business. What other altars ever had such a reredos? Above the
strepitant racket of the streets, he heard the harsh chimes of
Trinity at noonday--strong jags of clangour hurled against the
great sounding-boards of buildings; drifting and dying away down
side alleys. There was no soft music of appeal in the bronze
volleying: it was the hoarse monitory voice of rebuke. So spoke
the church of old, he thought: not asking, not appealing, but
imperatively, sternly, as one born to command. He thought with
new respect of Mr. Sealyham, Mr. Mastiff, Mr. Dachshund, all the
others who were powers in these fantastic flumes of stone. They
were more than merely husbands of charge accounts--they were
poets. They sat at lunch on the tops of their amazing edifices,
and looked off at the blue.

Day after day went by, but with a serene fatalism Gissing did
nothing about hunting a job. He was willing to wait until the
last dollar was broken: in the meantime he was content. You never
know the soul of a city, he said, until you are down on your
luck. Now, he felt, he had been here long enough to understand
her. She did not give her secrets to the world of Fifth Avenue.
Down here, where the deep crevice of Broadway opened out into
greenness, what was the first thing he saw? Out across the
harbour, turned toward open sea--Liberty! Liberty Enlightening
the World, he had heard, was her full name. Some had mocked her,
he had also heard. Well, what was the gist of her enlightenment?
Why this, surely: that Liberty could never be more than a statue:
never a reality. Only a fool would expect complete liberty. He
himself, with all his latitude, was not free. If he were, he
would cook his meals in his room, and save money--but Mrs. Purp
was strict on that point. She had spoken scathingly of two young