New York was open letting the calm day in. An afternoon of May ... made of the scent of far young grass, the swayings of far trees, the slopings of far hills ... lay above the streets where Fanny and Clara walked: came down, feathery certain into the open City, into their eyes and limbs. They walked languorous through a sleepy city lying like a brittle-kneed woman under the loved day. The City glowed with half responses ... new. The angle of a street falling away from the straight street where they walked was a gesture of pleasaunce. Above the clotted people the dim houses leaned gently together, making a haze of memory above the urgence of people. The streets turned angles leisurely: a Square beyond them was an invitation like a hand open or a mouth relaxed, the swerve of the Elevated train on the near Bowery was a stroke that caressed.
“You are from the South, I can hear that. Have you been here long?”
“About a month,” said Fanny.
“I was born here. I wonder what it’s like, coming to New York.”
“New York is easy to come to.”
“Do people come here happy?”
Fanny did not want to look at Clara. The day was lazy and round, falling into night. “Why do you ask that?” she said.
“O I don’t know.... I was just wondering—why do they come to New York.”
“Why did your parents come?”
“My father’s family was starving in Wicklow. Pa was a boy and no use at home ploughing more fields for a grabbing landlord. So he came. He wasn’t happy coming. Mother I don’t remember very well, she came from a place near Pressberg in Bohemia. She was so lovely always ... tall and so sweet ... and always so tired. I guess they were all just tired—her whole family came—they couldn’t keep still. I’ve been tired that way. I’d keep moving and moving. I’d say to myself; Now Clara if you’ll just try and stop and sit down you’ll be better. I couldnt. Something like that I’ve felt in all the foreigners ... Czechs and Dagos and Bohunks ... I have ever seen. Something in ’em I guess got too tired to hold on, to stay on, they had to move ... and there’s America all ready, a chute like in the cowpens I’ve seen over in Brooklyn ready to swallow ’em up as they come tumblin’. Heaven knows where those foreigners get their idea of us.”