ndeed, we spoke of a
previous New Year when we had sallied out from our flat and joined the
tumultuous citizens in the streets. Above us was the dark blue sky of a
wintry midnight, obscured here and there by indeterminate blotches of
moving cloud, and far away to the eastward lay a long, low glare pierced
by a single white light, the lantern of the Metropolitan Tower in New
York.

We paused and stood close together upon the immediate edge of the vacant
plot, now several feet deep in snow, our figures throwing long shadows
upon the ghostly purity of the covering. And we became aware that we
were not watching so much as listening, for on the freshening easterly
wind there was borne such a rumour as men are not often permitted to
make or to hear. It could scarcely be called a noise; it was rather a
terrible and confusing _presence_ translated into sound. So enormous was
it, and so distant, that it enfolded us like a foreboding of disaster.
It was as though one were listening to the cheering of innumerable
myriads on another planet. There was neither cessation to it nor
paroxysm, neither surging up nor dying away. It was a continuous and
prodigious drone. And the wonder of it was driven, if possible, a notch
higher when it was known that this uproar was caused, not by the moans
of a lost world falling down through inconceivable spaces to Gehenna,
but by the million tin horns which the people of New York deemed a
fitting tribute to the New Year. It was a fan-fare _in excelsis_,
defying criticism and distance. It was the apotheosis of Manhattan, a
sky-scraper of dizzy sound. It was, moreover, the expression of a primal
and singularly innocent joy, the joy of a young nation on beholding a
New Year. It was almost as though, in the cataclysm of hideous and
unlooked-for calamities, in the vanishing of cities and kingdoms, in the
irruption of mountains and the sinking of titanic ships beneath the
waves, even the recurrence of the seasons had become an adventure and a
matter of supreme wonder.

A million tin horns!

I suppose it was our preoccupation with the solemnity of the hour and
the stupendous accompaniment of it that prevented our seeing at first a
strange and disquieting signal. My friend suddenly grasped my arm and
pointed to a black bank of cloud over Newark, where there shone a tiny
constellation of three green lights. And the sound of New York's
jubilation was forgotten. With murmured exclamations we stood with our