Neal edged into the nearest door and then squirmed over to a place
against the opposite door in the vestibule, where he could see people as
they came out.

The train shot again into the dark tunnels. A thousand men and women
were being hurtled at terrific thundering speed, by some strange power
but half understood, through the black corridors of the night that
reigned under old Manhattan, to some unseen goal. It was magnificent;
it was colossal; but it was uncanny. Mr. Neal had always been moved by
the romance of the subway, but tonight, in his elevation of spirit, it
seemed something of epic quality, full of a strange, unreal grandeur.
Faint red lights here and there revealed nothing of the tunnel; they but
lent mystery to dimly seen arches and darkling bastions, fleeting by the
roaring train.

They stopped a minute at Canal Street, and more people pushed into the
overcrowded car, and then the train was off again. The man pushing
against Mr. Neal was heavy-jowled as a prize-fighter, but if ever he had
followed the ring his fighting days were over now. Good feeding had done
for him; he breathed heavily in the fetid atmosphere of the car. He was
almost squeezing the breath out of the little man with a heavy red
mustache who stood just behind him. The red mustache made the little
man's face seem out of proportion; there was not enough of chin to make
a proper balance.

At Spring Street two women struggled to get off.

"Let 'em off!" came the familiar admonition of the guard.

Those about the women made every effort to give them room, but at the
best they had a hard fight to make their way out. Both the women were
modishly dressed, and their complexions were correctly made. There was,
too, that hardness about the mouths of both of them that Mr. Neal found
in the faces of most of the women he saw--a hardness that even the
stress of their effort to get out of the car could not disturb. When
they finally got out, others crowded in.

Mr. Neal was happy, and he looked about him to find other happy faces.
But they were nowhere to be seen; the faces were stolid, or indifferent,
or intent, or vacuous. None of them were glad. If their mouths would
only turn up at the corners! Well, it was the same old story. Mouths
that turned up at the corners were seldom met with in Mr. Neal's book of
subway faces.

Bleecker Street, and a worse jam than ever, but there was encouragement
in the thought that Fourteenth Street would soon r