Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they read more

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that nothing of
pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely
forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the
lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a
different simile would have been wiser. Still nobody should take
offence. We would call nobody a lobster with good and sufficient
claws.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here read more

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of exiles.

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken read more

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs
lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous;
some lay in long, monotonous rows like, the basalt precipices
hanging over desert canons. Such was the background of the
wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city.
But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant
parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many
colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended
like the city's soul, sound and odors and thrills that make up
the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained,
of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There
below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from
the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill,
enrich, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of
it came up to him and went into his blood.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call read more

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it,
you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when
they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky
stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what
they sing.

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities
float
In sunset's golden read more

Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities
float
In sunset's golden and crimson dyes: I look and a great joy
clutches my throat!
Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by thousands
fire-furled--
O gazing, how the heart is lost in the Deepest City in the World.

Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!--
One plunge in the mighty torrent
read more

Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!--
One plunge in the mighty torrent
Is a year of tamer life!
City of glorious days,
Of hope, and labour and mirth,
With room and to spare, on thy splendid bays
For the ships of all the earth!

New York is the Caoutchouc City. . . . They have the furor
rubberendi.

New York is the Caoutchouc City. . . . They have the furor
rubberendi.

"If you don't mind me asking," came the bell-like tones of the
Golden Diana, "I'd like to know where read more

"If you don't mind me asking," came the bell-like tones of the
Golden Diana, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall
brogue. I did not know that Liberty was necessarily Irish." "If
ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications,
ye'd not need ask," replied Mrs. Liberty, "If ye wasn't so light
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."