



Produced by Duncan Harrod







FELIX O'DAY

By F. Hopkinson Smith




Chapter I



Broadway on dry nights, or rather that part known as the Great White
Way, is a crowded thoroughfare, dominated by lofty buildings, the
sky-line studded with constellations of  signs pencilled in fire.
Broadway on wet, rain-drenched nights is the fairy concourse of the
Wonder City of the World, its asphalt splashed with liquid jewels afloat
in molten gold.

Across this flood of frenzied brilliance surge hurrying mobs, dodging
the ceaseless traffic, trampling underfoot the wealth of the Indies,
striding through pools of quicksilver, leaping gutters filled to the
brim with melted rubies--horse, car, and man so many black silhouettes
against a tremulous sea of light.

Along this blinding whirl blaze the playhouses, their wide
portals aflame with crackling globes, toward which swarm bevies of
pleasure-seeking moths, their eyes dazzled by the glare. Some with heads
and throats bare dart from costly broughams, the mountings of their
sleek, rain-varnished horses glittering in the flash of the electric
lamps. Others spring from out street cabs. Many come by twos and threes,
their skirts held high. Still others form a line, its head lost in
a small side door. These are in drab and brown, with worsted shawls
tightly drawn across thin shoulders. Here, too, wedged in between shabby
men, the collars of their coats muffling their chins, their backs to the
grim policeman, stand keen-eyed newsboys and rag