I've tried to be factually accurate in this story. Horse cars really ran where Si rode them; El stations actually were located where he got on and off trains; the things he saw in the lobby of the old Astor House were really there; quotations from newspapers he read are verbatim; and the arm of the Statue of Liberty did indeed stand in Madison Square, a truth that especially pleases me. Occasionally my efforts at accuracy became compulsive, as in my account of the World Building fire and events just preceding it, in which I became obsessed with getting times of day and exact details of changing weather during the fire, and names of tenants and even the room numbers of that unmemorable old wreck of a building correct or close to it. I even tell myself that my fictional solution to the mystery of that forgotten fire's origins blends so well with the known facts that it might have been accepted as truth at the time. This kind of research becomes time-wasting foolishness, but fun. I haven't let accuracy interfere with the story, though. If I needed a fine old Dakota apartment building in 1882, and found it wasn'............