Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/270

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252
THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER

go-round seen through its locked glass doors. All those gayly caparisoned horses, with their bright Arabian housings, their flowing manes and tossing heads and scarlet-painted nostrils, stand stilled in the very gesture of glorious rotation. One remembers what a jolly sight that carrousel was on a warm evening, the groaning pipes of the steam-organ chanting an adorable ditty (we don't know what it is, but it's the tune they always play at the movies when our favorite Dorothy Gish comes on the screen), children laughing and holding tight to the wooden manes of the horses, and flappers with their pink dresses swirling, clutching for the brass ring that means a free ride. All this is frozen into silence and sleep, like a scene in a fairy tale. It is very sad, and we dare not contemplate the poor little silent horses too long.

Bitterly does one lament the closing of the Boardwalk auction rooms, which were a perpetual free show to those who could not find a seat in the movies. There was one auctioneer who looked so like Mr. Wilson that when we saw his earnest gestures we always expected that the league of nations would be the subject of his harangue. But on entering and taking a seat (endeavoring to avoid his eye when he became too persuasive, for fear some involuntary gesture or the contortions of an approaching sneeze would be construed as a bid for a Chinese umbrella stand) we always found that it was a little black box full of teacups that was under discussion. He would hold one up