that can be said against her; and yet in her great library of
streets, vast and various as Shakespeare, is beauty enough for a
lifetime. O poets, why have you been so faint? Because she seems
cynical and crass, she cries with trumpet-call to the mind of the
dreamer; because she is riant and mad, she speaks to the grave
sanity of the poet.

So, in a mood perhaps too consciously lofty, Gissing was
meditating. It was rather impudent of him to accuse the city of
being mad, for he himself, in his glee over freedom regained, was
not conspicuously sane. He scoured the town in high spirits,
peering into shop-windows, riding on top of busses, going to the
Zoo, taking the rickety old steamer to the Statue of Liberty,
drinking afternoon tea at the Ritz, and all that sort of thing.
The first three nights in town he slept in one of the little
traffic-towers that perch on stilts up above Fifth Avenue. As a
matter of fact, it was that one near St. Patrick's Cathedral. He
had ridden up the Avenue in a taxi, intending to go to the Plaza
(just for a bit of splurge after his domestic confinement). As
the cab went by, he saw the traffic-tower, dark and empty, and
thought what a pleasant place to sleep. So he asked the driver to
let him out at the Cathedral, and after being sure that he was
not observed, walked back to the little turret, climbed up the
ladder, and made himself at home. He liked it so well that he
returned there the two following nights; but he didn't sleep
much, for he could not resist the fun of startling night-hawk
taxis by suddenly flashing the red, green, and yellow lights at
them, and seeing them stop in bewilderment. But after three
nights he thought it best to leave. It would have been awkward if
the police had discovered him.