By TRISTRAM TUPPER
From Metropolitan Magazine
Grit was dead. There was no mistake about that. And on the very day of his burial
temptation came to his widow.
Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was Nell--a young,
immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her vision and spirit were small.
She never had understood Grit.
Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron staircase--up
through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom--to her three-room flat, neat as a pin;
but not even then did she give way to tears. Tears! No man could make Great Taylor
weep!
However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the occasion, she admitted,
"It ain't right." Grit had left her nothing, absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of
himself--his grimy face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great
Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever. "Grit's gone," she
told herself. "I ain't going to think of him any more."
Determinedly Great Taylor put some things to soak and, closing down the top of the
stationary washtubs, went to the window. The view was not intriguing, and yet she hung
there: roofs and more roofs, a countless number reached out toward infinity, with pebbles
and pieces of broken glass glittering in the sunlight; chimneys sharply outlined by
shadow; and on every roof, except one, clothes-lines, from which white cotton and linen
flapped in the wind at the side of faded overalls and red woollen shirts. They formed a
kind of flag--these red, white, and blue garments flying in the breeze high above a nation
of toilers. But Great Taylor's only thought was, "It's Monday."
One roof, unlike the rest, displayed no such flag--a somewhat notorious "garden" and
dance hall just around the corner.
And adjacent to this house was a vacant lot on which Great Taylor could see a junk-cart
waiting, and perhaps wondering what had become of its master.
She turned her eyes away. "I ain't going to think of him." Steadying her chin in the palms
of her hands, elbows on the window-sill, Nell peered down upon a triangular segment of
chaotic street. Massed humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath
the weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a furrow through
push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave crested with crude yellow, red, green,
and orange merchandise. She caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while
the odours of vegetables and fruit and human beings came faintly to her nostrils. She was
