over the lawns with his gasoline mowing machine. Everything is the same at heart. And that is why it's the perfect pilgrimage, the loveliest spot on earth, then, now and forever!
During the whole of a dull and oppressive afternoon, when the very buildings that loomed about me seemed to lean forward threateningly as if to crush me with their stony mass, I had been traveling in fitful jerks in a Market street trolley; and at length found myself, as the sullen shade of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy tower of the City Hall. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable, for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the simple visages of the policemen on guard in the courtyard—upon the throng of suburban humanity pressing in mournful agitation toward their solemn hour of trial—upon a deserted litter of planks left by the heedless hand of the subway contractor—and an icy anguish seized upon my
