feet by eighty-five at its base, and carries the building
to its fifty-second story. Exactly half-way between sidewalk and point
of spire is the great clock with the immense dials of reinforced
concrete faced with mosaic tile, each twenty-six and a half feet in
diameter, with the hour hand thirteen and a half feet long, weighing
seven hundred and fifty pounds, and the minute hand seventeen feet long
and weighing one thousand pounds. At night the indicating flashes, the
hours in white, the quarters in one, two, three, or four, red, may be
seen at a distance of twenty miles.

But nearer at hand, as the hours creep one by one towards the dawn, are
the derelicts of the Square, dozing fitfully on the park benches. In
waking moments their dull eyes watch the illuminated face, and the hands
pushing forward to another day. The spectacle moved one of them, Prince
Michael, heir to the throne of the Electorate of Valleluna, in O.
Henry's "The Caliph, Cupid, and the Clock," to pessimistic utterance.
"Clocks," he said, "are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed
you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant,
its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those
of a bunco-steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let
me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease to order
your affairs by that insensate monitor of brass and steel."

Sang Sara Teasdale:

"We walked together in the dusk
To watch the tower grow dimly white,
And saw it lift against the sky,
Its flower of amber light."

CHAPTER VI

_Some Great Days on the Avenue_

Some Great Days on the Avenue--Pictures and Pageants--When a Prince Came
Visiting--A Regiment Departs--Honour to the Captains--Funeral
Processions--Receptions--Dinners--The Orient and the Avenue--When
Admiral Dewey Came Home--Greeting a Marshal of France--The Roar of the
City and the Guns of the Marne.

In the stirring times in which we are living, it seems as if every day
is a great day on the Avenue. Take a single example: The morning broke
dark and threatening. Heavy clouds presaged showers. But after an hour
or two they passed from the heavens, and warmth and golden sunshine
came. In the course of various activities the writer made his way to
points between the Battery and Fifty-ninth Street, and the means of
travel employed included three journeys on top of Fifth Avenue buses. If
one of the