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Twilight

The real fever of love for the place will begin to take hold upon him. The subtle, insidious wine of New York will begin to intoxicate him. Then, if he is wise, he will go away, any place - yes, he will even go over to Jersey. But if he be a fool, he will stay and stay on until the town becomes all in all to him; until the very streets are his chums and certain buildings and corners his best friends. Then he is hopeless, and to live elsewhere would be death. The Bowery will be his romance, Broadway his lyric, and the Park his pastoral, the river and the glory of it all his epic, and he will look down pityingly on all the rest of humanity.

Paul Laurence Dunbar
From Richard J. Powell et al, Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance (1997: University of California Press). Quoted in the New York Times 12/28/97 Section 14 page 7.

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