But whether we see it in the sweet-scented dawn, or at high noon, or at the shopping hour, or later, when, to use Arnold Bennett's words, "the street lamps flicker into a steady, steely blue, and the windows of the hotels and restaurants throw a yellow radiance, and all the shops--especially the jewellers' shops--become enchanted treasure houses, whose interiors recede away behind their facades into infinity," it is ever the essence of our New York of Anno Domini 1918.
Then, in an instant, the Hill of today vanishes.

The show windows of the great shops, gorgeous with display, the vast hotels, the clubs, the fluttering Starry Banners and Tricolours and Union Jacks, the stirring posters that bring the heart into the throat and send the hand down into the pocket for Liberty Loan or Red Cross, the line of creeping motor-cars on the asphalt, the swarming sidewalks, swim away in a mist, and in their place there is rolling woodland, and a silver stream, and in the distance, a great white house.

The years drop away.

A boy of eight, curled up in a big chair, is dipping for the first time into the pages of his country's history.

His face is flushed, his eyes are bright.