Between the roar of the thunder and the blatter of the rain there were intervals of an astounding still, of an ominous suspense […]

I’ve seen your kicks, inmate: you’ve got forty cents to your name.

dead right; dead level; dead flat; dead straight; dead left

In later centuries, the masses of European immigrants making footfall in New York’s streets saw the turbid, jostling, unprecedented mix of peoples, all striving to get ahead, and called the jitteringly new phenomenon “American.”