Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian StreetStreet, Julian
General
Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
Street, Julian
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
With a jerk we started. Few other vehicles disputed our right to the
whole width of Seventy-second Street as we skimmed eastward. Farewell, O
Central Park! Farewell, O Plaza! And you, Fifth Avenue, empty, gray,
deserted now; so soon to flash with fascinating traffic. Farewell!
Farewell!
Presently, in that cavern in which vehicles stop beneath the overhanging
cliffs of the Grand Central Station, we drew up. A dusky redcap took my
baggage. I alighted and, passing through glass doors, gazed down on the
vast concourse. Far up in the lofty spaces of the room there seemed to
hang a haze, through which--from that amazing and audacious ceiling,
painted like the heavens--there twinkled, feebly, morning stars of
gold. Through three arched windows, towering to the height of six-story
buildings, the eastern light streamed softly in, combining with the
spaciousness around me, and the blue above, to fill me with a curious
sense of paradox: a feeling that I was indoors yet out of doors.
The glass dials of the four-faced clock, crowning the information bureau
at the center of the concourse, glowed with electric light, yellow and
sickly by contrast with the day which poured in through those windows.
Such stupendous windows! Gargantuan spider webs whose threads were
massive bars of steel. And suddenly I saw the spider! He emerged from
one side, passed nimbly through the center of the web, disappeared,
emerged again, crossed the second web and the third in the same way, and
was gone--a two-legged spider, walking importantly and carrying papers
in his hand. Then another spider came, and still another, each black
against the light, each on a different level. For those windows are, in
reality, more than windows. They are double walls of glass, supporting
floors of glass--layer upon layer of crystal corridor, suspended in the
air as by genii out of the Arabian Nights. And through these corridors
pass clerks who never dream that they are princes in the modern kind of
fairy tale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account