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wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full oflife.The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight,and tuming my head to watch it,I saw thatI was not alonefifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and wasstanding with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars.Something in his leisurelymovements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr.Gatsby himself,comeout to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him.Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner,and that would do for an introduction.

But I didn't call to him,for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alonehe stretched out hisarms toward the dark water in a curious way,and,far as I was from him,I could have sworn he was

trembling.Involuntarily I glanced seawardand distinguished nothing except a single green light,minute andfar away.that might have been the end of a dock.When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished.andI was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

ABOUT half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs besideit for a quarter of a mile,so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land.This is a valley of ashesafantastie farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens:where ashes take theforms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and,finally.with a transcendent effort.of men who movedimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along aninvisible track,gives out a ghastly creak.and comes to rest,and immediately the ash-gray men swarm upwith leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud.which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it.you perceive,after amoment,the eyes of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg.

The eyes of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg are blue and gigantictheir irises are one yard high.They look out of noface,but,instead,from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.Evidentlysome wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens,and then sankdown himself into eternal blindness,or forgot them and moved away.But his eyes,dimmed a little by manypaintless days,under sun and rain,brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river.and,when the drawbridge is up to let bargesthrough,the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour.There isalways a halt there of at least a minute,and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known.His acquaintances resented the fact thathe turned up in popular restaurants with her and,leaving her at a table,sauntered about,chatting withwhomsoever he knew.Though I was curious to see her.I had no desire to meet herbut I did.I went up to

New York with Tom on the train one afternoon,and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feetand,taking hold of my elbow,literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off."he insisted.

"I want you to meet my girl."I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon,and his determination to havemy company bordered on violence.The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothingbetter to do.