THE SEARCH AND FINDING 



imps, lend a shrill treble to the uproar; the 

 policeman's star twinkles somewhere in the 

 foreground; upon the begrimed stairway, 

 figures flit mysteriously up and down; there 

 is the shriek of a steam whistle somewhere in 

 the front ; a shock to the train ; a new deluge 

 of smoke rolls back and around newsboys, 

 police, cabmen, stairway, and all; there is a 

 crazy shout of some official, a jerk, a dash — 

 figures still flitting up and down the sooty 

 stairway— and so, a progress into day (which 

 seemed never more welcome). Again the 

 backs of shops, of houses, heaps of debris, as 

 if all the shop people and all the dwellers in 

 all the houses were fed only on lobsters and 

 other shellfish; a widening of the sluice, a 

 gradual recovery of position to the surface of 

 the ground— in time to see a few tall chim- 

 neys, a great hulk of rock, with something 

 glistening on its summit, a turbid river bor- 

 dered with sedges, a clump of coquettish pine 

 trees — and the conductor tells you all this is 

 the beautiful city of N — h — } 



* It is perhaps needless to say that the lapse of twenty 

 years has made a change in the approaches; and the 

 traveller is now set down at a station which is flanked 

 on one side by full sweep of the harbor waters and 

 which should (and might) be flanked on the other by 

 a City Green, witTi its trees and fountain. 



39 



