As in the shops
among the men workers, so here, also, walked the youth with unseeing eyes.
He liked it all; the mass of people; the clerks in their cheap clothing;
the old men with young girls on their arms going to dine in restaurants;
the young man with a wistful look in his eyes waiting for his sweetheart
in the shadow of the towering office building. The eager, straining rush
of the whole, seemed no more to him than a kind of gigantic setting for
action; action controlled by a few quiet, capable men--of whom he intended
to be one--intent upon growth.
In State Street he stopped at a shop and buying a bunch of roses came out
again upon the crowded street. In the crowd before him walked a woman--
tall, freewalking, with a great mass of reddish-brown hair on her head. As
she passed through the crowd men stopped and looked back at her, their
eyes ablaze with admiration. Seeing her, Sam sprang forward with a cry.
"Edith!" he called, and running forward thrust the roses into her hand.
"For Janet," he said, and lifting his hat walked beside her along State to
Van Buren Street.
Leaving the woman at a corner Sam came into a region of cheap theatres and
dingy hotels. Women spoke to him; young men in flashy overcoats and with a
peculiar, assertive, animal swing to their shoulders loitered before the
theatres or in the doorways of the hotels; from an upstairs restaurant
came the voice of another young man singing a popular song of the street.
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