The noonday sun beat down on Park Row. Hurrying mortals, releasedfrom a thousand offices, congested the sidewalks, their thoughtsbusy with the vision of lunch. Up and down the canyon of NassauStreet the crowds moved more slowly. Candy-selling aliens jostlednewsboys, and huge dray-horses endeavoured to the best of theirability not to grind the citizenry beneath their hooves.

　　Eastward, pressing on to the City Hall, surged the usual densearmy of happy lovers on their way to buy marriage-licenses. Menpopped in and out of the subway entrances like rabbits. It was astirring, bustling scene, typical of this nerve-centre of NewYork's vast body.

　　Jimmy Crocker, standing in the doorway, watched the throngsenviously. There were men in that crowd who chewed gum, therewere men who wore white satin ties with imitation diamondstick-pins, there were men who, having smoked seven-tenths of acigar, were eating the remainder: but there was not one with whomhe would not at that moment willingly have exchanged identities.

　　For these men had jobs. And in his present frame of mind itseemed to him that no further ingredient was needed for therecipe of the ultimate human bliss.

　　The poet has said some very searching and unpleasant things aboutthe man "whose heart has ne'er within him burned as home hisfootsteps he has turned from wandering on some foreign strand,"but he might have excused Jimmy for feeling just then not so mucha warmth of heart as a cold and clammy sensation of dismay. Hewould have had to admit that the words "High though his titles,proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim" did notapply to Jimmy Crocker. The latter may have been "concentred allon self," but his wealth consisted of one hundred andthirty-three dollars and forty cents and his name was so far frombeing proud that the mere sight of it in the files of the NewYork _Sunday Chronicle_, the record-room of which he had just beenvisiting, had made him consider the fact that he had changed itto Bayliss the most sensible act of his career.

　　The reason for Jimmy's lack of enthusiasm as he surveyed theportion of his native land visible from his doorway is not far toseek. The _Atlantic_ had docked on Saturday night, and Jimmy,having driven to an excellent hotel and engaged an expensive roomtherein, had left instructions at the desk that breakfast shouldbe served to him at ten o'clock and with it the Sunday issue ofthe _Chronicle_. Five years had passed since he had seen the dearold rag for which he had reported so many fires, murders,street-accidents, and weddings: and he looked forward to itsperusal as a formal taking _seisin_ of his long-neglected country.

　　Nothing could be more fitting and symbolic than that the firstmorning of his return to America should find him propped up inbed reading the good old _Chronicle_. Among his final meditationsas he dropped off to sleep was a gentle speculation as to who wasCity editor now and whether the comic supplement was stillfeaturing the sprightly adventures of the Doughnut family.