Modest apartment houses are built high on enormous
buttresses, over the steep scarp of the hillside. Through cellar
windows coal was visible, piled high in the bins; children were
trooping home for dinner; a fine taint of frying onions hung in the
shining air. Everywhere in that open, half-suburban, comfortable
region was a feeling of sane, established life. An old man with a
white beard was greeted by two urchins, who ran up and kissed him
heartily as he beamed upon them. Grandpa, one supposes! Plenty of
signs indicating small apartments to rent, four and five rooms. And
down that upper slant of Broadway, as the bus bumbles past rows of
neat prosperous-seeming shops, one feels the great tug and pulling
current of life that flows down the channel, the strange energy of
the huge city lying below. The tide was momentarily stilled, but
soon to resume action. There was a magic touch apparent, like the
stillness of a palace in a fairy tale, bewitched into waiting
silence.
* * * * *
Sometimes on our way to the office in the morning we stop in front
of a jeweller's window near Maiden Lane and watch a neat little
elderly gentleman daintily setting out his employer's gauds and
trinkets for the day. We like to see him brood cheerfully over the
disposition of his small amber-coloured velvet mats, and the
arrangement of the rings, vanity cases, necklaces, and precious
stones.
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