That pile of wealth and power, whatever was its name, went up above
and beyond me like a cliff that no living thing could climb.
I had an irrational sense that this thing had to be fought, that I
had to fight it; and that I could offer nothing to the occasion
but an indolent journalist with a walking-stick.

Almost as I had the thought, two windows were lit in that black,
blind face. It was as if two eyes had opened in the huge
face of a sleeping giant; the eyes were too close together,
and gave it the suggestion of a bestial sneer. And either
by accident of this light or of some other, I could now read
the big letters which spaced themselves across the front;
it was the Babylon Hotel. It was the perfect symbol of everything
that I should like to pull down with my hands if I could.
Reared by a detected robber, it is framed to be the fashionable
and luxurious home of undetected robbers. In the house of man
are many mansions; but there is a class of men who feel normal
nowhere except in the Babylon Hotel or in Dartmoor Gaol.
That big black face, which was staring at me with its flaming
eyes too close together, that was indeed the giant of all epic
and fairy tales. But, alas! I was not the giant-killer;
the hour had come, but not the man. I sat down on the seat again
(I had had one wild impulse to climb up the front of the hotel
and fall in at one of the windows), and I tried to think,
as all decent people are thinking, what one can really do.
And all the time that oppressive wall went up in front of me,
and took hold upon the heavens like a house of the gods.

. . . . .