44 
represents that many individuals, every one of them enjoying 
discreet identity; that is to say, if the six million etc. should 
differ among themselves in shape, smell, color, and chest meas 
urement, and were to be laid out end to end like paving stones, 
the procession or path formed thereby would not only extend 
from here to the moon, but I dare say it would extend a con 
siderable distance beyond it. That, indeed, would be an 
ASTONISHING SPECTACLE 
but as an even more striking illustration of subway efficiency 
another graphic measurement might possibly be used. Thus if 
all the 639385780 passengers could somehow or other be got 
into a mortar, brayed into a pulp of semi-liquid consistency, and 
then plastered over the sun, I believe there would be a sufficiency 
of the pulp not only to cover the sun, but to such an opaque 
depth that not even the tiniest twinkle of light could force its 
way through. But 
WHAT A TERRIBLE CALAMITY 
that would be! For denied its most important source of heat 
and light, the world would most certainly freeze. Business 
would collapse, stocks fall to unprecedented levels, and with 
all its telephones ringing unanswered, the earth would spin for 
ever through the stars, as cold and naked as a door knob. Never 
theless, Mr. Frank Warburg of the Revelation Undergarment 
Company, protected from ideas of any such a catastrophe by his 
morning newspaper, trotted down the subway steps, deposited 
his nickle and leaped 
THROUGH THE TURNSTILE 
Which act, being pars primo in his morning ritual, Mr. War 
burg thereat hastened with a fixed eye toward an open car door, 
and thrusting aside the weaker or less ardent votaries who were 
converging toward it, so skilfully employed his elbows as to 
thrust himself within and capture the last available seat. 
Whereat the gong jangled, the door slithered shut, the train 
moved, Mr. Warburg hitched up his trousers, and 
WHO’S THAT WAS SHOVING ME? 
asked Miss Craig. It was a young man who had lost his balance 
and fallen against Miss Craig, a young man in a leghorn hat. 
For though every morning and evening the New York Subways 
perform a miracle of quantitative transportation (Hannibal 
maneuvering his army over the Alps, Xerxes herding his war 
riors over the Hellespont, or Moses engineering the Children 
of Israel out of Egypt, performed no vaster feat of transporta