d
with care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country,
race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could
have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him
piece-meal by citizens of different height, but same number of inches
around the heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as
those speciments of raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded to
you by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, silk
handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money--as a poet
should be--but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a new
star in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who has seen ink
suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the great
city.

Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion
with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated,
puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him
as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as
send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster
cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene,
impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside
fingering damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary.

The greetings of the other cities he had known--their homespun
kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses,
garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference.
This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him.
Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an
eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned
for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; for
Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and
eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass--even for the
precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis.

On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood,
bashful, like any country swain. For the first time he experienced
the poignant humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to
reduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formula
he failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no color
similes, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets,
no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and
structure, as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done with
other towns. The houses were interminabl