35
THE FALLACY OF A NATION, 145
THE GREATNESS OF MAN, 154
DEATH AND TWO FRIENDS, 171
A SEAPORT IN THE MOON, 187

A SEVENTH-STORY HEAVEN

At one end of the city that I love there is a tall, dingy pile of
offices that has evidently seen more prosperous fortunes. It is not the
aristocratic end. It is remote from the lordly street of the fine shops
of the fair women, where in the summer afternoons the gay bank clerks
parade arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempestuous petticoat. It lies
aside from the great exchange which looks like a scene from _Romeo and
Juliet_ in the moonlight, from the town-hall from whose clocked and
gilded cupola ring sweet chimes at midnight, and whence, throned above
the city, a golden Britannia, in the sight of all men, is seen visibly
ruling the waves--while in the square below the death of Nelson is
played all day in stone, with a frieze of his noble words about the
pedestal. England expects! What an influence that stirring challenge
has yet upon the hearts of men may be seen by any one who will study the
faces of the busy, imaginative cotton-brokers, who, in the thronged and
humming mornings, sell what they have never seen to a customer they will
never see.

In fact, the end I mean is just the very opposite end to that. It is the
end where the cotton that everybody sells and nobody buys _is_ seen,
piled in great white stacks, or swinging in the air from the necks of
mighty cranes, cranes that could nip up an elephant with as little ado,
and set him down on the wharf, with a box on his ugly ears for his
cowardly trumpeting. It is the end that smells of tar, the domain of the
harbourmasters, where the sailor finds a 'home,'--not too sweet, and
where the wild sea is tamed in a maze of granite squares and basins; the
end where the riggings and buildings rise side by side, and a clerk
might swing himself out upon the yards from his top-floor desk. Here is
the Custom House, and the conversation that shines is full of freightage
and dock dues; here are the shops that sell nothing but oilskins,
sextants, and parrots, and here the taverns do a mighty trade in rum.

It was in this quarter, for a brief sweet time, that Love and Beauty
made their strange home, as though a pair of halcyons should choose to
nest in the masthead of a cattleship. Love and Beauty chose this