The come-on from The New Yorker is very tempting: subscribers now have access to the WHOLE Archive of the magazine in online form, and today’s annunciatory email quotes a bit from the November 2 1929 issue. So I log in and go to the Archive to see more, and here’s the first paragraph of Talk of the Town from that issue:

Fear, running through the jungle like flame, strong as ever. Doom still makes a crackling sound, like summer thunder. Thousands of minor clerks and small tradespeople, hearing faint noises of railroads they had never seen, mines they had never worked, steel they had never tempered, fled before the terror of the dark. Then came the voices. Two hundred and five for twenty-five thousand steel, said a Morgan, gritting his teeth. The fundamental business of the country is on a sound and prosperous basis, said President Hoover. No buildings were burned down, no industries have died, no mines, no railroads have vanished, crooned Arthur Brisbane. The great comforters. There, there, my children. Try and catch a little sleep. Mother is near.

Kinda makes you wish YOU had a subscription, doesn’t it? I’ve had The Complete New Yorker in the DVD form for a couple of years, but this Web form is much more useable (search function much improved, and navigation too). So now I have one more excuse to sit here in front of the monitor…