Time and Again

But now at the sight of it I exclaimed in simple delight, because the square ahead was alive and a joy. Under the winter trees and still-glowing gas mantles were countless children: girls in bo

These weren't just black. There were marvelous rich maroons among them, a deep olive-green, and one had a magnificent body of canary-yellow, the wheels and fenders shiny black. Most were enclosed but a few were actually open, and Julia named some of them: fine names like Victorias, five-glassed landaus, barouches, phaetons, and light rockaways. Liveried men drove them, top hats taking and revolving the light, polished boots and white pants displayed under the buttoned-back skirts of silver-buttoned outer coats, which in some instances matched the carriage bodies in color. On more than one, carriage footmen, often a pair of them, sat up behind, arms folded in splendid uselessness.

And the horses pranced, slim and magnificent, their harnesses and curried bodies shining, heads reined high, manes braided, knees lifting to chests; a lot of them were in matched absolutely identical pairs: black, brown, gray, white. And inside those carriages sat the most stylish, splendid, exciting-to-look-at women I'd ever seen. They were going shopping after a few turns around the square, Julia said — along the Ladies' Mile that stretched down Broadway to the south.

We were closer now, and I gri

Now, less than half a block away, we could hear, too: the thin, open-air screams of children, the jink-jink-jink of harness bells, the sharp haughty clip-clop of expensive hoofs on the Belgian-block paving of wood. And today, I saw now, there was someone controlling traffic at Broadway and Fifth: a giant policeman in tall helmet and white gloves, guiding traffic with sharply graceful motions of a slim baton like a man conducting an orchestra — making sure those carriages leaving the square were delayed very little by cruder traffic.

It was a marvelous scene, and off across the square through the branches of the winter trees I could see the white facades of strange hotel after hotel, and could read their signs: the Fifth Avenue, Albemarle, Hoffman House, St. James, Victoria, and to the north the Brunswick. It was like nothing in New York I'd ever seen, and I gri

She was smiling, her face reflecting my own excitement, but she was shaking her head. "No, it isn't," she said proudly, "it's New York!"

We walked on to Madison Avenue, stopping at the curb to watch for a break in the circle of carriages, and I nodded toward Broadway just ahead. "How far down does the Ladies' Mile go?"

"To Eighth Street." Then, chanting it, " 'From Eighth Street down, the men are earning it. From Eighth Street up, the women are spurning it! That is the way of this great town, from Eighth Street up and Eighth Street down!' " and I could have kissed her. There was a break in the double line of circling carriages, and I grabbed Julia's hand, and we ran across Madison Avenue and into Madison Square. Through the etched branches of the trees I saw something far across the square and ahead to the north, or thought I did: a structure of some kind, but no, not really a structure, something else; an almost familiar shape. We'd entered a path curving ahead to the north and west, and my head was moving from side to side, eyes narrowed, trying to make out what I was glimpsing through the trees and constantly moving people on the path ahead.

I had Julia's hand still, after our run across the street, and I stopped so abruptly I yanked her arm, swinging her around to face me, surprised. I was standing motionless, staring across the square. I knew what I was seeing now, and it was impossible.

What I saw off across the paths beyond the people, the benches, snow, and still-lighted lamps couldn't be there but was; and I turned to Julia open-mouthed, my arm rising full length to point. "It's the arm," I said stupidly, then almost shouted it, a man turning to look at me. "My God," I said, "it's the Statue of Liberty's arm!" and I turned from Julia to stare at it again across the square.

I wouldn't have been surprised if it had vanished during the instant I'd looked away, but there it was still, solidly and impossibly there: The erect right arm of the Statue of Liberty was standing on the west side of Madison Square holding the lighted torch of liberty high above the surrounding trees.

I couldn't believe it. I walked so fast it was just short of ru

"Yes!" She was laughing at me, bewildered, amused. "It's been here for some time, brought from the Philadelphia Cente

"Well, I predict that it will!" I said exuberantly, recklessly. "And I'd say Bedloe's Island is just the place for it!" Then I stared again, delighted that the arm wasn't the aged and permanent acid-green I was used to, but new, the copper still coppery and only begi

We went up into the arm then, climbing the narrow little circular staircase inside, edging past people coming down, then stepping out onto the railed and circular walkway around the base of the torch. I looked out over Madison Square, that wonderful, joyous, wintertime square; looked out over the far-off helmet of the mustached, white-gloved, giant traffic cop toward a still-nonexisting Flatiron Building; looked down onto that narrow Fifth Avenue and strange, strange Broadway, and suddenly I had to close my eyes because actual tears were smarting at the very nearly uncontainable thrill of being here.