"The first thing that always strikes me is its fearful and mysterious beauty.
On a very, very hot day, emerging into the streets from the air conditioning is like changing continents.
Manhattan is an island, and it is this condition of enclave that gives the place its sting. Its citizens are heightened, on way or another, by their confinement. If they are unhappier than most populaces, they are merrier too. If they are trapped in some ways, they are brilliantly liberated in others.
Sometimes their endless pacing to and fro is sad to see, but when the weather is right and the sap is rising, then it assumes an exhilarating rhythm, and the people of Manhattan seem to dance along their avenues, round and round the city squares, in and out of the sepulchral subway.
The huddled scurry of the people on the sidewalks, the shifting patterns of their umbrellas, the swish of cars through pothole puddles, the blinking of traffic lights one after another through the slanting rain.
The people of Manhattan are the most neurotic community on earth. The twitch, the mutter, the meaningless shriek, the foul-mouthed mumble, the disjointed shuffle - these are native gestures of the island.
Like all great metropolises, Manhattan is divided into lesser enclaves, each with its own personality and purpose, but the skinny shape of the island; the rigidity or its grid and the flatness of it all, make it impossible for any district to feel remote from any other.
All crammed in like this, it is no wonder the inhabitants of Manhattan sway to and fro, as though with minds linked, to the shifting tunes of fashion.
Refugees, idealists, adventurers, crooks from every land give Manhattan a quality of paradigm or fulcrum. It is the temple of human hope and ingenuity."
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