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The Green Door
Suppose you
should be walking down Broadway after dinner,
with ten minutes allotted to the
consummation of your cigar
while you
are choosing between a diverting tragedy and
something
serious
in
the
way
of
vaudeville.
Suddenly
a
hand
is
laid upon your arm. You
turn to look into the thrilling eyes
of
a
beautiful
woman,
wonderful
in
diamonds
and
Russian
sables.
She
thrusts
hurriedly
into
your
hand
an
extremely
hot
buttered
roll,
flashes
out
a
tiny
pair
of
scissors,
snips
off
the
second
button of your overcoat, meaningly
ejaculates the one word,
and
swiftly
flies
down
a
cross
street,
looking
back fearfully over her shoulder.
That
would
be
pure
adventure.
Would
you
accept
it?
Not
you.
You
would flush with
embarrassment; you would sheepishly drop the
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roll and continue down Broadway,
fumbling feebly for the
missing button.
This you would do unless you are one of the
blessed few in whom the pure spirit of
adventure is not dead.
True adventurers
have never been plentiful. They who are set
down
in print as
such have
been mostly
business
men
with
newly
invented methods. They
have been out after the things they
wanted--golden fleeces, holy grails,
lady loves, treasure,
crowns and fame.
The true adventurer goes forth aimless and
uncalculating to meet and greet unknown
fate. A fine example
was the Prodigal
Son--when he started back home.
Half-
adventurers--brave and splendid figures--have been
numerous.
From
the
Crusades
to
the
Palisades
they
have
enriched
the arts of history
and fiction and the trade of historical
fiction. But each of them had a prize
to win, a goal to kick,
an
axe
to
grind,
a
race
to
run,
a
new
thrust
in
tierce
to
deliver,
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a name to carve, a crow to pick--so
they were not followers of
true
adventure.
In the big city the twin
spirits Romance and Adventure are
always
abroad
seeking
worthy
wooers.
As
we
roam
the
streets
they
slyly peep at us and
challenge us in twenty different guises.
Without knowing why, we look up
suddenly to see in a window a
face
that
seems
to
belong
to
our
gallery
of
intimate
portraits;
in
a
sleeping
thoroughfare
we
hear
a
cry
of
agony
and
fear
coming
from
an empty and shuttered house; instead of at our
familiar
curb,
a
cab-driver
deposits
us
before
a
strange
door,
which
one,
with a
smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of
paper,
written
upon,
flutters
down
to
our
feet
from
the
high
lattices
of
Chance;
we
exchange
glances
of
instantaneous
hate,
affection
and
fear
with
hurrying
strangers
in
the
passing
crowds;
a
sudden
douse
of
rain--
and
our
umbrella
may
be
sheltering
the
daughter
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of the Full Moon and first cousin of
the Sidereal System; at
every
corner
handkerchiefs
drop,
fingers
beckon,
eyes
besiege,
and the lost, the
lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the
perilous, changing clues of adventure
are slipped into our
fingers. But few
of us are willing to hold and follow them. We
are grown stiff with the ramrod of
convention down our backs.
We
pass
on;
and
some
day
we
come,
at
the
end
of
a
very
dull
life,
to
reflect
that
our
romance
has
been
a
pallid
thing
of
a
marriage
or two, a satin
rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a
lifelong feud with a steam radiator.
Rudolf
Steiner
was
a
true
adventurer.
Few
were
the
evenings
on
which he did not go forth
from his hall bedchamber in search
of
the
unexpected
and
the
egregious.
The
most
interesting
thing
in
life
seemed
to
him
to
be
what
might
lie
just
around
the
next
corner. Sometimes his willingness to
tempt fate led him into
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strange
paths.
Twice
he
had
spent
the
night
in
a
station-
house;
again
and
again
he had found himself
the dupe
of
ingenious
and
mercenary tricksters;
his watch and money had been the price
of one flattering allurement. But with
undiminished ardour he
picked up every
glove cast before him into the merry lists of
adventure.
One evening
Rudolf was strolling along a crosstown street in
the
older
central
part
of
the
city.
Two
streams
of
people
filled
the
sidewalks--the
home-hurrying,
and
that
restless
contingent
that abandons
home for the specious welcome of the
thousand-candle-power table d'hote.
The young adventurer was of pleasing
presence, and moved
serenely and
watchfully. By daylight he was a salesman in a
piano
store.
He
wore
his
tie
drawn
through
a
topaz
ring
instead
of fastened with a
stick pin; and once he had written to the
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editor of a magazine that
had been the book that had most
influenced his life.
During his walk a
violent chattering of teeth in a glass case
on the sidewalk seemed at first to draw
his attention (with a
qualm), to a
restaurant before which it was set; but a second
glance revealed the electric letters of
a dentist's sign high
above the next
door. A giant negro, fantastically dressed in
a red embroidered coat, yellow trousers
and a military cap,
discreetly
distributed
cards
to
those
of
the
passing
crowd
who
consented to take them.
This
mode
of
dentistic
advertising
was
a
common
sight
to
Rudolf.
Usually
he
passed
the
dispenser
of
the
dentist's
cards
without
reducing his store; but tonight the
African slipped one into
his hand so
deftly that he retained it there smiling a little
at the successful feat.
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When
he
had
travelled
a
few
yards
further
he
glanced
at
the
card
indifferently.
Surprised, he turned it over and looked again
with
interest.
One
side
of
the
card
was
blank;
on
the
other
was
written
in ink three words,
saw,
three
steps
in
front
of
him,
a
man
throw
down
the
card
the
negro had given him as
he passed. Rudolf picked it up. It was
printed with the dentist's name and
address and the usual
schedule of
promises of
The adventurous
piano salesman halted at the corner and
considered. Then he crossed the street,
walked down a block,
recrossed and
joined the upward current of people again.
Without
seeming
to
notice
the
negro
as
he
passed
the
second
time,
he
carelessly
took
the
card
that
was
handed
him.
Ten
steps
away
he inspected it. In the same
handwriting that appeared on the
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first
card
Green
Door
was
inscribed
upon
it.
Three
or
four
cards
were
tossed
to
the
pavement
by
pedestrians
both
following
and leading him.
These fell blank side up. Rudolf turned them
over. Every one bore the printed legend
of the dental
Rarely did the
arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to
Rudolf
Steiner,
his
true
follower.
But
twice
it
had
been
done,
and
the quest was on.
Rudolf
walked
slowly
back
to
where
the
giant
negro
stood
by
the
case of rattling teeth. This time as he
passed he received no
card.
In
spite
of
his
gaudy
and
ridiculous
garb,
the
Ethiopian
displayed
a
natural
barbaric
dignity
as
he
stood,
offering
the
cards suavely to some,
allowing others to pass unmolested.
Every half minute he chanted a harsh,
unintelligible phrase
akin to the
jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not
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only did he withhold a card this time,
but it seemed to Rudolf
that
he
received
from
the
shining
and
massive
black
countenance
a look of cold,
almost contemptuous disdain.
The
look
stung
the
adventurer.
He
read
in
it
a
silent
accusation
that
he
had
been
found
wanting.
Whatever
the
mysterious
written
words
on
the
cards
might
mean,
the
black
had
selected
him
twice
from the throng for
their recipient; and now seemed to have
condemned him as deficient
in
the
wit
and
spirit
to
engage
the
enigma.
Standing aside from
the rush, the young man made a rapid
estimate of the building in which he
conceived that his
adventure must lie.
Five stories high it rose. A small
restaurant occupied the basement.
The
first
floor,
now
closed,
seemed
to
house
millinery
or
furs.
The second floor, by
the winking electric letters, was the
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