THE THIRD LEVEL By Jack Finney     The paper inside wasn't blank. It read:     Willard     Street     Galesburg,     Illinois     July 18, 1894     Charley I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were right. And, Charley, it's true; I found the third level! I've been here two weeks, and right now, down the street at the Daly's, someone is playing a piano, and they're all out on the front porch singing Seeing Nelly     Home.' And I'm invited over for lemonade. Come on back,     Charley and Louisa. Keep looking till you find the third level! It's worth it,... Show more

THE THIRD LEVEL By Jack Finney    

The paper inside wasn't blank. It read:    
Willard    
Street    
Galesburg,    
Illinois    
July 18, 1894    
Charley I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were right. And, Charley, it's true; I found the third level! I've been here two weeks, and right now, down the street at the Daly's, someone is playing a piano, and they're all out on the front porch singing Seeing Nelly    
Home.' And I'm invited over for lemonade. Come on back,    
Charley and Louisa. Keep looking till you find the third level! It's worth it, believe me!    
The note is signed Sam 'Charley I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were right'    

 

'But I've never again found the corridor that leads to the third level at Grand Central Station, although I've tried often enough. Louisa was pretty worried when I told her all this, and didn't want me to look for the third level any more, and after a while I stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now we're both looking, every weekend, because now we have proof that the third level is still there.    

My friend Sam Weiner disappeared! Nobody knew where, but I sort of suspected because Sam's a city boy, and I used to tell him about Galesburg — I went to school there — and he always said he liked the sound of the place. And that's where he is, all right. In 1894.'    
 

Have you ever been there? It's a wonderful town still, with big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees whose branches meet overhead and roof the streets. And in 1894, summer evenings were twice as long, and people sat out on their lawns, the men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans, with the fireflies all around, in a peaceful world. To be back there with the First World War still twenty years off, and World    
War II over forty years in the future… I wanted two tickets for that.    
Well, maybe, but my grandfather didn't need any refuge from reality; things were pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started my collection. It's a nice collection too, blocks of four of practically every U.S. issue, first-day covers, and so on. President Roosevelt collected stamps too, you know'.    
There were brass spittoons on the floor, and across the station a glint of light caught my eye; a man was pulling a gold watch from his vest pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced at his watch and frowned. He wore a derby hat, a black four-button suit with tiny lapels, and he had a big, black, handlebar mustache. Then I looked around and saw that everyone in the station was dressed like eighteen-ninety-something.    
The corridor I was in began angling left and slanting downward and I thought that was wrong, but I kept on walking. All I could hear was the empty sound of my own footsteps and I didn't pass a soul. Then I heard that sort of hollow roar ahead that means open space and people talking.    
The tunnel turned sharp left; I went down a short flight of stairs and came out on the third level at Grand Central Station.    
But that's the reason, he said, and my friends all agreed.    
Everything points to it, they claimed. My stamp collecting, for example; that's a temporary refuge from reality.    
Now, I don't know why this should have happened to me.    
I'm just an ordinary guy named Charley, thirty-one years old, and I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and a straw hat with a fancy band; I passed a dozen men who looked just like me. And I wasn't trying to escape from anything; I just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife.    
 

The clerk figured the fare he glanced at my fancy hatband, but he figured the fare and I had enough for two coach tickets, one way. But when I counted out the money and looked up, the clerk was staring at me. He nodded at the bills. That ain't money, mister, he said, and if you re trying to skin me, you won't get very far, and he glanced at the cash drawer beside him.    
 

He said I was unhappy. That made my wife kind of mad, but he explained that he meant the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all the rest of it, and that    

I just want to escape. Well, who doesn't?  Everybody I know wants to escape, but they don't wander down into any third level at Grand Central Station.    

That night, among my oldest first-day covers, I found one that shouldn't have been there. But there it was. It was there because someone had mailed it to my grandfather at his home in Galesburg; that's what the address on the envelope said. And it had been there since July 18, 1894 and I opened it    
 

But I've never again found the corridor that leads to the third level at Grand Central Station, although I've tried often enough. Louisa was pretty worried when I told her all this, and didn't want me to look for the third level any more, and after a while I stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now we're both looking, every weekend.    
'Once I got into a tunnel about a mile long and came out in the lobby of Roosevelt Hotel. Another time I came up in an office building on forty-sixth-street, three blocks away':    

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