December 2, 2011
"We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. Every day and night we repaired to one of those palaces of marble and glass and tilework, where goes on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register–it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and emblematic life. And the beans were only ten cents."

— O. Henry, in his short story “The Plutonian Fire.” The quote is from p. 8 in Selected Stories of O. Henry, as published by Barnes & Noble Classics. Delicious descriptions of sound punctuated by the brilliantly unpretentious last line. Hilarious!

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  1. bradleysroka posted this
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