In "After Twenty Years," describe what kind of area the policeman was patrolling.

This seems to be a neighborhood of small businesses and small offices. O. Henry offers the following description:

The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed.

O. Henry wanted the neighborhood to be fairly deserted for several reasons. One is that Bob would look more suspicious standing there in the darkened doorway of a hardware store. No doubt the policeman doesn't really consider him a suspicious character, because the policeman is really Jimmy Wells and he knows the other man is his old friend Bob. But Bob feels that he must look suspicious standing there. He knows that policemen are always suspicious of men just standing in one place doing nothing and looking innocent, because they could be lookouts (Bob has been involved in criminal activities for as long as twenty years).

O. Henry wanted the district to be almost totally unpopulated. This makes it easy for the plainclothesman to spot Bob and make the arrest. It also makes it impossible for Bob to escape by getting lost in a crowd of pedestrians. O. Henry also wanted to illustrate how districts changed in New York with the passage of time. New York is always changing. The place where Bob is standing had formerly been a big, busy restaurant called 'Big Joe' Brady's. From the name of the restaurant, we can imagine the clientele, drinking beer, smoking cigars, joking and laughing. The whole neighborhood was probably populated until late hours. The change that has taken place in is evidently intended to symbolize the change that has taken place in Jimmy and Bob. It is a bleak setting for the two old friends to have their proposed reunion, and the reader is not surprised when the reunion turns out as it does.