"On Beacon Street and across the city proper the night song came from speakers, mounted in the eaves, the second-story windows and rooftops, not every one, not every building, for materials were harshly rationed, but enough to blanket the rough sleepers and day-shift vagabonds lilting through the town with the recording of heavy industry, of squeaking brakes, the voices and happy shouts of a thriving, peopled city, and behind this the roaring engines of airplanes, a deft reminder of the war above."

Into the Quiet Barren