Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/299



HREE of the busiest portions of New York, varying with the various hours of the day, may safely be said to lie in that neighborhood where Nassau Street debouches into Park Row, and also near that point where Twenty-third Street intercepts Fourth Avenue, and still again not far from where Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet at the southeast corner of Madison Square.

About these three points, at certain hours of the day and on certain days of the week, an observant stranger might have noticed the strangely grotesque figure of an old cement seller. So often had this old street-peddler duty appeared at his stand, from month to month, that the hurrying public seemed to have become inured to the grotesqueness of his appearance. Seldom, indeed, did a face turn to inspect him as he blinked out at the lighted 289