is he who can travel daily some
dozen or score of miles in the subway, plunged in the warm wedlock
of the rush hours; and can still gather some queer loyalty to that
rough, drastic experience. Other than a sense of pity and affection
toward those strangely sculptured faces, all busy upon the fatal
tasks of men, it is hard to be precise as to just what he has
learned. But as the crowd pours from the cars, and shrugs off the
burden of the journey, you may see them looking upward to console
themselves with perpendicular loveliness leaping into the clear sky.
Ah, they are well trained. All are oppressed and shackled by things
greater than themselves; yet within their own orbits of free
movement they are masters of the event. They are patient and
friendly, and endlessly brave.

II

The train roared through the subway, that warm typhoon whipping
light summer dresses in a multitudinous flutter. All down the
bright crowded aisle of patient humanity I could see their blowing
colours.

My eyes were touched with Truth: I saw them as they are, beautiful
and brave.

Is Time never sated with loveliness? How many million such he has
devoured, and must he take these, too? They are so young, so
slender, so untutored, such unconscious vessels of amazing life; so
courageous in their simple finery, so unaware of the Enemy that
waits for us all. With what strange cruelties will he trouble them,
their very gayety a temptation to his hand? See them on Broadway at
the lunch hour, pouring in their vivacious thousands onto the
pavement. Is there no one who wonders about these merry little
hostages? Can you look on them without marvelling at their gallant
mien?

They are aware of their charms, but unconscious of their loveliness.
Surely they are a new generation of their sex, cool, assured, even
capable. They are happy, because they do not think too much; they
are lovely, because they are so perishable, because (despite their
naive assumption of certainty) one knows them so delightfully only
an innocent ornament of this business world of which they are so
ignorant. They are the cheerful children of Down Town, and Down Town
looks upon them with the affectionate compassion children merit.
Their joys, their tragedies, are the emotions of children--all the
more terrible for that reason.

And so you see them, day after day, blithely and gallantly faring
onward in this Children's Crusade. Can you see that caravan of life
without a pang? Fo