Produced by Suzanne Shell Charlie Kirschnerand the PG Distributed ProofreadersIllustration HE CAPERED THROUGH THE MELODY OF DVORÀKS WHICH IS ASIRONIC AS A GRINNING MASK                               HUMORESQUE                          A LAUGH ON LIFE WITH                            A TEAR BEHIND IT                             By FANNIE HURST                                  1920CONTENTSHUMORESQUEOATS FOR THE WOMANA PETAL ON THE CURRENTWHITE GOODSHEADSA BOOB SPELLED BACKWARDEVEN AS YOU AND ITHE WRONG PEWHUMORESQUEOn either side of the Bowery which cuts through like a drain to catchits sewage Every Mans Land a reeking march of humanity and humiditysteams with the excrement of seventeen languages flung in _patois_ fromtenement windows fire escapes curbs stoops and cellars whose wallsare terrible and spongy with fungiBy that impregnable chemistry of race whereby the red blood of theMongolian and the red blood of the Caucasian become as oil and water inthe mingling Mulberry Street bounded by sixteen languages runs itsintact Latin length of pushcarts clotheslines naked babies dryingvermicelli blackeyed women in rhinestone combs and perennially bigwith child whole families of buttonholemakers who first saw theblueandgold light of Sorrento bent at home work round a single gasflare pomaded barbers of a thousand Neapolitan amours And then justas suddenly almost without osmosis and by the mere stepping down fromthe curb Mulberry becomes Mott Street hung in grillwork balconies themoldy smell of poverty touched up with incense Orientals whose feetshuffle and whose faces are carved out of satinwood Forbidden womentheir white drugged faces behind upper windows Yellow childrenincongruous enough in Western clothing A draughty areaway with anoblique of gaslight and a black well of descending staircaseShowwindows of jade and tea and Chinese porcelainsMore streets emanating out from Mott like a handful of crooked rheumaticfingers then suddenly the Bowery again cowering beneath Elevatedtrains where men burned down to the butt end of soiled lives pass inand out and out and in of the kneehigh swinging doors a veinynosedacideaten race in themselvesAllen Street too still more easterly and half as wide is straddledits entire width by the steely longlegged skeleton of Elevatedtraffic so that its thirdfloor windows no sooner shudder into silencefrom the rushing shock of one train than they are shaken into chatter bythe passage of another Indeed thirdfloor dwellers of Allen Streetreaching out can almost touch the serrated edges of the Elevatedstructure and in summer the smell of its hot rails becomes an actualtaste in the mouth Passengers in turn look in upon this horizontal oflife as they whiz by Once in fact the blurry figure of what mighthave been a woman leaned out as she passed to toss into one AbrahmKantors apartment a shortstemmed pink carnation It hit softly onlittle Leon Kantors crib brushing him fragrantly across the mouth andcausing him to pucker upBeneath where even in August noonday the sun cannot find its way by achink and babies lie stark naked in the cavernous shade Allen Streetpresents a sort of submarine and greenish gloom as if its humanity wereactually moving through a sea of aqueous shadows faces rather bleachedand shrunk from sunlessness as water can bleach and shrink And thenlike a shimmering background of orangefinned and copperflanked marinelife the brassshops of Allen Street whole rows of them burnflamelessly and without benefit of fuelTo enter Abrahm KantorsBrasses was three steps down so that hiscasement showwindow at best filmed over with the constant rain of dustground down from the rails above was obscure enough but crammed withcopied loot of khedive and of czar The sevenbranch candlestick sobiblical and supplicating of arms An urn shaped like Rebeccas ofbrass all beaten over with little pocks Thingscups trays knockersikons gargoyles bowls and teapots A symphony of bells in graduatedsizes Jardinières with fat sides A potbellied samovar Aswinginglamp for the dead starshaped Against the door an octave oftubular chimes prisms of voiceless harmony and of heatless lightOpening this door they rang gently like melody heard through water andbehind glass Another bell rang too in tilted singsong from a pulleyoperating somewhere in the catacomb rear of this lambent vale of thingsand things and things In turn this pulley set in toll still anotherbell two flights up in Abrahm Kantors tenement which overlooked thefront of whizzing rails and a rear wilderness of gibbetlookingclotheslines dangling perpetual specters of flapping union suits in amidair flaky with sootOften at lunch or even the evening meal this bell would ring in onAbrahm Kantors digestive wellbeing and while he hurried down napkinoften bibfashion still about his neck and into the smouldering lanesof copper would leave an eloquent void at the head of hiswellsurrounded tableThis bell was ringing now jingling in upon the slumber of a still newerKantor snuggling peacefully enough within the ammoniac depths of acradle recently evacuated by Leon heretofore impinged upon youOn her knees before an oven that billowed forth hotly into her faceMrs Kantor fairly fat and not yet forty and at the immemorial task ofplumbing a delicately swelling layercake with broomstraw raised herface reddened and faintly moistIsadore run down and say your papa is out until six If its acustomer remember the first askingprice is the two middle figures onthe tag and the last askingprice is the two outside figures See oncewith your papa out to buy your little brother his birthday present andyour mother in a cake if you cant