a bonnet with fluttering paper streamers and rakish rosettes over the ears.
16He had tied the flimsy paper streamers of the thing under her chin and she had laughed. . . . And her laugh had rung low like the rich notes of a
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.