At the rear of the cathedral, across the roadway, stands a low stone
wall. Just over the wall the earth sinks like a precipice to a green
valley bottom far below. Out here is a rugged slope of rock and verdure
and forest growth which brings into the city an ancient presence,
nature--nature, the Elysian Fields of the art school, the potter's field
of the hospital, the harvest field of the church.
This strip of nature fronts the dawn and is called Morningside Park.
Past the foot of it a thoroughfare stretches northward and southward,
level and wide and smooth. Over this thoroughfare the two opposite-moving
streams of the city's traffic and travel rush headlong. Beyond the
thoroughfare an embankment of houses shoves its mass before the eyes,
and beyond the embankment the city spreads out over flats where human
beings are as thick as river reeds.
Thus within small compass humanity is here: the cathedral, the hospital,
the art school, and a strip of nature, and a broad highway along which,
with their hearth-fires flickering fitfully under their tents of stone,
are encamped life's restless, light-hearted, heavy-hearted Gipsies.
* * * * *
It was Monday morning and it was nine o'clock. Over at the National
Academy of Design, in an upper room, the members of one of the women's
portrait classes were assembled, ready to begin work.
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