Come on, Jack Tar, I'm
light on my feet, but I won't guarantee what I'll be on yours. Step up
and have a round."
Usually the crowd would turn sheepish and dissolve at this Terpischorean
threat. In fact, it was Miss Hoag's method of accomplishing just that.
In the August high noon of the Coney Island Freak Palace, which is the
time and scene of my daring to introduce to you the only
under-thirty-years, and over-one-hundred-and-thirty-pounds, heroine in
the history of fiction, the megaphone's catch of the day's first dribble
of humanity and inhumanity had not yet begun its staring,
gaping invasion.
A curtain of heat that was almost tangible hung from the glass roof. The
Ossified Man, sworn by clause of contact impervious alike to heat and
cold, urged his reclining wheel-chair an imperceptible inch toward the
neighboring sway of Miss Hoag's palm-leaf. She widened its arc, subtly.
"Ain't it a fright?" she said.
"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in a
_patois_ of very south Italy.
Then Miss Hoag turned to the right, a rail partitioning her from the
highly popular spectacle of the Baron de Ross, christened, married, and
to be buried by his nomenclature in disuse, Edwin Ross MacGregor.
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