A dull night watchman half asleep
took them in the elevator up to the top floor of the building, where in a
bustling, clanking loft the paper was just going to press. Deborah seemed
to know one of the foremen. He smiled and nodded and led the way through
the noise and bustle to a large glass door at one end. This she opened and
stepped out upon a fire escape so broad it was more like a balcony. And
with the noise of the presses subdued, from their high perch they looked
silently down.
All around them for miles, it seemed, stretched dark uneven fields of
roofs, with the narrow East River winding its way through the midst of them
to the harbor below, silvery, dim and cool and serene, opening to the
distant sea. From the bridges rearing high over the river, lights by
thousands sparkled down. But directly below the spot where they stood was
only a dull hazy glow, rising out of dark tenement streets where dimly they
could just make out numberless moving shadowy forms, restless crowds too
hot to sleep. The roofs were covered everywhere with men and women and
children--families, families, families, all merged together in the dark.
And from them rose into the night a ceaseless murmur of voices, laughing
and joking, quarreling, loving and hating, demanding, complaining, and
fighting and slaving and scheming for bread and the means of stark
existence. But among these struggling multitudes confusedly did Roger feel
the brighter presence here and there of more aspiring figures, small groups
in glaring, stilling rooms down there beneath the murky dark, young people
fiercely arguing, groping blindly for new gods.
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