Next I took the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin through a portal flanked by pillars worthy to crown any Athenian hill; I led them into a Parthenon in which Athena herself might have joyed to be worshipped, and we heard the echoing and reëchoing of a chant which lacked nothing but incense and organ notes to make one think one's self in an Old World cathedral. The chant was not a _Miserere_, but a call to entrust one's self to the depths of the earth--to descend into tubes of steel, beneath the river, and then travel to the fair cities of the living, throbbing, thriving West. It was a railway terminal without choking smoke, blinding dust, or deafening noise; also without that hideous mechanical ugliness which Ruskin so hated. This was merely a place from which one started to reach Oshkosh or Kokomo, Keokuk, Kalamazoo, or Kankakee. Yet more beautiful portals never swung to mortals in their fairest dreams of journeying to the abodes of bliss. The Spirit of America, at last crowned by beauty. We reached our hotel fairly exhausted by our morning's walk; but, after being properly refreshed, the Herr Director ventured to criticize. "Yes, you are a wonderfully resourceful people, keen and energetic, but chaotic. You take an Italian _campanile_ and elongate it fifty times; or a Gothic church, and attenuate it; or a Romanesque cathedral, and support it by Ionic pillars; or a cigar box, and enlarge it a million times. You put all these things side by side, and no one asks: Will they harmonize, or will they clash? "Each man builds as he pleases, although he may blot out the other man's work and waste colossal energy merely to express himself. The result is confusion. You can feel that unrest, that discord, in the air. My nerves fairly ache! No, we shall not go out this afternoon. We must rest our nerves." The Herr Director always spoke for his wife as well as for himself, thus expressing the collective spirit of the Old World. They both retired for a long rest, while I was left wondering how to introduce New York to them in the evening. At five o'clock in the afternoon they emerged from their apartments, their wearied Old World nerves rested, and, after being stimulated by a cup of coffee, were ready for further adventures. Broadway at that hour of the afternoon is bewildering. The shoppers have almost deserted it, and it is crowded by the clerks who served them, the cashiers who received their money, the girls who trimmed their hats, the men who cut their garments, the bookkeepers and the floor-walkers. Whole towns seem to pour out of the department stores and lofts; the makers and menders of garments flee from the heart of the city, from this pulsing machine which has been going at a dangerous speed. They go from it eagerly, with a brave show of courage, as if the ten hours' labor had not broken their spirits or wearied their energy. To count the ants of a busy hill would be easier than even to estimate the numbers of that throng.