U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [408]
-150-girl fashionablydressed fragrant at five o'clock in a taxicab careening down Park Avenue when at the end of each
crosstown street the west is flaming with gold and white smoke bil ows from the smokestacks of steamboats leaving port and the sky is lined with greenbacks the riveters are quiet the trucks of the producers are shoved off onto the marginal avenues
winnings sing from every streetcorner
crackle in the ignitions of the cars swish smooth in bal bearings sparkle in the lights going on in the show-windows croak in the klaxons tootle in the horns of im-ported mil ionaire shining towncars dol ars are silky in her hair soft in her dress sprout in the elaborately contrived rosepetals that you kiss be-come pungent and crunchy in the speakeasy dinner sting shril in the drinks
make loud the girlandmusic show set off the laughing jag in the cabaret swing in the shufflingshuffling orchestra click sharp in the hatcheck girl's goodnight) if not why not? walking the streets rol ing on your bed eyes sting from peeling the speculative onion of doubt if somebody in your head topdog? underdog?
didn't (and on Union Square) say liar to you
-151-NEWSREEL LII
assembled to a service for the dear departed, the last half hour of devotion and remembrance of deeds done and work undone; the remembrance of friendship and love; of what was and what could have been. Why not use well that last half hour, why not make that last service as beautiful as Frank E. Campbell can make it at the funeral church (nonsectarian)
BODY TIED IN BAG IS FOUND
FLOATING
Chinatown my Chinatown where the lights are low Hearts that know no other land Drifting to and fro
APOPLEXY BRINGS END WHILE WIFE
READS TO HIM
Mrs. Harding was reading to him in a low soothing voice. It had been hoped that he would go to sleep under that in-fluence
DAUGHERTY IN CHARGE
All alone
By the telephone
Waiting for a ring
Two Women's Bodies in Slayer's Baggage
WORKERS MARCH ON REICHSTAG
CITY IN DARKNESS
RACE IN TAXI TO PREVENT SUICIDE ENDS IN
FAILURE AT THE BELMONT
Pershing Dances Tango in the Argentine
HARDING TRAIN CRAWLS FIFTY MILES
THROUGH MASSED
CHICAGO CROWDS
Girl Out of Work Dies from Poison
-152MANY SEE COOLIDGE BUT FEW HEAR
HIM
If you knew Susie
Like I I know Susie
Oh oh oh what a girl
ART AND ISADORA
In San Francisco in eighteen seventyeight Mrs.
Isadora O'Gorman Duncan, a highspirited lady with a taste for the piano, set about divorcing her husband, the prominent Mr. Duncan, whose behavior we are led to believe had been grossly indelicate; the whole thing made her so nervous that she declared to her children that she couldn't keep anything on her stomach but a little champagne and oysters; in the middle of the
bitterness and recriminations of the family row,
into a world of gaslit boardinghouses kept by
ruined southern bel es and railroadmagnates and swing-ing doors and whiskery men nibbling cloves to hide the whiskey on their breaths and brass spittoons and four-wheel cabs and basques and bustles and long ruffled trailing skirts (in which lecturehal and concertroom, under the domination of ladies of culture, were the cen-ters of aspiring life) she bore a daughter whom she named after herself
Isadora.
The break with Mr. Duncan and the discovery of
his duplicity turned Mrs. Duncan into a bigoted femi-nist and an atheist, a passionate fol ower of Bob Inger-sol 's lectures and writings; for God read Nature; for duty beauty, and only man is vile.
Mrs. Duncan had a hard struggle to raise her
children in the love of beauty and the hatred of corsets
-153-and conventions and manmade laws. She gave piano-lessons, she did embroidery and knitted scarves and mittens.
The Duncans were always in debt.
The rent was always due.
Isadora's earliest memories were of wheedling
grocers and butchers and landlords and sel ing little things her mother had made from door to door,
helping hand valises out of back windows when
they had to jump their bil s at one shabbygenteel board-inghouse