Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began to cut steerage rates.  The translators, too, have put an extra burden upon her.  “Liberty Lighting the World” (as her creator christened her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate.  But to “enlighten” the world (as our learned civic guardians “Englished” it) requires abler qualities.  And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma’am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake.  With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C’s.

“Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!” called a clear, rollicking soprano voice through the still, midnight air.

“Is that you, Miss Diana?  Excuse my not turning my head.  I’m not as flighty and whirly-whirly as some.  And ’tis so hoarse I am I can hardly talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me throat by that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio.  ’Tis after being a fine evening, miss.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” came the bell-like tones of the golden statue, “I’d like to know where you got that City Hall brogue.  I didn’t know that Liberty was necessarily Irish.”

“If ye’d studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye’d not need to ask,” replied the offshore statue.  “If ye wasn’t so light-headed and giddy ye’d know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of welcomin’ Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New York.  ’Tis that I’ve been doing night and day since I was erected.  Ye must know, Miss Diana, that ’tis with statues the same as with people—­’tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were created that influence the operations of their tongues at all—­it’s the associations with which they become associated, I’m telling ye.”

“You’re dead right,” agreed Diana.  “I notice it on myself.  If any of the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air in the ancient Greek I couldn’t tell it from a conversation between a Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare.”

“I’m right glad ye’ve made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,” said Mrs. Liberty. “’Tis a lonesome life I have down here.  Is there anything doin’ up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?”

“Oh, la, la, la!—­no,” said Diana.  “Notice that ‘la, la, la,’ Aunt Liberty?  Got that from ‘Paris by Night’ on the roof garden under me.  You’ll hear that ‘la, la, la’ at the Cafe McCann now, along with ‘garsong.’  The bohemian crowd there have become tired of ‘garsong’ since O’Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling him it.  Oh, no; the town’s strickly on the bum these nights.  Everybody’s away.  Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this evening with his stenographer.  Show was so dull he went to sleep.  A waiter biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up.  He looks around and sees his little pothooks perpetrator.  ‘H’m!’ says he, ‘will you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?’ ’Sure, in a minute,’ says she, ‘if you’ll make it an X.’