There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the sanctuary of the temple.

The people went about in it, busy and dirty, thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt, sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their wives and babies and sweethearts.

The growth of the city was visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush.

There was more smoke than there had been this day of February a year earlier; there was more noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker in spite of that.

The traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent--they retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane nervousness.