PART. I
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
Any one who has ever written for the magazines (nobody could
devise a more sweeping opening; it includes the iceman who does a
humorous article on the subject of his troubles, and the neglected wife
next door, who journalizes) knows that a story the scene of which is not
New York is merely junk. Take Fifth Avenue as a framework, pad it out to
five thousand words, and there you have the ideal short story.
Consequently I feel a certain timidity in confessing that I do not know
Fifth Avenue from Hester Street when I see it, because I\'ve never seen it. It
has been said that from the latter to the former is a ten-year journey, from
which I have gathered that they lie some miles apart. As for Forty-second
Street, of which musical comedians carol, I know not if it be a fashionable
shopping thoroughfare or a factory district.