reared their children and were beginning to talk with their neighbors
and kinfolk about their winter home in the south. In the orchard on
the hill back of the house, the late fruit was hanging, full ripe,
upon the bending boughs. From the brow of the hill, where the man had
sat that afternoon when, for the first time, he faced Life and knew
that he was a man, the fields from which the ripened grain had been
cut lay in the distance, great bars and blocks and patches of golden
yellow, among the still green pastures and meadows and the soft brown
strips of the fall plowing. In the woods, the squirrels were beginning
to take stock of the year's nut crop and to make their estimates for
the winter's need, preparing, the while, their storehouses to receive
the precious hoard. And over that new mound in the cemetery, the grass
fairies had woven a coverlid thick and firm and fine as though, in
sweet pity of its yellow nakedness, they would shield it from the
winds that already had in them a hint that summer's reign was past.

But all this was far, very far, from where, in his small bare room,
the man crouched frightened and dismayed. The rush and roar of the
crowded trains on the elevated road outside his window shook the
casement with impatient fury. The rumbling thunder of the heavily
loaded subway trains jarred the walls of the building. The rattle and
whirr of the overflowing surface cars rose sharply above the hum and
din of the city streets. To the man who asked only a chance, only a
place, only room to stand and something--anything--to do, it was
maddening. A blind, impotent, fury took possession of him. He clenched
his fists and cursed aloud.

But the great, crowded, world heeded his curses as little as it
noticed him and he fell again into the silence of his hopelessness.