the Brevoort.

His mood was buoyant. He was looking out on life once more through
rose-tinted glasses. At Eighth Street he met at right angles the
swarming thousands hurrying across town from their work--heavy looking
men who tramped with tired step, striking the pavements dully with
their nailed shoes, tired anxious women, frouzle-headed little girls,
sad-eyed boys half-awake--all hurrying, the fear of want and the horror
of charity in their silent faces. And yet the sight touched no
responsive chord of sympathy in Stuart's heart as it often had.
To-night he saw only the thing that is and felt that it was good.

He pushed his way through the shabby throng, found a cab, sprang in and
gave his order to the driver. A row of taxicabs stood by the curb. He
took an old-fashioned hansom from choice. It seemed to link the present
moment of his life to the memory of some wonderful hours he had spent,
with Nan by his side, years ago.

As the cab whirled up Fifth Avenue he leaned back in his seat with a
feeling of glowing satisfaction with himself and the world. The shadows
of a beautiful spring night slowly deepened as the city drew her
shining mantle of light about her proud form. The Avenue flashed with
swift silent automobiles and blooded horses. These uptown crowds
through whose rushing streams he passed were all well dressed and
carried bundles of candy, flowers and toys. The newsboys were already
crying extras with glowing advance accounts of the banquet and ball.

Stuart felt the contagious enthusiasm of thousands of prosperous men
and women whose lives at the moment flowed about and enveloped his own.
This was a pretty fine old world after all, and New York the only town
worth living in.

And what was it that made the difference between the squalid atmosphere
below Fourth Street and the glowing, flashing, radiant, jewelled world
up-town? Money! It meant purple and fine linen, delicacies of food and
drink, pulsing machines that could make a mile a minute, high-stepping
horses and high-bred dogs, music and dancing, joy and laughter, sport
and adventure, the mountain and the sea, freedom from care, fear,
drudgery and slavery!

After all in this modern passion for money might there not be something
deeper than mere greed; perhaps the regenerating power of the spirit
pressing man upward? Certainly he could only see the bright side of it
to-night and the wonder grew on him that he had lived for twenty-five
years in a f