over-clean people, the Italians.... Li Hung Chang degraded of his
titles. Who the blazes was Li Hung Chang anyway, and what titles did he
have?... And Major Kitchener disperses the Berber tribes.... How
unimportant! Ah, here was something. Great gambling reported on the
_City of Rome_. Ah, there was what he always contended, that steam would
ruin everything. The great sea a resort for gamblers! In the old days,
in sail, when a captain was a captain, he'd have had none of that on
board clean timbers.... He was a little afraid the world was going to
the dogs!

Och! Was that woman never coming down at all, at all?

He smiled to himself at how the Ulster speech came back to him at the
thought of Ulster.... He turned to the paper with an effort of will....
An Indian outbreak feared in western Montana.... Stanley going to
Egypt.... Policeman beaten up in Brooklyn; a tough place, Brooklyn!...
American schooner arrested by Russian corvette for selling rum to Bering
Strait natives: a very strict modern people, the Russians.... Picnics on
Staten Island blamed for ruin of young girls.... And Bismarck and the
pope still sparring. Did that poor German think he could ever get the
better of the subtle Romans ...? Och, what was keeping that woman?

The light had become so dim that he could hardly read. The tempo
without quickened. People were hurrying now, on their way to the
restaurants for the evening meal. From the restaurants to the theater.
Home to sleep. And a new day with the old work facing them. There was a
fascination, a hypnosis to New York. He felt a pang at leaving it. It
had been very friendly to him. And he would never see it again.... Ah,
but he would remember it!

Section 3

It came to him with a sense of revelation that all his life he had been
looking forward: always the new thing. And now he would be looking back.
Always before guessing. Looking back now, knowing, or not quite knowing,
but having before him material from which to draw wisdom, truth. All his
life it seemed he had been gathering something. Now was the time to sort
it, make it.... And then, what was he to do with whatever he had made?
Toward what end? The paper he had in his hands dropped to his knees. His
eyes fixed on the windows where the lights of the city began to shine,
saw a haze, saw nothing. His ears, listening to the _clop-clop-clop_ of
the hansoms, heard only rhythm, then a faint harmony, then nothing....
Himself, within him, seemed t