ABSTRACT
Across Manhattan a lean wind blows, a late August wind, eastward out of the Hudson. It’s a wiry, muscular island, Manhattan is, from the South Ferry tip where the Ellis Island boats disgorge the greenhorns, to the gash cut by the Harlem River where the fat Bronx begins. It juts out like an unruly thumb in the clenched fist that is New York. It’s a gun pointed at the Atlantic. Span the middle from Thirteenth Avenue to Sutton Place and it’s an old man’s walk, only fourteen avenue blocks. But try to work your way across from a tenement fire-trap flat on Death Avenue to a terrace apartment overlooking Welfare Island, and it will age you. There’s a stop signal on every corner.
