o do was to create, to work. What he loved
best was to be perched on a scaffolding, with shirt sleeves tucked up,
among first-rate workmen. Once he said to me, 'If you should happen to
see a mason resembling me in New York, sitting on the pavement eating his
lunch and drinking a can of beer, don't hesitate to believe I am that
mason, and don't pity me. Congratulate me.'"

"Another one," thought Frederick, "who kept the best part of himself
hidden beneath the conventional foppishness of his time; another one who,
like me, may always have been trying in vain to reach a definite decision
between being and seeming."

IX

Ritter's dog-cart was waiting in front of the door. He suggested that
Frederick and Schmidt drive down in it to the railroad station, where
Schmidt was to get the train back to Meriden. The two men squeezed in
beside the Austrian horse-trainer, valet, or whatever Ritter's coachman
was. The trotter went off at a swift gait, and again the wild, noisy
phantasmagoria of the streets of the new Babylon went flashing by
Frederick's eyes.

Ritter had introduced his coachman as Mr. Boabo. He wore a small round
hat of brown felt, brown gloves, and a short brown jockey's overcoat. His
chin was heavy, his nose finely chiselled, and his moustache dark and
downy. He was a handsome man, or lad, since boyish naivete still
predominated in his expression. He was about the same age as Ritter.
While guiding the magnificent grey through the medley of cabs, trucks,
and street-cars, he smiled faintly, as if delighted by it all.

Notwithstanding the city's excesses of architecture and engineering, its
distinctive characteristic was unimaginativeness. The hurry and bustle,
"business," the chase after the dollar had lashed the technical arts on
to audacious attempts; for example, the skyscrapers, or the elevated
railroad, with its unfenced tracks high overhead, its trains thundering
along incessantly in two directions, winding sharply about the corners
like an illuminated snake, and writhing into streets so narrow that a
person in one of the upper stories of the houses can almost touch the
coaches with his hands.

"Madness, lunacy!" Frederick exclaimed in his amazement.

"Not altogether," said Schmidt. "Back of it all is a very sane,
unscrupulous practicality, riding down every obstacle in its way."

"It would be hideous were it not so tremendous," Frederick shouted above
the din.

The newsboys were still calling