CITIES 35

other, are fed all day long on the diet of audible
ugliness. And what shall we say when music
itself degenerates into noise ? For what else but
noise is the thing called jazz, added to the noises
in the street and apparently inspired by them ?
What are those melancholy " croonings " of the
human voice, administered by the wireless in
hotel lobbies, but Dante's orribile favelle, stirred
up, like baboon's blood, into the witches*
cauldron ? And here I am moved to chronicle a
lapse from good manners committed by myself
this very morning in consequence of the affliction
aforesaid.

.Perambulating the streets of the city, as my
habit is, I am sometimes brought to a point where
my sensuous organization ceases to function.
Stunned by the hideous noises, hypnotized by the
ceaseless rush of the cars and lost to all sense of
my individual significance amid the swarming
multitudes of my fellow-men, I walk on like one
in a dream, a phantom among phantoms, and yet
convinced when the dream breaks that I have been
engaged in some wonderful experience, like one
awakened from an anaesthetic. Thus it happened
to me this morning. After a long walk in this
deaf and blind condition I arrived, without
noticing where I was, in the lobby of my hotel,
Here I was suddenly assaulted by a noise viler
than any of the streets, and to me so hateful that
nothing short of sudden death would render me
unconscious of it. It was a jazz band, punctuated