I Travel by Train

Somewhere in the region of Hell Gate Bridge the train moved hesitantly for a time, and then made a broad sweep to the southward as if it were trying to find a way of getting around New York. It was exploring as it sped along. As it circled into open space, one of the fighters they had both been silent for a time looked off to the westward with a puzzled, interested stare as though he were seeing something that was beyond his understanding. Then I saw. The whole of New York from the region of Forty-second Street on downtown stood up in a leaden sunset sky like the dream of some brilliant madman. In a moment everybody in the car was silent and looking. It was something pagan, yet something unearthly. What had men been celebrating when they built it? A moment later when the train carried us along slowly where a veil of smoke in the foreground subdued the fading sunlight even more subtly than the clouds in t