It seems perfectly proper that they should, for they must build in
some direction and see what valuable real estate they have given up to
those dead people who cannot even appreciate it. Here among the quiet
graves the thoughtful stranger is accustomed to moralize tritely on how
thoughtless of death and eternity is "the hurrying throng" just outside
the iron fence, who, by the way, have to pass that church every day, in
many cases three or four times, and so can't very well keep on being
impressed by the nearness of death, etc., about which, perhaps, it is
just as well not to worry during the hours God meant for work. Even
though one cannot get much of a view from the steeple, except down Wall
Street, which looks harmless and disappointingly narrow and quiet at
first sight, Trinity is still one of the show-places of New York, and
it makes a pleasing and restful landmark in the walk up Broadway. It
deserves to be starred in Baedeker.
Now comes the most rushing section of all down-town: from Trinity to
St. Paul's, clattering, crowded, typical Down-Town. So much in a hurry
is it that at Cedar Street it skips in twenty or thirty feet a whole
section of numbers from 119 to 135. The east side of the street is not
so capricious; it skips merely from No. 120 to 128.
The people that cover the sidewalks up and down this section,
occasionally overflowing into the streets, would probably be pronounced
a typical New York crowd, although half of them never spend an entire
day in New York City from one end of the month to the other, and half
of that half sleep and eat two of their meals in another State of the
Union. The proportion might seem even greater than that, perhaps it is,
if at the usual hour the up-town walker should be obliged to struggle up
Cortlandt Street or any of the ferry streets down which the torrents of
commuters pour.
* * * * *
Up near St. Paul's the sky-scrapers again become thick, so that the
occasional old-fashioned five or six story buildings of solid walls with
steep steps leading up to the door, seem like playthings beside which
the modern building shoots up--on up, as if just beginning where the
old ones left off. More like towers are many of these new edifices, or
magnified obelisks, as seen from the ferries, the windows and lettering
for hieroglyphics. Others are shaped like plain goods-boxes on end, or
suggest, the ornate ones, pieces of carefully cut cake standing alone
and ready to fall over at any moment and damage the icing.
[Illustration: ... Grace Church Spire becomes nearer.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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