“Nerves!” She looked at him sharply.  “What is it, Joe?”

“Oh!  It’s in-betweenness.”

“I see.”  She smiled.  “Well, there’s some shopping to do—­”

“Thank Heaven!”

So they went out together and took the Sixth Avenue car to Thirty-fourth Street.  Their shopping took them to Fifth Avenue, and then, later, up Broadway to Forty-second Street.  It was a different New York they saw—­in fact, the New York best known to the stranger.  The gorgeous palaces of trade glittered and sparkled, shimmered and flashed, with jewels and silver, with silks and knick-knacks.  The immense and rich plenty of earth, the products of factories and mills, were lavishly poured here, gathered in isles, about which a swarming sea of well-dressed women pushed and crowded.  The high ceilings were hung with glowing moons of light; the atmosphere was magic with confused talk, shuffling footsteps, and all the hum and stir of a human hive.  Up and down Fifth Avenue swept a black thick stream of motors and carriages in which women and men lounged and stared.  The great hotels sucked in and poured out tides of jeweled and lace-wrapped creatures, and in the lighted interiors of restaurants were rouged cheeks and kindled eyes.

As Joe and his mother reached Forty-second Street, that whirlpool of theaters released its matinee crowds, a flood of youth, beauty, brightness, and luxury.

And it seemed to Joe, seeing all this life from a Tenth Street viewpoint, that here was a great city of wealth and idleness.  Evidently a large population had nothing to do save shop and motor, eat and idle.  How could he from shabby Tenth Street send out a sheet of paper that would compete with these flashing avenues?

The sight depressed him.  He said as much to his mother.

“This is New York,” he said, “barbaric, powerful, luxuriant.  These people are the power of the city—­the mighty few—­these are the owners.  What can we do with them?”

His mother sensed then the struggle in his mind.

“Joe,” she cried, “isn’t there any place where we can see—­the other people?”

There was.  They took the car down to Eighth Street, they walked east, and entered little Washington Park, with its monumental arch, and its shadowy trees, its wide and curving walks—­its general sense of being a green breathing-space in the sweep of streets.  As they walked through the sharp wintry air in the closing sunlight, what time the blue electric lights gleamed out among the almost naked boughs, the six-o’clock whistles began blowing from factories all about them—­a glad shriek that jumped from street to street over the city—­and at once across the eastern plaza of the park streamed the strange torrent of the workers—­a mighty, swift march of girls and boys, women and men, homeward bound, the day’s work ended—­a human stream, in the gray light, steeped in an atmosphere of accomplishment, sweet peace, solution.  All life seemed to touch a moment of harvest.