In front of the Hotel Astor, some years ago, a policeman was doing what he could to improve the flow of traffic when a tall and youthful man stepped of the curb and approached him. “Excuse me, Officer," he said. “My name is George Hartzog. I'm a ranger from Great Smoky Mountains National Park." It is, of course, impossible to say what ran through the cop’s mind at that moment, but something stirred there—perhaps a sense of colleagueship, however distant. Hartzog, for his part, feeling bewildered in this milieu, was attempting not to show his extrinsic fem‘. He had never been and never would be comfortable in New York. He gestured upstream into the river of metal that was moving south, one way, around them. “My wife is about to come down through here in a yellow station wagon,” he said. “I told her I'd be waiting for her, and she should be here any minute. Would you help me get her out of the traffic?" “Ranger, you stand right here, and when you see your wife, point her out," said the cop. Two minutes later, the yellow station wagon appeared under the big advertising signs and moved past Lindy’s and Jack Dempsey's and McGinnis of Sheepshead Bay and on into the zone of the Astor, where the policeman, paralyzing the traffic of the city, cleared out an acre of the avenue and guided Mrs. Hartzog to the curb...