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Show •202 tissue-paper, slipped them in filmy plastic bags and stacked them in cardboard boxes stenciled Duluth, Baton Rouge, Los Angeles; once with a queer leap of my heart I saw one labeled Marysville, Oregon. It was a lonesome enterprise; I saw hardly anybody except Cecil, who brought the shades to me by the cartload. It rained in the morning when we ran for the subway; it was still coming drearily down when we clocked out of the factory in the dark afternoon. The buildings sweated soot, the streets oozed oil, the people turned surly. The usually elegant mounted cops in the Park slipped and slid on the waterslick streets; their horses hunkered down in a terrific effort to stay upright and struck sparks off the pavement with their hooves. There was no grace in the city-not in the sour-faced citizens, not in its wet dark towers, nor in that cold greasy sky drawn over us like a piece of flapping dirty canvas, Then the weather broke; we saw it first over New Jersey: a wedge of pure bright blue that split the clouds one Saturday morning. The sun slipped through; steam came up from the roofs and the sidewalks and curled up to heaven like misty hosannahs. "Let's do something to celebrate," I said. "What?" "The mountains," I said, "We've got two days-let's go |