Manhattan

The liner steams through the Narrows (the Normandie, Queen Mary,
Bremen; the dozen greatest ships of the world, sailing from Liverpool,
Southampton, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Havre, Genoa, head for that narrow
strip of water and steam dexterously through it, turn precisely toward the
slender island toward the north). Out of an early morning fog come
brooding, ghostly calls. A dark blotch appears, takes form—an anchored
tramp: coffee from Brazil, rubber from Sumatra, bananas from Costa
Rica—and slowly disappears; another liner is suddenly moving along-
side, also steaming northward, and then dissolves into the white nothing.
Invisible ferries scuttle, tooting, across the harbor.

The Limited, bearing a sight-seeing family (there are 115,000 of them
daily—from Waco, Mobile, Los Angeles, Kansas City), the literary
genius of Aurora High School, the prettiest actress in the Burlington
dramatic club, a farm boy hoping to start for Wall Street, and a mechanic
with an idea, pounds across the state of New Jersey. They cross the
meadows, see far off the great wall of the city and dive into the darkness
beneath Jersey City and the Hudson River. Or perhaps the train comes
from Winnipeg, Gary, Erie, and follows the Hudson toward its mouth
or crosses the Hell Gate from New England.

In the city, night workers, their footsteps sharp, irregular on the quiet
streets, return home. A water wagon rolls by. Bands are still playing in
half a dozen night clubs. In the Upper East Side, in the Upper West