Before leaving the Woolworth
Building, I would say that there seemed to me something rather comically
paradoxical in being charged 50 cents for access to the top of a
structure which was erected to celebrate the triumph of a commercial
genius whose boast it was to have made his fortune out of articles sold
at a rate never higher than 10 cents.
Having dallied sufficiently on the summit--there are a trifle of fifty-
eight floors, but an express lift makes nothing of them--I continued the
implacable career of the tripper by watching for a while the deafening
kerb market, which presented on that morning an odd appearance, more
like Yarmouth beach than a financial centre, for there had been rain,
and all the street operators were in sou'westers and sea-boots. There
can be spasms of similar excitement in London, in the neighbourhood of
Capel Court, but we have nothing that compares so closely with this
crowd as Tattersall's Ring at Epsom just before the Derby.
A PLEA FOR THE AQUARIUM
It was a relief to resume my programme by entering that abode of the
dumb and detached--the aquarium in Battery Park. For the kerb uproar
"the uncommunicating muteness of fishes" was the only panacea. The Bronx
Zoo is not, I think, except in the matter of buffalo and deer paddocks,
so good as ours in London, but it has this shining advantage--it is
free. So also is the Aquarium in Battery Park, and it was pleasing to
see how crowded the place can be.
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