The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving–Picture Show is a public personage, who stands out on Fourteenth Street, New York, wearing a gorgeous light-blue coat of numerous brass¹ buttons. He nods to all the patrons, and his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to trot² down to Fourteenth Street, passing ever so many other shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head stuffy³.

He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company as “Our Mr. Wrenn,” who would be writing you directly and explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock-room. He was a meek⁵ little bachlor — a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache.

To-day — historians have established the date as April 9, 1910 — there had been some confusing mixed orders from the Wisconsin retailers⁶, and Mr. Wrenn had been “called down” by the office manager, Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle. He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion ticket-taker. He found Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by a dusty wind that whisked the skirts of countless⁷ plump Jewish girls, whose V-necked blouses showed soft throats of a warm brown. Under the elevated station he secretly made believe that he was in Paris, for here beautiful Italian boys swayed with trays of violets; a tramp displayed crimson⁸ mechanical rabbits, which squeaked⁹, on silvery leading-strings; and a newsstand was heaped with the orange and green and gold of magazine covers.

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