One of the most inexplicable things in human nature is, commonly, the stuff out of which other people carve their fetiches. A philosopher is a man who can understand the incomprehensible selections by other men of the objects of their adoration. But philosophers are uncommon. To Helen Maitland, leaving Fifth Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street and straying northwestward into the early autumn splendor of the Park, it seemed as though for the first time she could understand the viewpoint of those unidentified myriads to whom New York is a fetich; and as she walked on beneath the trees soon to lay aside their valedictory robes, she appreciated most fully those to whom Central Park is a fetich within a fetich, a guarded flame within the inmost chamber of the shrine. Partly the spell was that of Autumn, that grave, melodious season; and as Helen went forward, her mind lingered on the "tragic splendor" at whose "mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, crumbles the gorgeous year." In the past she had never been inordinately fond of New York. In common with most of her fellow Bostonians, she had found it too big, too noisy, too garish, and too unfriendly. To her it was iron and stone and dust and the tumult of a harsh and heartless unceasing struggle. But now, under the alchemic hand of Autumn, she found herself thrilling to the town as never before had she thought possible. Only two days had elapsed since her departure from Boston, but it seemed to her now that she was a participant in some slow-moving pageant, not a hostile critic in the audience, but a minor actor in an unfamiliar yet strangely familiar play. Even the hurrying throng of people who confronted her, when at length she sought again the street on her way homeward, seemed less hostile and alien, less inimical to her and her mood than ever before. As she went southward on the street car--for her careful New Englandism forbade her taking a taxicab in sunny weather--she found herself reflecting with a smile that Boston in her recollection was an astonishing distance away. She also detected with surprise a very slight irritation at the intense preoccupation of the thronging thousands in their own concerns and their utter carelessness of her and hers.