"Carley, look and listen!" he had whispered.

Under them stretched the great long white flare of Broadway, with its
snow-covered length glittering under a myriad of electric lights. Sixth
Avenue swerved away to the right, a less brilliant lane of blanched
snow. The L trains crept along like huge fire-eyed serpents. The hum of
the ceaseless moving line of motor cars drifted upward faintly,
almost drowned in the rising clamor of the street. Broadway's gay and
thoughtless crowds surged to and fro, from that height merely a thick
stream of black figures, like contending columns of ants on the march.
And everywhere the monstrous electric signs flared up vivid in white and
red and green; and dimmed and paled, only to flash up again.

Ring out the Old! Ring in the New! Carley had poignantly felt the
sadness of the one, the promise of the other. As one by one the siren
factory whistles opened up with deep, hoarse bellow, the clamor of the
street and the ringing of the bells were lost in a volume of continuous
sound that swelled on high into a magnificent roar. It was the voice of
a city--of a nation. It was the voice of a people crying out the strife
and the agony of the year--pealing forth a prayer for the future.

Glenn had put his lips to her ear: "It's like the voice in my soul!"
Never would she forget the shock of that. And how she had stood
spellbound, enveloped in the mighty volume of sound no longer
discordant, but full of great, pregnant melody, until the white ball
burst upon the tower of the Times Building, showing the bright figures
1919.