When I got off the train at Grand Army Plaza this evening, I was tired and lugging a bag of library books, and it was already dark, and raining, too. I was heading up the stairs from the subway station into the cold and wet when someone a few steps ahead of me struck a match against a matchbook. In the momentary smell of that small combustion—a sharp smokiness, acrid, not unpleasant—was contained that Hans Christian Anderson tale of the little match girl. I tucked my hands in my coat pockets and walked home along the park in the rain, and it was quite nice, actually.