Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE FOUR ROADS " As a man thinketh in bis heart, so is he." WALFORD had spent six months in New York, and already he measured his life by them. Memory declined to visualize the little Western town where he had lived through two-and-twenty years of his youth, never questioning the wealth of its resources. Why should he have questioned it? There were rows upon rows of comfortable houses where the residents were supremely occupied in residing. There were new buildings constantly going up, more commodious and no uglier than their predecessors, and there was a steady growth of the census report, which brought swelling pride to the heart of every loyal citizen of Alkali. As he looked back upon it all now, it was as if through a veil of the dust of the plains. The present alone had tangible reality. At twenty- five he felt that he had just begun to live. New York " haunted him like a passion." He felt an intoxication in its very air, and he threw himself eagerly into each passing experience. He had visited every picture-gallery; he knew every orchestral program by heart; he had dined in rich men's palaces; he had heard great orators and felt the thrill of their speech. But, after all, there was nothing like the city streets. They had taught him more than all the rest, and he was accustomed to walk up and down the great thoroughfares from Broadway to the Bowery, in a delighted absorption, studying the myriad types of men drifting around him. On this Sunday morning he was on his way from church to keep a luncheon engagement at a club, and as he strolled up Fifth Avenue, unconsciously he caught the gaiety of the crowd which surged up and down in all colors of the rainbow, like a flight of butterflies sunning themselves in the soft spring air. At a broad window of the...