Then, with a flash, Quincy was aware of a glitter of lights along the precipice. They were everywhere—huge bars of them in the north, clusters of them in the south. The lights of a city do not come out, one by one. A moment before, he had not noticed any. This, however, Quincy did remark: at first the lights appeared faint, almost fancied within the clear eminence of buildings. But by degrees, the lights, thickening in numbers, grew as well in strength, became more real and more brilliant. In measure, the cold outline of stone against the blue melted and merged; the two values—sky and building—fell back into one wash of grey. And the lights took firmer form in their dimming casements, and gleamed forth like a new city of flame in place of the city of stone. Manhattan of the day, with its sharp, cruel outlines and its clumsy angles, hostile to subtlety and to suggestion, was fading utterly before this faëry Manhattan with its swarms of color and its deep store of fancy.
Quincy fought his way to the street through the frantic turbulence of clattering cars and thronging home-goers. He felt as if he had been dropped down the muddy vortex of a whirlpool. Night was thick above him. Great clouds of people swirled toward the bridge and subway, amid the clangor of traffic and the cacophony of newsboys.
Bruised, frightened, Quincy turned away, eager only to escape. Suddenly, amazement stopped him. Across the dismal mouth of the street was the bridge—a giant causeway. One arc-light underneath broke off a circlet of yellow-white from the surrounding gloom. Above shone a ragged strip of sky. The air was rank. The solitary light tumbled and flashed in the vapors.
Panic clutched the boy. There seemed a half uttered charm about this place. He pressed on. And now, he slipped along the wet walks of Fulton Market where the fish of a thousand pushcarts had dropped blood and ooze during the day. Facing the low, red houses with the hectic, gas-burning shops, Quincy observed Broadway beyond—a long, high gauze of flame. Ponderous trucks rattled past. And a thin stream of drab humanity shuffled toward the ancient ferry that plies to Brooklyn.
Quincy went north on South Street, past the swinging doors of saloons and shops where marling-spikes and flag-trucks made display. Under the Bridge itself he went—looming above him like a curse; and into the rookeries of Cherry Hill.
Quincy had had enough. He was frightened, horrified.
He pushed up Water Street and westward, eager above all to escape the omnipresent Bridge. He passed through fetid piles of tenement, pouring their produce into the street. Crowds jostled him; cars clashed; machines went braying, shuttling. The taste of New York was bitter on his lips. Through its sheer bulk, it threatened to submerge him. He wished to run, in order to be rid of it. But he held himself back. He must be calm, courageous. All of this delirium, this lurid show of filth and vice and an inexplicable beauty—was it not life? Would he avoid life, would he be rid of it? Was he not of it? was he not also life?
And so, aching in his soul, for his experience, yet aware deeply that he had somehow been visiting himself, Quincy reached the station and journeyed back to college.
The depth of the impression of this trip on Quincy was such that he did not begin really to know it until somewhat later. Great shocks often compound a spiritual bath which takes a long time to soak upon the nerves. Quincy’s experience, as he looked back on it, was in the nature of a shock—a physical one. It grew blurred, dimensionless within his mind. And in proportion, grew the mental reflex. It seemed now, to Quincy, that the vagueness of what he had encountered was his own subjective vagueness; as if indeed he had pried into the arcana of existence. Of course, such a venture into truth could not have the petty clarity of fact. He learned that a glance within himself gave just such dim results. Yet here, dimness did not detract from poignancy. And so, with New York. There was a firm analogy between these delvings; and between their consequences, at first elusive, physical, and finally outspreading into an aura of deep importance.
He spoke freely of all this to Garsted.