... Was he likely to meet a like
irresponsiveness when he should seek clothing for the body?
Watch the clubs, young Wickert had advised. Banneker strolled up Fifth
Avenue, branching off here and there, into the more promising side
streets.
It was the hour of the First Thirst; the institutions which cater to
this and subsequent thirsts drew steadily from the main stream of human
activity flowing past. Many gloriously clad specimens passed in and out
of the portals, socially sacred as in the quiet Fifth Avenue clubs,
profane as in the roaring, taxi-bordered "athletic" foundations; but
there seemed to the anxious observer no keynote, no homogeneous
character wherefrom to build as on a sure foundation. Lacking knowledge,
his instinct could find no starting-point; he was bewildered in vision
and in mind. Just off the corner of the quietest of the Forties, he met
a group of four young men, walking compactly by twos. The one nearest
him in the second line was Herbert Cressey. His heavy and rather dull
eye seemed to meet Banneker's as they came abreast. Banneker nodded,
half checking himself in his slow walk.
"How are you?" he said with an accent of surprise and pleasure.
Cressey's expressionless face turned a little. There was no response in
kind to Banneker's smile.
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