ST. LOUIS IDYLL
J.
S. Balch
"Here they come!" someone shouted.
"Where? Where?" the youngsters stopped running and singing
in the streets and stretched on tiptoes looking westward. The thousands
massed patiently for hours on curbs and corners climbed one another's
backs to look.
"Where?" they shouted.
"Where?"
A
band began to play on the roof of Loew's State Theatre. The
waiting people, shocked by the sudden crash of sound, looked up.
A
searchlight illuminated the faces of John Barrymore and Joan Crawford
flappmg on the wind in twentyfoot frames.
An
arrow pointed at John
said: should he have done it? An arrow pointed at Joan said: what
was it she did? The faces of the players above bulged pastily in the
searchlight glare behind brass instruments.
"For he's a jolly good fellow," the band played.
"Here they come!" the people shouted.
The mounted police, riding back the sidewalk overflow, with horse–
hoofs rearing, came first. The Zouaves came next with turbans and red–
coats, every man a sixfooter.
A
tightly trousered batonmajor, prancing
like a dancer, led them. Then came a band of turks with fifes and drums.
"Ha1l, hail, the gang's all here I"
The people took up the song. The plutocrats and
pluta~
from the
sixteenth stories of the hotels down to the newsboy and policeman-crowded
lobbies, the waitresses in the restaurants, the thousands of little children,
the gangs of young toughs, all sang Hail, hail, the gang's all here.
A
voice through an invisible loudspeaker roared above drumthunder:
the Mist Prophet's parade, ladeez and genmen, is now about to pa!is the
point of honor after having come along a nine mile route of city streets
into the do-owntown district. His Mysterious Majestee, comes but once
a year to his good
city
through the courtesy of (here followed a sten–
torian list of all the business
house~
which had invested in his coming,
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