Damon Runyon’s Broadway stories, set in the ‘hardened artery of New York,’ are peopled with dudes, dolls, bootleggers, gangsters, dreamers and drop-outs who throng the speakeasies, do time in the sneezer and often meet death facing a Betsy. Sometimes, however, even Broadway with its jungle laws has it surprising off-hand decencies. In these stories and those in the companion volume From First to Last, Runyon took the traditional yarn and gave it a new slick, upbeat modernity.