did not even look in my direction, and those who did turn their
eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I
wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly
sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in
garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel,
but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to
speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a
wraith, a ghost--not a palpable human being at all. For a moment I felt
unutterably lonely.

It is this way with me. When I have reached the very depths of any
serious situation or tragic emotion, something within me seems at last
to stop--how shall I describe it?--and I rebound suddenly and see
the world, as it were, double--see that my condition instead of being
serious or tragic is in reality amusing--and I usually came out of it
with an utterly absurd or whimsical idea. It was so upon this occasion.
I think it was the image of my robust self as a wraith that did it.

"After all," I said aloud taking a firm hold on the good hard flesh of
one of my legs, "this is positively David Grayson."

I looked out again into that tide of faces--interesting, tired, passive,
smiling, sad, but above all, preoccupied faces.

"No one," I thought, "seems to know that David Grayson has come to
town."

I had the sudden, almost irresistible notion of climbing up a step near
me, holding up one hand, and crying out:

"Here I am, my friends. I am David Grayson. I am real and solid and
opaque; I have plenty of red blood running in my veins. I assure you
that I am a person well worth knowing."

I should really have enjoyed some such outlandish enterprise, and I am
not at all sure yet that it would not have brought me adventures and
made me friends worth while. We fail far more often by under-daring than
by over-daring.

But this imaginary object had the result, at least, of giving me a new
grip on things. I began to look out upon the amazing spectacle before
me in a different mood. It was exactly like some enormous anthill into
which an idle traveller had thrust his cane. Everywhere the ants were
running out of their tunnels and burrows, many carrying burdens and
giving one strangely the impression that while they were intensely alive
and active, not more than half of them had any clear idea of where they
were going. And serious, deadly serious, in their h