Street traffic had grown heavier. We were passing carriages now; and a light delivery wagon, enameled deep purple and lettered Moquin in gold script, cut around us. As I watched it, Kate touched my arm, and I turned. She was frowning, shaking her head. "Si, I've had enough. I'm seeing too much. I'd like to… just retreat somewhere and close my eyes."

"I know: I know what you mean." I stood up, stooping to look ahead. I knew we must be approaching Forty-second Street and I was unconsciously looking for the landmark that would confirm it, the main library on the west corner just across Forty-second. Again a moment of utter disbelief, because of course it wasn't there. Where it should have been stood what looked like the base of an enormous pyramid: tall blank walls slanting inward, running clear down to Forty-first Street on Fifth, and west on Forty-second out of sight. Martin had briefed me with pictures, and I knew what this was: the Croton Reservoir. But it was one more bewildering sight in a city completely familiar to me and now terribly different. The bus was edging toward the curb, I beckoned to Kate, and we got off directly in front of a two-wheeled hansom cab parked just short of the corner. I opened the cab door and helped Kate in. Settling down beside her, I glanced at her, and her head was back, her eyes closed. The driver sat in the rear on a high seat where he could look over the top, and now I heard a sound overhead, and looked up to see a panel slide back and reveal a small open square in the roof. Framed in it a moment later, I saw one eye, half of the other, a nose red with cold, and the beginnings of a large and drooping mustache. "The main post office," I said; then I got out my watch, pressed the stud, and the lid sprang back to reveal the face. It was nearly five. "Can you do it in half an hour?"

"I don't know," he said disgustedly, and clucked at his horse, snapping the reins. We pulled out into the street. "The way traffic is nowadays, it gets worse every day, you never know anymore. We'll try it; straight down Fifth to the square shouldn't be too bad yet, this time of day. Then over to Broadway, and miss the damned El; pardon me, ma'am." My head was back, too, my eyes closed; I'd seen enough for the moment, almost more than I could take. But as the roof panel slid shut I was smiling; however different, New York wasn't really changed.

10

The slow absolutely regular clip-clop, clip-clop of our horse's hoofs on the hard-packed snow — a little louder and more ringing when we crossed bare cobbles — was soothing, and so was the rhythmical sway and slight jounce of the hansom body on its springs. I began to recover from too much all at once, and opened my eyes now and then. But the glimpses I had were more of the same: This was a narrow, pleasant, tree-lined, expensive residential street, mostly. Occasionally we passed hotels with strange names: St. Marc… Shelburn. And the Union League Club looking just like a Union League Club.

Then I heard the distant frantic sound of a bell, growing louder with every clang, and as we crossed Thirty-third Street it was suddenly a brain-numbing fury of sound to the west. Kate scrambling upright beside me, I turned to look, and here it came straight for us, a team of immense white horses, manes flying, hoofs pounding, drawing a red-and-brass fire engine, the driver slashing his whip at the horses, a flat stream of white smoke lining out behind it like the wake of a ship. The bell was wild now, the pound of hoofs on the cobbles so fast and in such unison that the sound was a throb. It was frightening to see that smoke-belching fury roaring straight at us, and our driver lashed out at his horse, and we jolted on across the street and out of its way. Behind us, we saw it dash on across Fifth, red-and-gilt spokes flashing, drivers reining up to hold the path clear. Four or five blocks farther on we heard the sound again, this time to the south, and I remembered that this was a city of wooden beams, floors and walls, and of open-flame lighting and heat.

All the while we clip-clopped on, block after block downtown into the busy part of the city, the street traffic grew heavier, Then suddenly Kate and I were bumped hard against each other. The cab had stopped abruptly, slewing sideways in the slush of the pavement. Then it jerked, starting forward again, and I sat up, hearing our driver cursing, and I lowered my window to stick my head out, and the noise was hard to believe.

We were at the intersection where Broadway crosses Fifth, and vehicles were pouring from Broadway to join our traffic stream, which was just possible, or to fight their way across it, which was almost impossible. Nearly every vehicle had four wheels and every wheel was wrapped in iron that smashed and rang against the cobbles, every horse had four iron-shod hoofs that did the same, and there was no control whatsoever. Wheels clattered, wood groaned, chains rattled, leather creaked, whips cracked against horseflesh, men shouted and cursed, and no street I've ever seen of the twentieth century made even half that brain-numbing sound.

Bulling their way across Fifth or Broadway were varnished delivery wagons, each with a single slim horse; enormous-wheeled, flat-bedded wagons loaded sky-high with barrels, crates, sacks, some pulled by as many as three tandem teams of immense steam-breathing dray horses; carriages of black, maroon, green, brown, some shabby, some elegant and glinting with glass and polish. They trotted, lumbered, or rattled over the stones, or they slowed or stopped short in little knots and clusters; Kate was leaning out her window and we saw a carriage horse at the intersection rear high on his hind legs, whinnying, and I saw a truck driver come out of Broadway, standing before his seat to force his way across Fifth, slashing out with his whip at his own horses and at any others who got in his way. Other drivers simply sat in numb patience, hunched and motionless against the cold, completely out in the open on their high wooden benches, wrapped to the waist in drab torn-edged blankets, wearing fur or knit caps pulled down low, and enormous coats of stained cloth or balding fur. Then we were across, resuming our steady clip-clop down Fifth, and I yelled at the driver, "There ought to be traffic lights!" and he opened his slide.

"What's that?"

"They ought to have signal lights to control the traffic," I said, but of course he just looked at me, then slid the panel closed. At Washington Square we turned left — there was no arch at the entrance, and to me, again, it looked as though it had been removed — over to Broadway, and I sat with Kate's hand in mine, my body, senses, and capacity for surprise used up. Kate laid her head back on the hard tufted-leather upholstery, and I did, too, watching the telegraph wires, which had appeared as soon as we turned into Broadway, angle endlessly across the top of my window. I didn't sit up or look out again till Chambers Street. Then, a block ahead on Kate's side, I looked out and saw City Hall, and it was so good to see something familiar that I dragged out my watch; it was five twenty, there was time to walk, and I rapped on the roof.

We walked south, on past City Hall and the little park before it. I said, "This is the original City Hall you can't fight, you know," and Kate smiled. Then we crossed the street to the big main post office which filled the triangle of land just across from City Hall Park where Park Row ends at Broadway. By the time we got around to the front entrance of the post office, Kate and I were grinning at each other; it was such a ridiculous building, all windows and ornamental stone columns rising five stories to a roof of shingled towers; cast-iron railings; an ornamental cupola; and, fluttering from a flagpole, a long pointed pennant on which was lettered POST OFFICE.