NEW YORK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 7 August 1928, Page 8

NEW YORK

THOMB-NAtL SKETCH

"For a thumb-nail sketch of the Metropolis," says tho "New York Time's,"the' following is about, as good as anything we have ever seen." It is by Harriet Monroe, editor of "Poetry": 'New York in its tight little-'.island; New. York shooting up madly into the a iv, like bubbles from a boiling vat, because- that is its only escape; Neyv York towering over its sea-inlet, crawling and bawling through its squeezed and liur-iwy-sffcets, hustling and rustling up its million elevators to toil and moil in offices, shops, factories; New. York, shaking out its golcl-bcudo3 tassels of light from forty-two stories to the ground, to laugh at night and guide its gay crowds to plays, cabarets, dinners, dances, operas, to all the arts and follies which may beguile the vanity of man ; New York, taking tribute i'rcni the forty-eight States ami the little old nations across the* sea, jamming the world's gold down into its vaults with bland and virtuous satisfaction ; New York jazzing out tho modern song of gongs, trolley cars, riveters, drilling and thrilling its l*n million citizens and the five million strangers withiij its gilded gales; New York tho prodigious, magnificent; New York the sordid and selfish ; New York the grabber; New York the spender; New York the wisecraeker and broadcaster: New York (he hideous when it herds its hordes into clutters them into standardised fiats and glittering hotels; New York the beautiful when it flings its towers up to the sun or lifts I heir star-bordered pinnacles into the night ; what shall-we say of this successor of Babylon and Home, this modern great capital ambitious to rule the worlci. this lavish, exuberant fantastic' agglomeration of tall buildings and moving cars and groping human souls all'straining., to be or. do something never btjard of on earth before, something beyond the reach of man and surprising even to God! Hero is another account, in the "American Bookman," by the Englishman Mr Douglas Goldring, who crossed the Atlantic the other day to undertake a lecturing tour, but was recalled

lo London by a family bereavement bo-' fore ho had done much more than meet some of New York's most interesting people: Of all the great international centres I have visited, New York is the only one in which the American tourist is conspicuous by his absence. One searches for him in' vain. For the rest, 1 never saw ,a city so indifferent to the minor details of'its appearance. (The poorest European town would have too much civic-pride not to do. something whh Washington Square and other open spaces.) 1 have never scie.n such traffic jams; nor such a vast consumption/of tho more potent and noxious forms of alcohol; nor such spontaneous friendliness and sociability; nor such readiness to listen to proposals and to judgo them on theirimerits. I was never in a. town before where the tempo of social lifo was siftrapid, nor in one in which the process of pulling down and rebuilding was so continuous. And 1 never, in recent years at all events, have, ffclt so rejuvenated and so- energetic as I did in New York". The charm of London, and indeed of Europe, is, 1 suppose, largely to lie found in that strong "sense of the past" which is always bound up with the life of the present and dominates our ideas of the romantic Now York has, to a heady and intoxicating degree, the "sense of the future." and I found it romantic in a way which J have to admit I did not believe possible.