Yet meantime the city sings of its happiness, the lights burn, the autos honk; there are great restaurants agleam with lights and merriment. See, that is where strength is! I like this fact of the man on the bench, as sad as it is. It is the evidence of the grimness of life, its subtlety, its indifference. Men pass them by. The world is elsewhere. And yet I know that below all this awaits after all the unescapable chemistry of things. They are not out of nature. They cannot escape it really. They are of it--an integral part of the great mystery and beauty--even they. They fare ill here, now, perhaps--very. Yet it is entirely possible that they need only wait, and life will eventually come round to them. They cannot escape it; it must use them. The potter has but so much clay. He cannot but mold it again and again. And as for the fire, He cannot ultimately prevent it. It goes, somewhat wild or mild, into all He does. THE MEN IN THE DARK It is not really dark in the accepted sense of the word, for a great, yellow, electric lamp sputtering overhead casts a wide circle of gold, but it is one-fifteen of a cold January morning, and this light is all the immediate light there is. The offices of the great newspaper center, the sidewalk in front of one of which constitutes the stage of this scene, are dark and silent. The great presses in every newspaper building hereabouts are getting ready to whir mightily, and if only the passers-by would cease their shuffling you could hear the noises of preparation. A little later, when they are actually in motion, you can hear them, a sound of rushing, dim and muffled, but audible--the cataract of news which the world waits for, its daily mental stimulus, not unlike the bread that is left at your door for your body. But who are these peculiar individuals who seem to be gathering here at this time in the morning? You did not notice any one a few minutes ago, but now there are three or four over there discussing the reasons for the present hard times, and here in the shadow of this great arch of a door are three or four more. And now you look about you and they are coming from all directions, slipping in out of the shadow toward this light, where sits a fat old Irish woman beside an empty news-stand waiting to tend it, for as yet there is nothing on it. They all seem at first to be men of one type, small and underweight and gaunt. But a little later you realize that they are not so much alike in height and weight as you first thought, and of differing nationalities. But they are all cold, though, that is certain, and a little impatient. They are constantly shifting and turning and looking at the City Hall clock, where its yellow face shows the hour, or looking down the street, and sometimes murmuring, but not much. There is very little said. “What is all the trouble?” you ask of some available bystander, who ought to be fairly _en rapport_ with the situation, since he has been standing here for some time.