The Girl in the Crowd
Stretch an invisible cord knee-high across the sidewalk at Broadwayand Forty-second Street, and in five minutes a hundred prettier girlsthan Daisy Reynolds will stumble over it. (A hundred homelier girls too,for that matter!)
Daisy was just the Girl in the Crowd. Look down the aisle of yoursubway- or surface- or L-car on the way home to-night, and you will seeher. You will see her by the dozen.
But you will not observe her, unless you look hard. She is not thetype of girl to make you murmur fatuously: “Gee, but I wish she wasmy stenographer!” Nor is she the sort that excites pity for herplainness. She is—yes, my term “the Girl in the Crowd” best fitsher.
For three years, after she left high school, Daisy occupiedtwenty-eight inches of space along one of the two sides of a room whosewalls were wainscoted in honeycombed metal. At shelves in front of thehoneycombing sat double lines of girls with ugly steel appliances overtheir frizzed or lanky hair. Their hands were ever flitting from spot tospot in the perforated wainscoting, deftly shifting plugs from hole tohole.
An excrescence, like a misshapen black-rubber lily, jutted forth fromthe wall facing each girl. Into these lily-mouths the damsels were wontto croon such airy sentiments as these:
“Schuyler 9051 don’t answer. —Yes, I’m ringing Aud’bon 2973. —Beekman4000 is busy. —I’ll give you Inf’ma-tion. —’Xcuse it, please. —No’m,I didn’t cut you off. What number was you talking to? —Schuyler4789 is still busy. —It’s just twelve-forty-two, by the c’recttime. —Number, please.”
Up and down the double rank marched a horribly efficient woman whodiscouraged repartee and inter-desk conversation. The long room buzzedwith the rhythmic droning of fifty voices and with the purring ofcountless plugs clicked into innumerable sockets.
To end, once and for all, the killing suspense, the room whereinDaisy Reynolds toiled for the first three years of her business careerwas a telephone exchange.
And at the three years’ end, she was assigned to the job ofday-operator at the Clavichord Arms.
The pay at the hotel was no larger than atthe exchange; but there was always the possibility of tips, and thecertainty of Christmas-money. Besides, there were chances to rest or toread between calls. On the whole, Daisy rejoiced at the change—as mighta private who is made corporal.
The Clavichord Arms is a glorious monument to New York’sefforts at boosting the high cost of living. The building occupiesnearly a third of a city block, in length and depth, and it towers tothe height of nine stories. Its facade and main entrance andcathedral-like lobby are rare samples of an architecture whose sacredmotto is, “Put all your goods in the show-window.”
When the high cost of living first menaced our suffering land, scoresof such apartment-houses sprang into life, in order that New Yorkersmight do their bit toward the upkeep of high prices. Here, at a rentalranging from fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars a year, one maylive in quarters almost as commodious as those for which a suburbaniteor smaller city’s dweller pays fifty dollars a month.
And nobly did New York rally to the aid of the men who sought thus toget its coin. So quickly did the new apartments fill with tenants thatmore and yet more and more such buildings were run up.
Men who grumbled right piteously at the advance of bread from five tosix ce