And nobody knew.
And the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, the great crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then the more quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like private parks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a little absent, now and then a footfall passing through.
And I found them all full of the same strange questioning: "Where are we going?"
And nobody knew.
It was the same questioning I had just left in New York, going up all about me, out of the skyscrapers.
New York did not know.
Now London did not know.
And after I had tried the journals and the magazines, I thought of books.
I could not but look about—how could I do otherwise than look about?—a lonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways and windows—for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in the sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; who still see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint and tiny roar of London.