Here Is New York
埃尔文·布鲁克斯·怀特 / Elwyn Brooks White
On any person who desires such queer prizes， New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population； for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town， seeking sanctuary or fulf？illment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual， or it can fulf？ill him， depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and f？inance， bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator， the evangelist， the promoter， the actor， the trader， and the merchant. It carries on its lapel the unexpungeable odor of the long past， so that no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds， of queer people and events and undertakings. I am sitting at the moment in a stif？ling hotel room in 90-degree heat， halfway down an air shaft， in midtown. No air moves in or out of the room， yet I am curiously affected by emanations from the immediate surroundings. I am twenty-two blocks from where Rudolph Valentino lay in state， eight blocks from where Nathan Hale was executed， f？ive blocks from the publisher’s off？ice where Ernest Hemingway hit Max Eastman on the nose， four mile from where Walt Whitman sat sweating out editorials for the Brooklyn Eagle， thirty-four blocks from the street Willa Cather lived in when she came to New York to write books about Nebraska， one block from where Marceline used to clown on the boards of the Hippodrome， thirty-six blocks from the spot where the historian Joe Gould kicked a radio to pieces in full view of the public， thirteen blocks from where Harry Thaw shot Stanford Whites， f？ive blocks form where I used to usher at the Metropolitan Opera and only 112 blocks from the spot where Clarence Day the Elder was Washed of his sins in the Church of the Epiphany (I could continue this list indef？initely)； and for that matter I am probably occupying the very room that any number of exalted and somewise memorable characters sat in， some of them on hot， breathless afternoons， lonely and private and full of their own sense of emanations from without.