Chapter 3
These were also days of panic. Banks went down and bank officials threw themselves after. The city was thrilled, even charmed, to find that its financial perturbations touched, however slightly, the nerves of London and Paris. I myself was in Algeria that winter: my Elsie and I had decided on three months along the Mediterranean. It was on the white, glaring walls of the casino at Biskra that the news was first bulletined for our eyes. It had a glare of its own, I assure you: for a few days we knew little enough how we ourselves might be standing. I thought of the Mid-Continent, with its cumbersome counters and partitions done in walnut veneer and its old-fashioned pavement in squares of black and white. I thought too of Johnny McComas's new institution, with so many bright brass handrail
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