The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-01-03

Ding wreaths from east to west, from
south to north, as if the high hosts
OF Babylon had decked a dream city
for a Belshazzar feast.
But such torches were never fash
toned in any Babylon, never burned
in any Nineveh, and never dreamed of
by a King of Assyria in the days of its
pride. Two hundred feet high they
stand, and their flames float a hundred
feet into the air-the torches of nightly
New York fashioned out of chimneys
that spout steam among the lights.
In fog the castled walls swim as if
they themselves were truly but the
f%ashionings of the creeping mist that
has stolen in from the secret sea TO
spin a spell through the brief night.
Then the lights throb and thinner as
if men saw them through tears-throb
and thinner with that supreme and
passionate mystery that is the crown
of far lights set in a high dark.
And yet only a %dwindling percent
age of all the army that shufles and
pushes and jOstles its hOmeward way
under that spectacle each night has
wen 3 remote idea that such a thing Is.
Nightly the army turns its back on
the place of its travail. By boat and
bridge and cab and car its corps and
brigades flee, with every face set to-
ward home and away from lower New
York. 1t could lot see the glory if it
would, for the ~iercest battle of New
York is the escape of the army from
the battlefield of the day.
This retreating, fleeing army pres
emily makes a picture of light of its
] own, and from the skyscrapers the
black world far below appears torn in
a hundred directions by binding
white meteors darting north and east
and west.
Over the bridge fly blazing stars
as the cars soar up the pendant arch
and down again to dive into Brooklyn.
That ugly stalking centipede of iron
that is called the elevated system is
CARRIED in incessant lightnings, with
bolts ten miles long. The rushing
Hudson River bears dancing, slipping
things, shining like diadems on black
velvet, and gliding swiftly-the ugliest
craft in the world, the New York fer
ryboat, transformed by the night.
The Hudson Is IN the electric age.
The East River Is in the gas and oil
age. Its ferries shine in subdued vel
low and orange tones. Its banks are
black and forbidding. But that very
gloom makes the East River shore
the fitting background for a fairy
dance of colOred lights each night.
Green and red and blue they fit on
the unseen stream. Golden and red
and green they hang in rows like
strings OF beads over the black slips
and along the black piers. Here every
snorting tugbOat IS a tripping goblin,
and every believing steamer is a sea
thing with glittering golden scales.
For one brief hour the reign OF
the lights holds its full sway. At hal
past six they begin TO die-hrst on the
highest towers, then one by one lower
down, then suddenly in scores, in hun
dreds, in thousands.
By 8 o'clock lower New York stands
dark and grim, and all that area Is so
lonely that the footsteps of a single
pedestrian awaken echoes through a
mile OF vacant streets.
New York is dark-but its spell will
never free the soul of him who has
seen ii. Ii will draw him again and
always, until ono more he sees from
afar the light IN the horizon that tells
that the nightly wonder Is building
itself anew. JULIUS MULLER.