From the day
Perspective: The Anxious Local · Sound
Blimey, the docks are humming with a nervous rattle today, and every whistle-blast from the latest shipping news makes my heart skip, fearing what those rates will do to a five-cent loaf. I sought a moment’s peace by dropping one of those new-fangled silk teabags into a cup, but the silence is ruined by the infernal crackle of a vacuum diode tube glowing in the neighbor’s wireless set. Between the deafening clatter of the offset printing press churning out more dire headlines and a child nearby relentlessly whistling "Meet Me in St. Louis," the world feels far too fast and expensive to ever catch my breath. It’s enough to make a man feel like a proper chump, watching his wages vanish into a cloud of coal smoke and progress.