ers, the clang of car gongs, and the never-ending shuffle of feet.
Uptown life seemed on its surface to be lighter, and the curse of Adam
to rest more easily on the shoulders of his children.

Of Fifth Avenue this was especially true. It was not a canyon of brick
and stone in those days. Trade had just begun its invasion and had
gained a foothold only in the few blocks above and below Twenty-third
Street, and for the rest it was still a street of homes, where people
moved in a more leisurely fashion than in the crowded thoroughfares
downtown. The very air was charged with a healthier life, and here
amid the opulence one could forget the near presence of the squalid
alley. So it had become a habit of mine always to begin my day with a
walk uptown, as a gentle tonic for my body and to give my mind a brief
but more cheerful outlook than through the smutted office windows. I
never tired of the life which I saw about me. And it was about me and
I not of it, for though I might pause at a tailor's to examine his
fabrics, it was always through his plate-glass window; beyond the
window I could afford to go only in the cheaper Nassau Street; and I
might stop in front of a picture-shop, but only to o select prints for
that dream-land house on the hill, set on the bit of green. Smart
carriages rolled by me, manned by immaculate, haughty servants, drawn
by horses stepping high in time with the jingle of their harness. At
one time I had planned an equipage such as these for myself; but now,
computing, from past experience, my future possibilities in finance, I
saw them fascinating as ever, yet as far from me as though they dashed
through some Martian city, and their occupants as removed from my ken
as the inhabitants of the farthest planets. Indeed, even in the
commoner throng about me I knew no one. It was seldom that I was
called on to doff my hat, and then to some of the queer old women who
were moulding away in the corners of Miss Minion's boarding-house or to
Miss Tucker hurrying to her school.

One morning in May, as was my custom, I set out for work by my
circuitous route, with the intention of walking to Fifty-eighth Street
and taking an elevated train downtown. The day was one of the
loveliest of spring. The brightest of suns swept the Avenue. In
Madison Square the fresh green had burst from the trees overnight, and
I should have liked to drop down on one of the benches there, to look
upward through the branche