A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

"And I say to her, 'My beloved, my queen, you and I will be married and we will work together and grow famous and rich.' And she say, 'Yes.' So we marry and begin work at once....

"Eighteen, nosey. Why the insult? I got a new job yesterday with the telephone company. That makes my sixth job this year. Tell me that ain't going good? One of the Johns I met...

And see, the afternoon has been squandered. There were things which should have been done. I blush indignantly at the memory of my thoughts during the shining hours in the Avenu...

An old man with a battered face. A young man with a battered face. Silent, stoical, battered-looking men with fishpoles. A hundred, two hundred, they sit staring into the water...

"Then after they've got along and think they've got you biting they begin to get fresh. They tell you you shouldn't ought to work in a barber shop, a girl as beautiful as you. T...

"Offhand, though," sighed Sergt. Kuzick, "it's difficult. I ain't got it clear in my head what you want either. Of course I know it's got to be interestin' or the paper won't pr...

And there is M. Jacques Coini. He will not participate in the world premier. Except in spirit. Now M. Coini is present in the flesh. He wears a business suit, spats of tan and a...

We would talk little. He would throw out a hint now and then that perhaps I could use some of his misfortunes for material. For instance, the time his two children had been burn...

A friend said, "There's a man living in my hotel who should make a good story. He's been around the world. Worked in England, Bulgaria, Russia, Siberia, China and everywhere. Wa...

I have an hour to wait. From the musty smelling hallway where I stand the scene is like an old print--an old London print--that I have always meant to buy and put in a frame but...

So you dance for us. We have paid 50 cents each to see the show. This abominable orchestra is out of tune. The fiddles scrape, the piano makes clattering sounds. And you, madam,...

The fog thickens till the city disappears. High up, where the mists thin into a dark, sulphurous glow, roof bubbles float. The great cat's work is done. It stands balancing itse...

The streets invite a mood of melodrama. Windows glint evilly. Doorways grin with rows of electric teeth. This, _Jonnerrvetter_! is the Great City of the old-time ten-twenty-thir...

Life, alas, is an intricate illusion. God is a pack of lies under which man staggers to his grave. And man--ah, here we have Nature's only mountebank; here we have Nature's humo...

It was a day in the spring of 1921. Dismal shadows, really Hechtian shadows, filled the editorial "coop" in _The Chicago Daily News_ building. Outside the rain was slanting down...

He sits smoking, his eyes fastened on the scene outside the window. His eyes seem to be searching as if for meanings that withhold themselves. Yet obviously there is no thought...

This little caricature of a fop, loitering in the hotel lobby, enthralled by his own fastidiousness, gazing furtively at the glisten of his newly manicured nails and shuddering...

But here is a curious plot, he says, on a day like this. Here is a crowd around a broken automobile. The broken automobile has trapped them, betrayed them. They realize the brok...

The newspaper man notices that the man stands like one who is braced against something that may come suddenly and that his deep-set eyes say, "We know what we know." There are o...