Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, read more

Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken read more

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs
lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous;
some lay in long, monotonous rows like, the basalt precipices
hanging over desert canons. Such was the background of the
wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city.
But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant
parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many
colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended
like the city's soul, sound and odors and thrills that make up
the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained,
of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There
below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from
the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill,
enrich, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of
it came up to him and went into his blood.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here read more

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of exiles.

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they read more

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that nothing of
pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely
forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the
lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a
different simile would have been wiser. Still nobody should take
offence. We would call nobody a lobster with good and sufficient
claws.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call read more

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it,
you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when
they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky
stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what
they sing.

Just where the Treasury's marble front
Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations,--
Where Jews and Gentiles most read more

Just where the Treasury's marble front
Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations,--
Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
To throng for trade and last quotations;
Where, hour, by hour, the rates of gold
Outrival, in the ears of people,
The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled
From Trinity's undaunted steeple.

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.

You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get
a chance to learn. Every thing's read more

You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get
a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the
hay-seeds are bailed hay-seeds. But what else can you expect
from a town that's shut off for the world by the ocean on one
side and New Jersey on the other?

In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness,
he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating
completeness, that sophisticated read more

In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness,
he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating
completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced
poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in
his greatness.