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“If you take the papers,” interrupted the Westerner, “you must have read of Pete Webster’s daughter. The Websters live two blocks north of the court-house in Topaz City. Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up. The doctors said that –“

“Pass the matches, please,” said the New Yorker. “Have you observed the expedition with which new buildings are being run up in New York? Improved inventions in steel framework and –“

“I noticed,” said the Nevadian, “that the statistics of Topaz City showed only one carpenter crushed by falling timbers last year and he was caught in a cyclone.”

“They abuse our sky line,” continued the New Yorker, “and it is likely that we are not yet artistic in the construction of our buildings. But I can safely assert that we lead in pictorial and decorative art. In some of our houses can be found masterpieces in the way of paintings and sculpture. One who has the entree to our best galleries will find –“

“Back up,” exclaimed the man from Topaz City. “There was a game last month in our town in which $90,000 changed hands on a pair of –“

“Ta-romt-tara!” went the orchestra. The stage curtain, blushing pink at the name “Asbestos” inscribed upon it, came down with a slow midsummer movement. The audience trickled leisurely down the elevator and stairs.

On the sidewalk below, the New Yorker and the man from Topaz City shook hands with alcoholic gravity. The elevated crashed raucously, surface cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked, wheels clattered ear-piercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy thought, with which he aspired to clinch the pre-eminence of his city.

“You must admit,” said he, “that in the way of noise New York is far ahead of any other –“

“Back to the everglades!” said the man from Topaz City. “In 1900, when Sousa’s band and the repeating candidate were in our town you couldn’t –“

The rattle of an express wagon drowned the rest of the words.