"Me? well, it's either me or Bill Watson. She treats us both equal. Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me? - well, you saw me plating the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver tonight. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst. Second - the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies. This is magazine-covery, but reliable.
     Third - Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.
     Fourth - Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.
     Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the higher criticism has hard-boiled them.
     The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception. It belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going back still further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a new green leaf from the tree ficus carica.
     "How? Why, old Hildebrandt say to me and Bill this afternoon: 'Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide - is not that - hein?' And he hands us a riddle - a conundrum, some calls it - and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that'll carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair of traces.