arville displayed no shadow either of reverence or
dislike for a place which impressed itself upon me more even than San
Francisco or Chicago. It seemed to me strange that a man so sensitive to
detail, so conscious of the scant poetry of the commonplace, should have
no feeling for that astonishing accident which we call New York City.
That he was not aware of her I refused absolutely to credit. If he could
feel the beauty of Genoa and the immensity of London, he must
necessarily be conscious of the sublimity of Manhattan. I regretted
that I had not led him to speak of this. I regretted the possibility of
seeing him no more. I felt a pertinacious curiosity about him, as a man
who could contemplate with equanimity a spectacle that for me held
always an inscrutable problem. To the disgust of the cynical American I
always waved aside Washington and even Boston, ignored even that
mysterious bourne, the "Middle West," and claimed that he who found the
secret of New York had also found the secret of America. As I drowsed
that night I registered a vague resolve to see Mr. Carville again and
broach the subject to him. I felt sure that in some way or other he
would add something to my knowledge, not only of the city, but of
himself.

* * * * *

I became aware of Mac's voice in my ear, and struggling to rise, saw
that he held in his hand a letter bearing a special-delivery stamp. It
is one of the terrors, and no doubt advantages of the American mail,
that a letter may descend upon one at unexpected hours. You may be
locking up for the night, or enjoying your beauty sleep in the early
morn, when a breathless messenger will hammer at your door with a
letter, quite possibly containing a bill. Such a missive my friend held
over me like a Damocles sword, between thumb and finger, and awaited the
news with interest.

It did not, however, contain a bill. It was a request from an
advertising agency to proceed to Pleasant Plains, S. I., and interview
the president of a realty company who desired what we call tersely
enough a "write-up," an essentially modern development of English
Literature, in my opinion. Mac maintains with stubborn ingenuity that
Doctor Johnson and Goldsmith did "write-ups," just as Shakespeare wrote
melodramas, and Turner did "bird's-eye views." I make no such claim. The
point is that a write-up brings in fifty dollars, while sonnets are a
drug in the market. For this reason I sprang o