His study and classification went on for several years before it
occurred to him that there was one kind of face that he never saw--one
type that he never found in all the Manhattan crowds. When he had first
discovered that this face was missing he had called it "the good face;"
and though he realized the insufficiency of this designation he could
not think of a better, and the term stuck. It was not that he never saw
faces with good qualities stamped upon them: he sometimes saw faces
marked with benevolence, honesty and resolution, for example, and these
were all good faces in a way. But they were not what Mr. Neal was
looking for--what he searched for more intently with the passing months.
He remembered the face of his own mother dimly through the years; it was
a little like what he wanted to see here in the subway. He searched for
simplicity, for transparent truth, for depth of spirituality, for meek
strength and gentle power. But simplicity in the subway? Guileless
transparency of any sort? Spirituality? Mockery!

The face he never saw became an obsession with Mr. Neal. He hunted for
it in various parts of the city. He tried the Broadway line of the
subway where the faces are notably pleasanter, more prosperous, and
smugger. But neither there nor about the Universities on Morningside
Heights and on the banks of the Harlem, nor in Brooklyn, nor anywhere he
looked, did he find the face he sought. He could always see it when he
closed his eyes. At night he dreamed of it continuously--of meeting it
on the subway and looking into eyes of ineffable kindness.

It came finally to affect his life--this search for the unseen face. It
gradually altered his attitude toward all his subway folk. He came to
have a great pity for the ignorant, and pain filled his heart at all the
marks of Cain he saw. He came to have an inexpressible hunger for the
sight of spiritual quality lighting the faces of the people of the
subway crowds. He did not express his hunger in words, as people do when
they want to make a thing definite and tangible. It was perfectly clear
and distinct to him when he closed his eyes; then he saw the face.

The time came when Mr. Neal could not sleep of nights for the evil faces
that leered at him from every side out of the darkness. It was only when
he slept that he could see, in his dreams, the "good face." Finally, he
was driven to make a resolution. He would consciously seek for the good
faces; evil ones he wou