nor a typical bourgeois - but just a man was walking along. He was
dressed in average clothes, he was shaved and carried a suit case and
didn't look out of work and was evidently going somewhere.

He was walking along with this suit case - it was on Larkin near
McAllister about two o'clock on one of those superb days of last week -
and he came to a place where there was a stretch of grass near the
sidewalk. I think he was hot and the suit case was getting heavy. . . .

At any rate when he saw that grass, tall, dark green and fragrant, he
immediately lay down on it, pulled his hat over his eyes and, I expect,
went to sleep. It sounds so free and easy written down. Which makes it
no less significant.

First, it was significantly Western. An Easterner or a Middle Westerner
would have thought it over first. Then the fact that the man was so
average made it significant. If he had looked like a vagabond it would
have been not even an incident. It is we who are respectable who are
fettered by Grundy. It was a logical thing to do and natural and
terribly human, but most of us can't do the logical thing and natural
even if inside we do feel terribly human. Especially these spring days.
Today at noon I would like to have gone up on the grass in Union Square
and taken my shoes off. Why didn't I? Not because of the police - but
Grundy.

Now a Piute Indian woman could have done it. Her stockings too. A Piute
Indian woman when she's tired she sits down right in the street, right
where she's tired. But you and I, when we are weary we may sigh - "Wish
I could sit down." But we can't, not until we've gone down the street
and up in the elevator to some particular place where Grundy says we may