Avenue as though he were
striding among green fields, head up, shoulders squared like a
grenadier, without a care in the world, so visibly delighted at the
novelty of gay crowds, of towering buildings decked in electric
garlands, of theatric shop-windows, that more than one perceiving this
open enthusiasm smiled with a tolerant amusement.

Now when a young man appears thus on Fifth Avenue, undriven, without
preoccupation, without a contraction of the brows and particularly
without that strained metropolitan gaze of trying to decide something
of importance, either he is on his way to the station with a coveted
vacation ahead or he has been in the city less than twenty-four hours.
In the present instance the latter hypothesis was true.

Tom Beauchamp Crocker, familiarly known as Bojo, had sent his baggage
ahead, eager to enjoy the delights one enjoys at twenty-four, which the
long apprenticeship of school and college is ended and the city is
waiting with all the mystery of that uncharted dominion--The World. He
went his way with long, swinging steps, smiling from the pure delight of
being alive, amazed at everything: at the tangled stream of nations
flowing past him; at the prodigious number of entrancing eyes which
glanced at him from under provoking brims; at the sheer flights of
blazing windows, shutting out the feeble stars; at the vigor and
vitality on the sidewalks; at the flooded lights from sparkling shop
windows; at the rolling procession of incalculable wealth on the Avenue.

Everywhere was the stir of returning crowds, the end of the summer's hot
isolation, the reopening of gilded theaters, the thronging of hotels,
and the displays of radiant shop fronts, preparing for the winter's
campaign. In the crush of the Avenue was the note of home-coming, in
taxicabs and coupes piled high with luggage and brown-faced children
hanging at the windows, acclaiming familiar landmarks with piping cries.
Tradesmen and all the world of little business, all the world that must
prepare to feed, clothe, and amuse the winter metropolis, were pouring
in.

And in the midst of this feverish awaking of luxury and pleasure one
felt at every turn a new generation of young men storming every avenue
with high imaginations, eager to pierce the multitudes and emerge as
masters. Bojo himself had not woven his way three blocks before he felt
this imperative need of a stimulating dream, a career to emulate--a
master of industry or a master