The story is about the notion of "escape," and specifically a kind of escape from history. Charley, the narrator, is a typical guy—one of dozens of men who look the same in their straw hats and gabardine suits. The escape Charley longs for is not a vacation from the city, however: he longs to escape to the past, to a time before the world wars. The non-existent third level of Grand Central station offers just such an escape: it is a kind of portal to the past.

The ending is ironic because it is the narrator Charley's "psychiatrist friend" Sam who makes it back to Galesburg, Illinois in 1893, not Charley himself. Charley confided in Sam about the third level, and Sam of course told Charley that he was experiencing a kind of "waking dream wish fulfillment." But Sam "got to wishing" that Charley had been right; like everyone, Sam, too, craves an escape from the twentieth century; he was able to find the third level (because, it is suggested, he wanted escape so badly) and buy train tickets to Galesburg. In the end, it is the psychiatrist, who ostensibly is trying to ground Charley in the present, who escapes into a past where even his profession does not yet exist.