The city
and the day's task have seized upon them and passed them through the
same set of rollers and pressed out their differences and transformed
them into a single mass of weary human material. The city has had its
day's work out of them and now sends them home to recruit the new
supply of energy that it will demand to-morrow. The unshaven men with
their newspapers and the listless women with their paper-covered novels
show ascetically tight-drawn faces, as if the day had been passed in
prayer and supplication. I need not see those faces; I know they are
there from the steady footfalls on the board platform. I overhear a
young girl recounting what a perfectly lovely time she had last night,
and how she simply couldn't stop dancing; but her foot drags a bit
heavily and there sounds in her chatter and her vehemence the
ground-tone of weariness.
It is not often that I hear the tramp of the late afternoon crowd upon
the wooden platforms at City Hall. I find the sound of the crowd too
solemn to be endured every day, and there is no comfort in the crush. I
usually take pains to travel at an early hour when there are few people,
and one is sure of a seat.
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