There was incipient demoralisation already in the offices of Craig & Son.

Young gentlemen perched on high benches still searched city maps and explored high-way and by-way with compass and pencil-point, but their ears were alert to every shout from the streets, and their interest remained centred in the newspaper bulletins across the way, where excited crowds clamoured for details not forthcoming.
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.