the store windows or to scrutinize the passing crowd,
each person intent on his or her special business. By
the time he had reached Broadway the upper floors
of the business buildings were dark, but the windows
of the restaurants, cigar shops, and saloons had begun
to blaze out and a throng of pleasure seekers to replace
that of the shoppers and workers. This aspect of
New York appealed to him most. There were fewer
people moving about the streets and in less of a hurry,
and he could study them the closer.

In a cheap restaurant off Union Square he ate a spare
and inexpensive meal, whiled away an hour over the
free afternoon papers, went out to watch an audience
thronging into one of the smaller theatres, and then
boarded a down-town car. When he reached Trinity
Church the clock was striking, and, as he often did
when here at this hour, he entered the open gate and,
making his way among the shadows sat down, on a
flat tomb. The gradual transition from the glare and
rush of the up-town streets to the sombre stillness of
this ancient graveyard always seemed to him like the
shifting of films upon a screen, a replacement of the
city of the living by the city of the dead. High up
in the gloom soared the spire of the old church, its
cross lost in shadows. Still higher, their roofs melting
into the dusky blue vault, rose the great office-
buildings, crowding close as if ready to pounce upon
the small space protected only by the sacred ashes of
the dead.