Later I would tear myself away from the second feature (often a country comedy) and come blinking into the light like someone newly born. There, in the unreal glare of afternoon, I would sail away around the square, just as Plato said I could if I faced the Forms (such allusions are also an old man’s hobby), a cutlass thrust through my sash that was sharper than any store-bought blade or low-grade image, since it was created out of concepts, made of metaphors instead of metal; for when I slashed the mainsail with my sword and dropped lightly onto the deck like Douglas Fairbanks, it was upon the word ‘toes’ I landed, legs alert in their harem pants; it was im-pah-cah-toh in Loo-cah, I sang while I swooped; and lo! at the rightly sung word there were all about me towers of stone, hillsides covered with flowers, cold lakes, ocher earth and planted fields, poplars lining the roads, cypresses surrounding the cemeteries, ancient churches, laden vines. The movie made a lousy muse.

So I strolled around the square, shopping for shadows, looking for illusions in the windows, following my face as it followed me, until I reached the library, another lotusland; but I had been hard and swollen for it the whole day, invariably beguiled and brought erect by the promise of print, the volumes of Carlyle I might carry away, perhaps, books bellied by his flatulent style like Falstaff’s shirt, and sinking from asides and the weight of his ponderous lines; yet where Frederick may be seen walking through some scrubby Potsdam woods with a fresh-cut stick and soft cocked hat, or where sight of a bored queen can be caught sneaking a pinch of snuff during the coronation, so that the new king has to hurl at her a look of well-merited fulminancy—the word by itself enough to dampen anyone’s dickie.

Roads with honest, common, sawed-off names like Park, High, Market, Main, went out from the square like legs. On Bank there were still banks; Hill Street was dutifully steep; Central and South were matter-of-factly geographical; Erie and Ohio paralleled the tracks and Mahoning followed the river, intersecting Ferry a block before Bridge; while Chestnut, Maple, Elm, and Oak once represented real trees, and were reserved for the first ring the city wore—the one which married prosperous businesses to stately homes; nevertheless, it wasn’t long before names became liars like the people they served, and signified the presence of the developer like a measle the disease. My walk back I was on paths of increasing deceit. The tacky, curbless, oil-and-cinder streets which made up my neighborhood were called Adelaide and Bonnie Brae, Woodbine and Belvedere, and the appeal of their signposts to our pretensions was as glib and easy as the dreams they invoked were vulgar and cheap. Oak Knoll destroyed both the knoll and the oaks it was named for; Meadowbrook ran beside a dry ditch; I don’t know where Cumberland came from. Even then lines on speculators’ maps said Peachtree and Inglenook; boulevards and avenues and elegant circles were already disappearing in favor of drives, courts, lanes, ways, terraces, and hollows. Already the suburban mentality (Satan’s lazy servant) was in sorry evidence. Formerly roads went straight when they could and curved when they had to, but now it is salesmanship and cutie-pie caprice which causes them to curl up like wounded worms. Well, I think with pleasure of the day when whorehouses will fill Squire Lane, antique shops dot Ellenwood, Sagamore will smell of fries, grease, and gasoline, and in the windows on Hillandale Drive little propped, dime-store-designed signs will say ROOMS. My infrequent friend, Henry Herschel, has a house on Litany Lane, but the fact does not appear to disturb him; he says “Litany Lane” without a grimace or any sign of shame; but it pained me, even as a boy, to admit I lived on Bonnie Brae, or to write on letters my return address.