The outside walls and columns of 30th Street Station extended high into an abnormally hot and blue October sky. I wondered what terrific and earnest work must have been involved in their erection. Italian stonecutters and laborers of every breed. If you removed a column, would the stone canopy above us fall? It didn't seem so. What if you removed them all? Even then. Everything seemed fixed in place by some immutable, ethereal force. It was stronger than a building: it was an idea. Below it cabs of various colors, many two-tone, drove in and out to pick up fares.