"For students of the troubled heart Cities are perfect works of art."There is a city so tall that even the sky above her seems to have lifted in a cautious remove, inconceivably far.There is a city so proud, so mad, so beautiful and young, that even heaven has retreated, lest her placid purity be too nearly tempted by that brave tragic spell.In the city which is maddest of all, Gissing had come to search for sanity.In the city so strangely beautiful that she has made even poets silent, he had come to find a voice.In the city of glorious ostent and vanity, he had come to look for humility and peace.
All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant.All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.Who shall tell me the truth about this one? Tragic? Even so, because wherever ambitions, vanities, and follies are multiplied by millionfold contact, calamity is there.Noble and beautiful? Aye, for even folly may have the majesty of magnitude.Hasty, cruel, shallow? Agreed, but where in this terrene orb will you find it otherwise? I know all 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 driverto 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.
It was time to settle down and begin work.He had an uncle who was head of an important business far down-town; but Gissing, with the quixotry of youth, was determined to make his own start in the great world of commerce.He found a room on the top floor of a quiet brownstone house in the West Seventies.It was not large, and he had to go down a flight for his bath; the gas burner over the bed whistled; the dust was rather startling after the clean country; but it was cheap, and his sense of adventure more than compensated.Mrs.Purp, the landlady, pleased him greatly.She was very maternal, and urged him not to bolt his meals in armchair lunches.She put an ashtray in his room.
Gissing sent Mrs.Spaniel a postcard with a picture of the Pennsylvania Station.On it he wrote Arrived safely.Hard at work.Love to the children.Then he went to look for a job.
His ideas about business were very vague.All he knew was that he wished to be very wealthy and influential as soon as possible.He could have had much sound advice from his uncle, who was a member of the Union Kennel and quite a prominent dog-about-town.But Gissing had the secretive pride of inexperience.Moreover, he did not quite know what to say about his establishment in the country.That houseful of children would need some explaining.
Those were days of brilliant heat; clear, golden, dry.The society columns in the papers assured him that everyone was out of town; but the Avenue seemed plentifully crowded with beautiful, superb creatures.Far down the gentle slopes of that glimmering roadway he could see the rolling stream of limousines, dazzles of sunlight caught on their polished flanks.A faint blue haze of gasoline fumes hung low in the bright warmair.This is the street where even the most passive are pricked by the strange lure of carnal dominion.Nothing less than a job on the Avenue itself would suit his mood, he felt.
Fortune and audacity united (as they always do) to concede his desire.He was in the beautiful department store of Beagle and Company, one of the most splendid of its kind, looking at some sand-coloured spats.In an aisle near by he heard a commotion-- nothing vulgar, but still an evident stir, with repressed yelps and a genteel, horrified bustle.He hastened to the spot, and through the crowd saw someone lying on the floor.An extremely beautiful sales-damsel, charmingly clad in black crepe de chien, was supporting the victim's head, vainly fanning him.Wealthy dowagers were whining in distress.Then an ambulance clanged up to a side door, and a stretcher was brought in."What is it?" said Gissing to a female at the silk- stocking counter.
"One of the floorwalkers--died of heat prostration," she said, looking very much upset.
"Poor fellow," said Gissing."You never know what will happen next, do you?" He walked away, shaking his head.
He asked the elevator attendant to direct him to the offices of the firm.On the seventh floor, down a quiet corridor behind the bedroom suites, a rosewood fence barred his way.A secretary faced him inquiringly.
"I wish to see Mr.Beagle."
"Mr.Beagle senior or Mr.Beagle junior?"Youth cleaves to youth, said Gissing to himself."Mr.Beagle junior," he stated firmly.
