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than let my girl marry that scalawag, I'll take you and her to Greece this
winter with the class. Separation. It is a sure cure that has the sanction
of antiquity."
"Well," said Mrs. Wainwright, "you know best, Harris. You know
best." It was a common remark with her, and it probably meant either
approbation or disapprobation if it did not mean simple discretion.
CHAPTER III.
THERE had been a babe with no arms born in one of the western
counties of Massachusetts. In place of upper limbs the child had
growing from its chest a pair of fin-like hands, mere bits of
skin-covered bone. Furthermore, it had only one eye. This phenomenon
lived four days, but the news of the birth had travelled up this country
road and through that village until it reached the ears of the editor of
the Michaelstown Tribune. He was also a correspondent of the New
York Eclipse. On the third day he appeared at the home of the parents
accompanied by a photographer. While the latter arranged his,
instrument, the correspondent talked to the father and mother, two
coweyed and yellow-faced people who seemed to suffer a primitive
fright of the strangers. Afterwards as the correspondent and the
photographer were climbing into their buggy, the mother crept furtively
down to the gate and asked, in a foreigner's dialect, if they would send
her a copy of the photograph. The correspondent carelessly indulgent,

promised it. As the buggy swung away, the father came from behind an
apple tree, and the two semi-humans watched it with its burden of
glorious strangers until it rumbled across the bridge and disappeared.
The correspondent was elate; he told the photographer that the Eclipse
would probably pay fifty dollars for the article and the photograph.
The office of the New York Eclipse was at the top of the immense
building on Broadway. It was a sheer mountain to the heights of which
the interminable thunder of the streets arose faintly. The Hudson was a
broad path of silver in the distance. Its edge was marked by the tracery
of sailing ships' rigging and by the huge and many-coloured stacks of
ocean liners. At the foot of the cliff lay City Hall Park. It seemed no
larger than a quilt. The grey walks patterned the snow-covering into
triangles and ovals and upon them many tiny people scurried here and
there, without sound, like a fish at the bottom of a pool. It was only the
vehicles that sent high, unmistakable, the deep bass of their movement.
And yet after listening one seemed to hear a singular murmurous note,
a pulsation, as if the crowd made noise by its mere living, a mellow
hum of the eternal strife. Then suddenly out of the deeps might ring a
human voice, a newsboy shout perhaps, the cry of a faraway jackal at
night.
From the level of the ordinary roofs, combined in many plateaus,
dotted with short iron chimneys from which curled wisps of steam,
arose other mountains like the Eclipse Building. They were great peaks,
ornate, glittering with paint or polish. Northward they subsided to
sun-crowned ranges.
From some of the windows of the Eclipse office dropped the walls of a
terrible chasm in the darkness of which could be seen vague struggling
figures. Looking down into this appalling crevice one discovered only
the tops of hats and knees which in spasmodic jerks seemed to touch
the rims of the hats. The scene represented some weird fight or dance
or carouse. It was not an exhibition of men hurrying along a narrow
street.
It was good to turn one's eyes from that place to the vista of the city's
splendid reaches, with spire and spar shining in the clear atmosphere

and the marvel of the Jersey shore, pearl- misted or brilliant with detail.
From this height the sweep of a snow-storm was defined and majestic.
Even a slight summer shower, with swords of lurid yellow sunlight
piercing its edges as if warriors were contesting every foot of its
advance, was from the Eclipse office something so inspiring that the
chance pilgrim felt a sense of exultation as if from this peak he was
surveying the worldwide war of the elements and life. The staff of the
Eclipse usually worked without coats and amid the smoke from pipes.
To one of the editorial chambers came a photograph and an article from
Michaelstown, Massachusetts. A boy placed the packet and many
others upon the desk of a young man who was standing before a
window and thoughtfully drumming upon the pane. He turned at the
thudding of the packets upon his desk. " Blast you," he remarked
amiably. " Oh, I guess it won't hurt you to work," answered the boy,
grinning with a comrade's Insolence.