20 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



at bay in order to win through the press. The 

 tailor's legend "Clothes pressed while you wait" 

 flashed across my mind as an appropriate inscription 

 for the stately arches that span the interval between 

 the city and its growing suburb. Twenty years 

 ago I had thought the daily ebb and flow of city 

 clerks across London Bridge a bewildering mael- 

 strom, but, compared with the torrent between New 

 York and Brooklyn, the passing of London's 

 suburban penmen was a stagnant backwater. 



To accommodate a population so great, so 

 growing, so restless within the narrow limits of the 

 island, it has been found necessary to model the 

 architecture on the Tower of Babel, hence the 

 flat-iron buildings and other skyscrapers, some of 

 which stagger the perspective of the unaccustomed 

 eye. Vertical expansion only is possible with water 

 on every other side, and already the subways dive 

 as far underground as the overhead runs above it, 

 so that the citizens are at once but a little lower 

 than the angels and a little higher than the devil. 

 (Geographically, I mean, of course.) A very 

 perfect system of elevators, compared with which 

 our lifts at home are toys, does much to mitigate 

 the rigour of these constant ups and downs, and in 

 American cities the ascent is no harder than the 

 descent. I have found myself deposited on the 

 nineteenth floor of a building in less time than it 

 takes to write it down. Arrived there, though by 

 no means at the top, only the bird's-eye-view from 

 a window enabled me to realise how far I had risen 

 in the drawing of a breath. The subways up and 

 down town also work admirably and are, at the 

 moment of writing, the last word in that scientific 



