stars. I felt neither fear nor loneliness. This city had
been building for these hundreds of years for just this hour. It
waited to receive me.

But the David Malcolm who stood bewildered in the streets was not the
conqueror who had stepped ashore from the ferry-boat. The life a
moment ago so precious had suddenly lost its value in the eyes of the
unknowing. Yesterday he had walked through Malcolmville, and every
man, woman and child in its straggling length had come out to bid him
farewell. His departure was an event. His arrival in these strange
streets was an event, but to him alone. His very existence was not
recognized save by those churlish souls with whom his awkwardness
brought him into physical contact. A belt-line car charged at him as
though it mattered little if he were ground beneath its wheels. A
truck hurled at him as though it were a positive blessing could the
world be rid of him. Plunging to safety, he bowled over a man who made
it perfectly plain that he regarded himself as just as important as
Malcolm of '91. Pausing on a corner with his shining suit-case at his
feet, he looked about him. Then he became in his own mind but another
ant in a giant hill.

I was lonely now, but I had no fear. I watched the unceasing flow of
life around me, and I said that I could move in it as boldly as any
man, and perhaps a little better than most men, and if the time came
when I must at last be caught beneath a belt-line car my removal from
these mad activities would at least be dignified by a notice in the
papers. The shrinkage to my self-importance added fire to my ambition.
More carefully but resolutely I threaded my way up Cortlandt Street,
and at every step my sense of my unimportance increased. Even my hotel
seemed to be a hotel of no importance. Mr. Pound had stayed there in
1876, and his account of its magnitude and luxury had led me to believe
that I could find it merely by asking. Three men met my simple inquiry
with shakes of the head and hurried brusquely on, and yet they were
respectable and intelligent-looking. The policeman at the Broadway
corner had at least heard of my hostelry; he remembered having seen it
when he first came on the force, but he was inclined to believe that it
had long since been torn down. This was discouraging, but I did not
abandon my search, for Mr. Pound had advised me to make myself known to
Mr. Wemple, the head clerk, a friend of his, who would doubtless