Across the park and up and around West Street are more of these immigrant places, some with foreign lettering and some plain Raines's law hotels with mirrored bars. One of them, perhaps the smallest and lowest-ceiled of all, is where Stevenson slept, or tried to, in his amateur emigranting.
These are among the few older houses in New York used for the same purposes as from the beginning. They seem to have been left stranded down around this earliest part of the town by an eddy in the commercial current which sweeps nearly everything else to the northward from its original moorings.... But this is not what is commonly meant by "down-town," though it is the farthest down you can go, nor is it where the walk up-town properly begins.
The Walk Up-town begins where the real Broadway begins, somewhat above the bend, past the foreign consulates, away from the old houses and the early nineteenth century atmosphere. Crowded sidewalks, a continuous roar, intent passers-by, jammed streets, clanging cable-cars with down-towners dodging them automatically; the region of the modern high business building.
In the wake of a fire-engine.
Above are stories uncountable (unless you are willing to be bumped into); beside you, hurried-looking people gazing straight ahead or dashing in and out of these large doors which are kept swinging back and forth all day; very heavy doors to push, especially in winter, when there are sometimes three sets of them. Within is the vestibule bulletin-board with hundreds of men's names and office-numbers on it; near by stands a judicial-looking person in uniform who knows them all, and starts the various elevators by exclaiming "Up!" in a resonant voice. While outside the crowd still hums and hurries on; it never gets tired; it seems to pay no attention to anything. It is a matter of wonder how a living is made by all the newsstands on the corners; all the dealers in pencils and pipe-cleaners and shoe-strings and rubber faces who are thick between the corners, to whom as little heed is given as to the clatter of trucks or the wrangling of the now-blocked cable-cars, or the cursing truck-drivers, or the echoing hammering of the iron-workers on the huge girders of that new office building across the way.
But that is simply because the crowd is accustomed to all these common phenomena of the city street. As a matter of fact, half of them are not so terrifically busy and important as they consider themselves. They seem to be in a great hurry, but they do not move very fast, as all know who try to take the walk up-town at a brisk pace, and most of them wear that intent, troubled expression of countenance simply from imitation or a habit generated by the spirit of the place. But it gives a quaking sensation to the poor young man from the country who has been walking the streets for weeks looking for a job; and it makes the visiting foreigner take out his note-book and write a stereotyped phrase or two about Americans—next to his note about our "Quick Lunch" signs which never fail to astonish him, and behind which may be seen lunchers lingering for the space of two cigars.
An ambulance, with its nervous, arrogant bell, comes scudding down the street. A very important young interne is on the rear keeping his balance with arrogant ease. His youthful, spectacled face is set in stony indifference to all possible human suffering. The police clear the way for him. And now see your rushing "busy throng" forget itself and stop rushing. It blocks the sidewalk in five seconds, and still stays there, growing larger, after those walking up-town have passed on.
The beautiful spire of Trinity, with its soft, brown stone and the green trees and quaintly lettered historic tombs beneath and the damp monument to Revolutionary martyrs over in one corner—no longer looks down benignly on all about it, because, for the most part, it has to look up. On all sides men have reared their marts of commerce higher than the house of God.
