Aurelia smiled wonderfully.  She sat on the high stoop.  A spray of insolent ivy bobbed against her right ear.  A ray of impudent moonlight flickered upon her nose.  But I was adamant, nickel-plated.

“I must go and find out,” I said, “what is the Voice of this City.  Other cities have voices.  It is an assignment.  I must have it.  New York,” I continued, in a rising tone, “had better not hand me a cigar and say:  ‘Old man, I can’t talk for publication.’  No other city acts in that way.  Chicago says, unhesitatingly, ‘I will;’ I Philadelphia says, ‘I should;’ New Orleans says, ‘I used to;’ Louisville says, ‘Don’t care if I do;’ St. Louis says, ‘Excuse me;’ Pittsburg says, ‘Smoke up.’  Now, New York—­”

Aurelia smiled.

“Very well,” said I, “I must go elsewhere and find out.”

I went into a palace, tile-floored, cherub-ceilinged and square with the cop.  I put my foot on the brass rail and said to Billy Magnus, the best bartender in the diocese: 

“Billy, you’ve lived in New York a long time—­what kind of a song-and-dance does this old town give you?  What I mean is, doesn’t the gab of it seem to kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you in a sort of amalgamated tip that hits off the burg in a kind of an epigram with a dash of bitters and a slice of—­”

“Excuse me a minute,” said Billy, “somebody’s punching the button at the side door.”

He went away; came back with an empty tin bucket; again vanished with it full; returned and said to me: 

“That was Mame.  She rings twice.  She likes a glass of beer for supper.  Her and the kid.  If you ever saw that little skeesicks of mine brace up in his high chair and take his beer and—­ But, say, what was yours?  I get kind of excited when I hear them two rings—­was it the baseball score or gin fizz you asked for?”

“Ginger ale,” I answered.

I walked up to Broadway.  I saw a cop on the corner.  The cops take kids up, women across, and men in.  I went up to him.

“If I’m not exceeding the spiel limit,” I said, “let me ask you.  You see New York during its vocative hours.  It is the function of you and your brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city.  There must be a civic voice that is intelligible to you.  At night during your lonely rounds you must have heard it.  What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting?  What does the city say to you?”

“Friend,” said the policeman, spinning his club, “it don’t say nothing.  I get my orders from the man higher up.  Say, I guess you’re all right.  Stand here for a few minutes and keep an eye open for the roundsman.”

The cop melted into the darkness of the side street.  In ten minutes he had returned.

“Married last Tuesday,” he said, half gruffly.  “You know how they are.  She comes to that corner at nine every night for a—­comes to say ‘hello!’ I generally manage to be there.  Say, what was it you asked me a bit ago—­what’s doing in the city?  Oh, there’s a roof-garden or two just opened, twelve blocks up.”