Oblivious to the interest of the spectators, oblivious
to all the hurrying and running and crowding as other trains roared into
the underground station, the little man leaned limply against a pillar.
"He's gone!" he muttered to himself. "He's gone!"
For upward of twenty years Mr. James Neal had been a clerk in the
offices of Fields, Jones & Houseman on Lower Broadway. Every day of
these twenty-odd years, if we except Sundays and holidays, Mr. Neal had
spent an hour and a half on subway trains. An hour and a half every day
for more than twenty years he had spent in the great underground system
of the Interborough. Its ceaseless roar benumbed his senses as he was
hurtled from the Bronx, where he had a room, to the Imperial Building,
where he worked, and back again. This, as he had often computed,
amounted to fifty-eight and a half working days each year, or about two
months' time. Such was the fee he paid to Time for the privilege of
using other hours for working and living. It had seemed a cruel loss at
first--this hour and a half from every working day--but that was in the
early days of his experience in the city. Then he had been driven by
boundless energy and hope--the same energy and the same hope that had
brought him here from his little mid-western community in the first
place.
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