At 11.30 o'clock the South Station is deserted and the night air blowing in through the gates wanders around and is lost in the hollowness of stone. People are away at the Cape or in the mountains. Between the sheds the Owl lies panting little spirals of smoke in anticipation of the long run past weary towns, isolated farm-houses pallid in the moonlight, black water sleeping in the dim aisles of forests, down through Connecticut, past exclusive suburbs, through Harlem tenaments under Park Avenue into the awakening city, cool in the gray and pink of dawn.

Mail trucks clatter by carrying pouches for New Orleans, Butte, Little Rock, Winnetka, Miami, Ottumwa, and Dallas. Letters from angry fathers, distraught mothers, improvident sons, enamored daughters; letters from salesmen in shiny blue serge suits, executives in State Street, swathy Armenians, and pious Baptist priests.

The train lurches and grinds forward. The night before the Vagabond sat in a little room up under the roof smoking meditatively and wondering at the beauty of a girl's profile against a shaded lamp. She was reading Eleanor Wylie's poetry half aloud. Her lips were wet, and the dampness in the air wove her black hair into ringlets. Outside silver rain was falling softly through the blackness in Bay State Road, and the poplars were glad for the rain.

The night before the Vagabond had lived again in Attica through Gulick's book, and walked in a shining white cloth over the Athenian hills one crystal spring morning down to the blue-girt Piraeus. Five o'clock that morning through the windows of the Waldorf he had seen dawn steal down Massachusetts Avenue like a great gray cat, tail between its legs.

Providence is full of screw factories and steep nondescript streets. In the country there are no tawdry yellow lamps. There are a thousand trees, and each tree has a thousand thousand leaves, and each leaf falls to the ground where there are million grains of earth. In the calm of night, thought flows effortlessly like a great river, and embraces the whole world. The clamor and confusion of day are swept from the brain and a single eye comprehends the essence of all things. The imagination plays in a jewel-box ideas.

Now London is full of boats, secondhand Buicks, and bouncing college girls. The Sound is the playground of sybarities. Stretching off to Long Island, the shoreline follows the water as a wet garment clings to the firm sweet limbs of a girl and the little line of foam, milky in the moon, decks her with lace.

New Haven never should have been, Ten thousand Babbitts must live in Stamford. When the eastern sky is saffron, and the west is a slate blue, New York yawns, Banana vendors in Second Avenue push their carts through streets littered with humanity's debris, as Park Avenue tumbles into scented beds. Tugs hoot in the harbor, trains leave, planes arrive, the subway roars and the never ending round feverishly swings toward the stupid frenzied pitch of noon.