Then, as the minute approached at which he must give himself to these difficult waters, he prayed. His account of the act was simple and straightforward. He asked God to have him in His keeping while he made this attempt, and to comfort those at home if he failed. With that he slipped into the stream and struck outward.
Well, standing somewhere in the neighborhood of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue I turned this over in my mind, considering its advisability. I was not what would be called a praying man. As to that, I had not prayed in years. I had sometimes told myself that I didn’t know what prayer was, that its appeal seemed to me illogical. Illogical it seemed to me now, in the sense of imploring God to do what He wouldn’t do of His own accord.
So, although I didn’t pray, something passed through my mind that might have been prayer’s equivalent. As far as I can transcribe it into the words which I did not use at the time it ran like this:
"I know there is a God. I know that His will is the supreme law for all of us. I know that that law is just and beneficent. It is not just and beneficent for me to be standing here in the snow and the slush, chilled, hungry, with wet feet, workless, and homeless. Consequently, this is not His will. Consequently, I must give myself to discovering that will as the first principle of safety. When I have got into touch with that first principle of safety I shall find a home and work."
Of this the immediate result was that I did not return to the Barcelona. Something like a voice, the voice of another, told me that the thread of flame led onward. Onward I drifted, then, hardly noticing the way I went, hypnotized by the physical process of being on the move. It was just on and on, through the slanting snowfall, through the patches of blurred light, with feet soggy and heart soggier, a derelict amid these hundreds of vehicles, these thousands of pedestrians, all bound from somewhere to somewhere, and knowing the road they were taking. I didn’t know the road I was taking and in a sense I didn’t care. Having given up from sheer impotence the attempt to steer my ship, I was being borne along blindly.
When I lifted my head to look about me again I was in a part of New York not only new to me, but almost refreshing to the eye. I mean that it was one of those old-fashioned down-town regions where the streets hadn’t yet learned the short and easy cut to beauty of running only at right angles. Two or three thoroughfares focused in an irregular open space, which I saw by the signboard to bear the name of Meeting-House Green. There was no meeting-house in the neighborhood now, and probably nothing green even in spring. If it was like the rest of New York it would be dirty in winter and fetid in summer, but after the monotonous ground plan of the uptown regions its quaintness relieved the perceptions to a degree which the thunder of the near-by Elevated couldn’t do away with. Just now all was blanketed in white, through which drays plunged heavily and pedestrians slipped like ghosts.