There was a big crowd on the ferryboat from Jersey when she bumped her nose into the pier at New York that morning, but when the gates were thrown open there wasn’t the usual scurry and rush to land that marked the morning arrival. At the front, hugging the rail on the woman’s side was a nice little blonde dressed all in white, even down to her shoes and stockings, and with a complexion of the kind known as peachy, if you have any idea what that is. Fastened to her with a strong arm hold was a fellow of about twenty-three—years, not skiddoo, you understand—and he was togged out like a hot sport after a winning fight, or one who had picked the 20 to 1 shot at Sheepshead for the first time in his life. Top hat, frock coat, white vest, patent leather shoes, pearl tie and gray gloves completed the picture, and it was the surest case of orange blossoms and wedding cake that ever happened.
That was what held the crowd and made a few of them whistle what sounded very much like that old familiar tune of “Here Comes the Bride.”
Arm in arm, entirely oblivious of anything in the world except themselves and their own happiness, the couple marched off the boat, heads up in the air and trailed by the grinning bunch, and if ever a case of love’s young dream went around on legs this was surely it.
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They knew as much about New York as a Shrewsbury River clam knows about cigarettes, and it didn’t require the services of a head-grabber or a hand-holder to know that they were hunting a honeymoon hostelry.
They had come from the fertile fields of Freehold to the land where there are real bathtubs with hot and cold water, and where a chunk of plain calf is soused with gravy, called fricandeau of veal, and charged for at the rate of a dollar a portion.
What was money made for except to spend, especially on occasions of this kind? You’re young but once, and then a little makes you feel like a millionaire and you get value received and five times over for every dollar you peel off the roll. But when Time, who is the most wonderful artist in the world, does a few stunts, makes brown hair turn gray and deftly paints in the wrinkles, then the joy of spending goes and pleasure becomes as soggy as a wet sponge. Years are the frosts which kill the flowers of hope and ambition, and there are thousands of men who would give millions of dollars if they could but stand off, if only for a brief while, the gray-haired patriarch with the scythe.
Just think of the sight of a young bride and groom holding in leash, as it were, a couple of hundred business men who were as anxious to get on the job of making money as a dog is to get a bone, and all of these hard-headed fellows smiling as if each one of them were in the same position as the young fellow who was fast to her arm.
Up the street to Broadway, where they turned north, and then they were lost to all but two men, and these two were trailing.
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Begins to sound like one of Old Sleuth’s detective stories, doesn’t it? Where the villains are always on the job and always being foiled. Where it is either a case of murder the child and get the papers or kidnap the girl and marry her so as to get the old man’s fortune. Doesn’t that take you back a few years when you used to have those yellow-covered books in your inside pocket and believe every word you read, or are you so unfortunate as to have never lived the life of a real boy, with all its castle building and romancing? You know there are men in this world who still dream of those days, and it doesn’t do them any harm, either.
The two men who were brought into this story a moment ago are still in the game, but they are neither burglars nor kidnappers. They are simply a pair of good fellows with enough money on the side to get anything within reason, and a belief that there are happy days and good people in this world if you only take the trouble to look for them.
“I’ll bet,” said one, “that that kid hasn’t more than a hundred in his clothes, and that he feels as if the world was his to do with as he likes.”
“The world is his if he has as much as a hundred,” returned the other. “That will give him the time of his life for three weeks, and he wouldn’t go back broke, either, unless his home is in London, which it isn’t.”
“She’s a nice-looking girl all right, and from the way they’re heading I should say it would be Niagara for theirs.”
“Niagara nothing,” retorted his friend, “that is a spot that belongs to the past. Our mothers and fathers made it fashionable, but the present generation takes
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 to big cities as naturally as a duck takes to water, for they want the busy life and the theatres. The billing and cooing of the newly wed is all done under cover now and they mix with the crowd. You’ll find them taking in the big cafes along The Line getting a good look at things they never expect to see again, and these are the things they will be talking about twenty or thirty years from now. Make a picture of that couple ahead there in 1926, for instance. He’ll be telling his friends about this day, and the night they went to see Joe Weber, and he’ll tell how the buildings first impressed him, and then she’ll butt in with:
“‘Say, Henry, what was the name of the restaurant in New York we went to after we saw that funny show—you know, the place where we had that lobster a la Newburg?’
“As long as she lives she’ll talk about lobster a la Newburg because it sounds different, you see, and that’s the woman of it.
“Then Henry will stroke his whiskers and take his corncob pipe out of his mouth and say, as if he had known the place all his life, ‘Why, that was Shanley’s.’”
“Cut it out, for you’re talking like one of Denman Thompson’s home-made rural drammers,” put in his friend, as he pulled out his cigar case. “You’re always looking for the unusual and the sentimental, so I’ll make you a proposition. Let’s get ne............