The Manhattaners

It was half an hour after midnight, and two men were standing at the south-west corner of City Hall park, gazing at the statue of Nathan Hale. The taller of the two was a man who, having passed the portentous age of forty, no longer referred to his birthday when he reached it. He had maintained silence on this subject for several years, and his friends were not certain whether he was forty-one or forty-five; but his face seemed to indicate the latter age. It was a strong face, marked with lines of care, perhaps of dissipation, and about the mouth lurked an expression of discontent. That he had grown rather weary of the battle of life was indicated by his dress, which possessed that indefinable characteristic that may be expressed as careless shabbiness. His beard was untrimmed, and a slouch hat covered a head of iron-gray hair that would have been picturesque had it not been constantly neglected. His companion was a youth of not more than three-and-twenty, slender, carefully attired, and with a delicately-moulded face that was strikingly handsome when he smiled. He was showing his perfect teeth at this moment, as he glanced first at the statue of the martyred hero, and then at the sarcastic countenance of his companion.