Atdtda29: Bureaucrats at play, 806-814

[Monte Davis]

Laura sez:

>  As a kid, I 
> particularly loved the hot chocolate:  you put a coin in an 
> ornate, wall-mounted urn (can't remember if the spout was in 
> the shape of a lion, a dragon or a griffin) and held the 
> provided thick ceramic mug under the spout.  More magic there 
> than cold modernity.

Moving into Manhattan in 1960 at age 10, I found automats (then fast
disappearing) cool, although probably didn't visit more than a dozen times.
I would qualify what you say only by noting that there had been a time when
they *were* modernity: a 1908 when sober prognosticators could envision
automats as the coming norm.

Part of the magic in AtD is that very transition -- P rings the changes
among those  things that have come to pass and those (like automats and
rail-balloon trains) that are now piquant might-have-beens.