nst the paper, which
would fill up the room if it were left at the discharging end of the
machines without being sent rapidly aloft; and there on the floor
above the men are fighting hand to hand with great bundles of papers
that must be sent out in time for the morning trains. Outside in the
square stand horses sufficient for the artillery of an army corps
awaiting their burdens, and as I go up town by the surface car,
although there is not yet any sign of light, I pass hundreds of men on
their way down town to make an early start in the battle struggle of a
new day in the City of Unrest.

XII

A STREET IN THE CITY OF UNREST

It was a very wonderful sight last night, looking down from that
height at the black pool of New York specked with star-like lights--a
pool of darkness, where three million people slept, or tried to sleep;
but it was like looking into a cup of ink to read destinies. Now,
twelve hours afterwards, let us step down below into the centre of the
city, when the limelight of a glaring, cloudless sun is turned full on
it--when the living microcosm of its active life is thrown on the
magic-lantern screen of our retina. Now we are at the base of these
high buildings, and no city in Europe can show anything like them. It
is difficult to know what to compare them to. We cannot compare
Broadway to an avenue of poplars in stone, for the poplars are out of
proportion to the avenue--far too high and far too irregular. There is
no regular design, no continuous outline; immense, costly, new, they
sprout upwards--sprout as if under the drawing-up power of a tropical
sun, sprout as if fed with the superabundant fecundity of virgin soil.
Unless they were as high, there would not be room for the people down
at this crowded end of the wedge-shaped town. The want of finality
about them is no less apparent in their irregularity of size than in
their sides, generally blank of windows, in expectancy of buildings
going up beside them probably higher still. Some of them are to be
seen with white marble facades crowned with Corinthian pilasters, and
the sides are of red or yellow brick, on which is probably some huge,
ugly advertisement announcing that some fine five-cent cigar is
"generously good," or holding out hope of relief in the shape of a
pill to liver-troubled humanity. Parenthetically, I may remark that
this city is, if anything, rather worse than London in the way of
placards that scar the face of it. Th