NCERT Book Class 12 English (Vistas) Chapter 1 The Third Level

1
The Third Level
Jack Finney
Before you read
Have you ever had any curious experience which others
find hard to believe?

THE presidents of the New York Central
and the New York, New Haven and
Hartford railroads will swear on a stack
of timetables that there are only two. But
I say there are three, because I’ve been
on the third level of the Grand Central What does
Station. Yes, I’ve taken the obvious step: the third level
I talked to a psychiatrist friend of mine, refer to?
among others. I told him about the third
level at Grand Central Station, and he said it was a waking-
dream wish fulfillment. 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.
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.’ Well, maybe, but my grandfather didn’t need any
refuge from reality; things were pretty nice and peaceful