ittle of it?
Somehow he could not quite imagine a graveyard left at peace in the
shopping district. It would be bad for trade, perhaps? Even the churches
on the Avenue, he had noticed, were huddled up and hemmed in so tightly
by the other buildings that they had scarcely room to kneel. If I ever
become a parson, he said (this was a fantastic dream of his), I will
insist that all churches must have a girdle of green about them, to set
them apart from the world.

The two little brown churches among the cliffs had been gifted with a
dignity far beyond the dream of their builders. Their pointing spires
were relieved against the enormous facades of business. What other
altars ever had such a reredos? Above the strepitant racket of the
streets, he heard the harsh chimes of Trinity at noonday--strong jags of
clangour hurled against the great sounding-boards of buildings; drifting
and dying away down side alleys. There was no soft music of appeal in
the bronze volleying: it was the hoarse monitory voice of rebuke. So
spoke the church of old, he thought: not asking, not appealing, but
imperatively, sternly, as one born to command. He thought with new
respect of Mr. Sealyham, Mr. Mastiff, Mr. Dachshund, all the others
who were powers in these fantastic flumes of stone. They were more than
merely husbands of charge accounts--they were poets. They sat at lunch
on the tops of their amazing edifices, and looked off at the blue.

Day after day went by, but with a serene fatalism Gissing did nothing
about hunting a job. He was willing to wait until the last dollar was
broken: in the meantime he was content. You never know the soul of a
city, he said, until you are down on your luck. Now, he felt, he had
been here long enough to understand her. She did not give her secrets to
the world of Fifth Avenue. Down here, where the deep crevice of Broadway
opened out into greenness, what was the first thing he saw? Out across
the harbour, turned toward open sea--Liberty! Liberty Enlightening the
World, he had heard, was her full name. Some had mocked her, he had also
heard. Well, what was the gist of her enlightenment? Why this, surely:
that Liberty could never be more than a statue: never a reality. Only a
fool would expect complete liberty. He himself, with all his latitude,
was not free. If he were, he would cook his meals in his room, and save
money--but Mrs. Purp was strict on that point. She had spoken scathingly
of two young females she