he electric car lurches by
with silent gong, taking the empty track by leaps, humming to itself
in the invisible distance. A benighted team swings recklessly around
the corner, sharp under my rattling window panes, the staccato pelting
of hoofs on the cobblestones changed suddenly to an even pounding on
the bridge. A few pedestrians hurry by, their heavy boots all out of
step. The distant thoroughfares have long ago ceased their murmur, and
I know that a million lamps shine idly in the idle streets.

My sister sleeps quietly in the little bed. The rhythmic dripping of a
faucet is audible through the flat. It is so still that I can hear the
paper crackling on the wall. Silence upon silence is added to the
night; only the kitchen clock is the voice of my brooding
thoughts,--ticking, ticking, ticking.

Suddenly the distant whistle of a locomotive breaks the stillness with
a long-drawn wail. Like a threatened trouble, the sound comes nearer,
piercingly near; then it dies out in a mangled silence, complaining to
the last.

The sleepers stir in their beds. Somebody sighs, and the burden of all
his trouble falls upon my heart. A homeless cat cries in the alley, in
the voice of a human child. And the ticking of the kitchen clock is
the voice of my troubled thoughts.

Many things are revealed to me as I sit and watch the world asleep.
But the silence asks me many questions that I cannot answer; and I am
glad when the tide of sound begins to return, by little and little,
and I welcome the clatter of tin cans that announces the milkman. I
cannot see him in the dusk, but I know his wholesome face has no
problem in it.

It is one flight up to the roof; it is a leap of the soul to the
sunrise. The morning mist rests lightly on chimneys and roofs and
walls, wreathes the lamp-posts, and floats in gauzy streamers down the
streets. Distant buildings are massed like palace walls, with turrets
and spires lost in the rosy clouds. I love my beautiful city spreading
all about me. I love the world. I love my place in the world.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LANDLADY

From sunrise to sunset the day was long enough for many things besides
school, which occupied five hours. There was time for me to try to
earn my living; or at least the rent of our tenement. Rent was a
standing trouble. We were always behind, and the landlady was very
angry; so I was particularly ambitious to earn the rent. I had had one
or two poems published since the c