ot; the measure
of existence was square measure. People streamed by in straight rows;
the horrible din and crash stupefied him.

Sam leaned against the sharp corner of a stone building. Those faces
passed him by thousands, and none of them were turned toward him.
A sudden foolish fear that he had died and was a spirit, and that
they could not see him, seized him. And then the city smote him with
loneliness.

A fat man dropped out of the stream and stood a few feet distant,
waiting for his car. Sam crept to his side and shouted above the
tumult into his ear:

"The Rankinses' hogs weighed more'n ourn a whole passel, but the mast
in thar neighborhood was a fine chance better than what it was
down--"

The fat man moved away unostentatiously, and bought roasted chestnuts
to cover his alarm.

Sam felt the need of a drop of mountain dew. Across the street men
passed in and out through swinging doors. Brief glimpses could be
had of a glistening bar and its bedeckings. The feudist crossed and
essayed to enter. Again had Art eliminated the familiar circle. Sam's
hand found no door-knob--it slid, in vain, over a rectangular brass
plate and polished oak with nothing even so large as a pin's head
upon which his fingers might close.

Abashed, reddened, heartbroken, he walked away from the bootless door
and sat upon a step. A locust club tickled him in the ribs.

"Take a walk for yourself," said the policeman. "You've been loafing
around here long enough."

At the next corner a shrill whistle sounded in Sam's ear. He wheeled
around and saw a black-browed villain scowling at him over peanuts
heaped on a steaming machine. He started across the street. An
immense engine, running without mules, with the voice of a bull
and the smell of a smoky lamp, whizzed past, grazing his knee. A
cab-driver bumped him with a hub and explained to him that kind words
were invented to be used on other occasions. A motorman clanged his
bell wildly and, for once in his life, corroborated a cab-driver. A
large lady in a changeable silk waist dug an elbow into his back, and
a newsy pensively pelted him with banana rinds, murmuring, "I hates
to do it--but if anybody seen me let it pass!"

Cal Harkness, his day's work over and his express wagon stabled,
turned the sharp edge of the building that, by the cheek of
architects, is modelled upon a safety razor. Out of the mass of
hurrying people his eye picked up, three yards away, the surviving
bloody