Ptomaine Street: The Tale of Warble Petticoat. Wells Carolyn
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the sound of Interpretative Dancing, and the applause of perfunctory hands.
She wanted to elope. Her own ideas of utility, efficiency, and economy were being shattered—broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Her sense of proportion, her instinct for relative values, her abhorrence of waste motion, her inborn system and method, all were swept away as a thief in the night. Could she reform this giddy whirl? Could she bring chaos out of cosmos? Was her own ego sufficient to egg her on in her chosen work?
She haed her doots.
She maundered down the street on one side—back on the other.
Dudie’s Drug-store was like unto a Turkish Mosque. Minaret and pinnaret, battlement and shuttle-door, it was a perfect drug-store, nobly planned. The long flight of steps leading up to its ptortal was a masterpiece in the step line.
Inside, the Soda Pagoda was a joy of temple bells and soft, sweet drinks, while at the prescription counter, the line formed on the right, to get Dr. Petticoat’s prescriptions filled for their ptomaines.
A Moldavian Incense Shop was the barber’s; a half-timbered house sold English-built clothes; a brick affair of Georgian influences and splendid lines, housed the hardware needed by the Butterflies, and the milliner’s was a replica of the pyramid of Cestus.
The bank was the Vatican, with Swiss guards in the doorway.
Perpetual waste motion! In all the town not one building that connoted to Warble the apotheosis of efficiency shown by the King Alfred tossing cakes in the window of Bairns’ Restaurant. Not a dozen buildings that even suggested use in addition to their beauty.
And the street was cluttered with trees in tubs, window boxes, sudden little fountains or statues; gilded wicker birdcages on tall poles—songs issuing therefrom.
Arbors, covered with pink Dorothy Perkinses, here and there by the curbside. And, worst of all, people sitting idle in the arbors. Idle!
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