From the day
Perspective: The Anxious Local · Sound
The scratchy phonograph keeps howling *The Sheik of Araby* through the thin tenement walls, a relentless noise that can’t drown out the newsboys shouting about German bonds and Wilson’s billion-dollar debt games. My nerves are frayed thin; I just watched a neighborhood sheba drop a whole **$0.11** for a single loaf of bread, and the way prices are climbing, I’m terrified we’re all being set up as the fall guy for high society's mess. The world feels cold and mechanical, like those new-fangled "robots" I keep hearing about in the papers, while I'm just here counting pennies on a Tuesday. The biting February wind whistles through my wool coat, mingling with the heavy clatter of horse hooves on the cobblestones and the ominous hum of those new motorcars that seem to own the street now.