Show LIGHTS IT K R sy lattek WAt w TEK 1 y TRUMBULL of NEW YORK i although we watched it rise story by story and although it Is only a comparatively short distance from where we live we never until recently visited the alie tower of the E empire state building that Is of course because we happen to dwell in now new york there are many things in the city which no resident knows half as much about as does some visitor from thousands of miles away nor Is that peculiar cull ir to this portion of the country we met let a man the other day who has lived for years in seattle and never ling haa seen rainier park we know chicagoans who never have been inside the field museum 0 0 once having reached the top ot of the empire state we were sorry we had riot not gone before from street level new york Is a pretty impressive place from that tower it looks like something a child has constructed of blocks the liners lying at their toy docks are little boats one might sail in a bathtub and man raised that building beam by beam and stone by stone it was something ot of an achievement you may say that mt everest Is almost twenty five live times as high man alan did not raise that and from its peak the empire state might not look like much that Is true enough but men in airplanes have been higher than mt everest considering that only a short while ago as time Is measured the highest man ever got was to the topmost limb which would bear his weight lie he has done pretty well if lie he keeps on he may get somewhere i yet looking down from that tower at the largest city on this continent at the cars which look like a procession of crawling ants and the pedestrians who look like fly specks makes roan man feel a bit humble a little more doubtful of his individual importance to the universe they say that even from the top of the empire tower the stars still look pretty far away the things that interested us about the empire state tower were not the facts told by the books for sale in the observation room we dont care much how many pounds of steel or how many thousands of bricks went into Ms its construction or how bow far the wires and pipes would reach if laid end to end we were interested to see that already efforts had been made to obliterate names hastily and surreptitiously scrawled in pencil on the stone and to note that persons who appeared to be perfectly comfortable in the observation room at the base of the tower were noticeably nervous in the observation room at the top probably one ona reason Is that the latter room Is so eo much smaller that it gives them a feeling of being at the top of a shaft a long distance above the ground we heard one visitor say she had the same sense of movement there that she got from a boat lying at a dock 0 visitors with whom we ascended in the elevators evidently expected to feel the ascent one passenger opened hla his mouth and put his lingers fingers to his ears but we could discover little or no sensation due to the alde the elevators run so smoothly that you do not real ize they are proceeding rapidly upward some of the men who run ran thern them told me that they never bad experienced any feeling of rising suddenly to a height the attendants at the top admitted that they answer hundreds of questions dally daily visitors usually wish to know whether the tower tover tov er sways and ask concerning the wind velocity there are instruments in the tower chich measure both these things one thing we noticed was that smoking was permitted on the open terrace which surrounds the lower observation room having peered at the human race for some time we suspected visitors might be seized with an irresistible desire to flick cigarette butts over the restraining wall toward the street far below but those we saw ne never r did this perhaps they felt close enough to the sky to be careful of their manners bell ell syndicate service |