From the day
Perspective: The Anxious Local · Sound
The relentless clicking of the telegraph at the corner office is driving me mad, a frantic rhythm that matches the rising price of a simple loaf of bread to five cents. Gadzooks, the noise of progress is deafening, drowned out only by some neighbor’s gramophone looping "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" for the tenth time today. I tried to find peace by the hearth, but watching my cousins bicker over that Land's Lord game—obsessing over property and taxes—only makes my own mounting bills feel more suffocating. Between the clatter of the new offset presses and the frightening speed of wireless messages, I fear the world is spinning far too fast for a man with an empty pocket.