Then he walked across the
street for no other reason than that there were for the moment no more
automobiles to count. He stopped on the opposite pavement and stood
looking at the figures that lay on the grass in Grant Park.
* * * * *
The newspaper reporter had been lying for ten minutes on his back in the
grass when he sat up suddenly and muttered: "Here it is. Right in front of
me." He sat, looking intently, at the men who were lying on the grass as
he had been a moment before. And his idea about the city's being a mirror
giving him back images of himself started up again in his mind. But now he
could find out what these images of himself were. In fact, what he was.
Whereupon he would have his story.
Being a newspaper reporter there was nothing unusual in his mind about
walking up to one of the figures and talking to it. For years and years he
had done just that for a living--walked up to strangers and asked them
questions. So now he would ask the men lying on their backs what they were
lying on their backs for. He would ask them why they came to Grant Park,
what they were thinking about and how it happened that they all looked
alike and lay on their backs like a chorus of figures in a pastoral
musical comedy.
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