Loud Noise

Laurel wreaths having gone out of fashion, the U. S. welcomed its victorious athletes on their return from the eighth Olympiad with noise--loud noise -- emitted through the natural national mouth, Manhattan.

As the S. S. America steamed up from Quarantine, the heroes and heroines heard a sudden vast cacophony of factory whistles, ferryboat hooters, tug sirens, automobile horns.

Docking at Hoboken, they were con fronted by an attentive swarm of U. S. Customs men, who opened, rummaged, scrambled the baggage with all that suspicious efficiency which is ordinarily accorded to millionaires, screen queens or famed pugilists.

At the Battery, "cheering thousands" awaited. There were "salesladies," stenographers, clerks, bond-salesmen, mers." commuters, There street were sheiks, idlers, "representatives "bum of 23 organizations"--chiefly athletic clubs and life insurance companies. The heroes and heroines sailed across from Hoboken. The Fire Department Band struck up the National Anthem. All sang, all cheered, all marched to the City Hall. Mayor Hylan's Reception Committee was there and Mayor Hylan himself, with a typewritten speech clutched firmly in his damp and clammy hand.

Mayor Hylan read his speech, placing tactless emphasis on minor unpleasantries the Americans had suffered in France. Colonel Robert M. Thompson, Chairman of the American Olympic Committee, corrected this bad impression before the Mayor distributed his City's largesse among the athletes in the shape of gold medals for one and all. That gesture completed the welcome, save for a beefsteak dinner uptown, to which all rushed hungrily.

One "color" account in the newspapers described lower Broadway at this moment: "The terra cotta canyon was visited by a blinding, whirling mass of paper, stock tickertape, torn newspapers and shredded telephone books which were hurled from the thousands of windows that overlooked the street."