All day, just outside the glass doors of the office, Broadway streamed with people; and here, where the human counter currents running north and south encountered amid the racket of omnibuses, carts, carriages, and drays, a vast overflow spread turbulently, eddying out around the recruiting stations and newspaper offices which faced the City Park.

Sidewalks swarmed, the park was packed solid.  Overhead flags flew from every flag pole, over every portal, across every alley and street and square—­big nags, little flags, flags of silk, of cotton, of linen, of bunting, all waving wide in the spring sunshine, or hanging like great drenched flowers in the winnowing April rain.

And it was very hard for the young gentlemen in the offices of Craig & Son to keep their minds on their business.

Berkley had a small room to himself, a chair, a desk, a city map suspended against the wall, and no clients.  Such occasional commissions as Craig & Son were able to give him constituted his sole source of income.

He also had every variety of time on his hands—­leisure to walk to the window and walk back again, and then walk all around the room—­leisure to go out and solicit business in a city where already business was on the edge of chaos and still sliding—­leisure to sit for hours in his chair and reflect upon anything he chose—­leisure to be hungry and satisfy the inclination with philosophy.  He was perfectly at liberty to choose any subject and think about it.  But he spent most of his time in trying to prevent himself from thinking.

However, from his window, the street views now were usually interesting; he was an unconvinced spectator of the mob which started for the Daily News office, hissing, cat-calling, yelling:  “Show your colours!” “Run up your colours!” He saw the mob visit the Journal of Commerce, and then turn on the Herald, yelling insult and bellowing threats which promptly inspired that journal to execute a political flip-flap that set the entire city smiling.

Stephen, who had conceived a younger man’s furtive admiration for Berkley and his rumoured misdemeanours, often came into his room when opportunity offered.  That morning he chanced in for a moment and found Berkley at the window chewing the end of a pencil, perhaps in lieu of the cigar he could no longer afford.

“These are spectacular times,” observed the latter, with a gesture toward the street below.  “Observe yonder ladylike warrior in brand-new regimentals.  Apparently, Stephen, he’s a votary of Mars and pants for carnage; but in reality he continues to remain the sartorial artist whose pants are more politely emitted.  He emitted these—­” patting his trousers with a ruler.  “On what goose has this my tailor fed that he hath grown so sightly!”

They stood watching the crowds, once brightened only by the red shirts of firemen or the blue and brass of a policeman, but now varied with weird uniforms, or parts of uniforms, constructed on every known and unknown pattern, military and unmilitary, foreign and domestic.  The immortal army at Coventry was not more variegated.