It seemed to have no sense whatever of the exigencies of human life; it was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities. One was continually being jostled, yet longed, at the same time, for the sense of others, for a human touch; and if one was never – it was the general complaint – left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness.