four in the afternoon
After a fortnight in Vienna , I expected to go west to London for the autumn , and then back to New York . Strange to relate , I was homesick . Never before had my thoughts turned so restlessly , so wistfully to the haunts of my boyhood days . I began to long for the lights of Broadway -LRB- which I had scornfully despised in other days -RRB- , and the gay peacockery of Fifth Avenue at four in the afternoon . It seemed to me that nowhere in all the world was life so joyous and blithe and worth while as in `` old New York '' ; nowhere were the theatres so attractive , nowhere such restaurants . Even , in retrospect , the subway looked alluring , and as for the Fifth Avenue stages they were too beautiful for words . Ah , what a builder of unreal things a spell of homesickness may become if one gives it half a chance !