The Grand Central Station of New York has two levels, i.e.New Heaven and Hart-Ford. The narrator had been there so many times and he attained a new experience at every time. He would bump into corridors and new staircases. Very often he got the chances of losing his way and thought that he was on the Third Level.

Once while on the station of Second Level, he got into a tunnel. The sub urban trains left from there. There Charley ducked into an arched doorway leading for the subway. There he was got lost many a times. At another time he got into a tunnel of a mile length and came up in the lobby of a hotel. So he started thinking that the Grand Central was ever pushing up new corridors and new staircases like the roots of a tree. The new corridors and tunnels were trying to reach Times Squares and Central Park. But he lost his way and reached the Third Level. The strangest thing was the corridor that had led into the past.

Galesburg was a peaceful city, specially in 1894. According to Charley, it is wonderful town even in the present world. His grandfather lived there and Charley also lived there, when he was a school going kid. The city of Galesburg had big frame houses. There were huge lawns in the city. The city had large trees across the roads, and their branches met overhead to form a kind of roof over the roads. It was nice to be there during summers. The evenings of the summer were long and people enjoyed sitting in their lawns. People used palm-leaf fans. Fireflies used to fly around and all this made the city of Galesburg a beautiful and peaceful city to live in.

Sam and Charley had seen the rushing life of the New York city. A city which never stops or sleeps, not even for a while. The pace of the life had made the lives of the people stressful, so they wanted to be in the city of Galesburg for the sake of peace and tranquility.

For Charley, Grand Central Station of New York has three levels. Actually, there are only two levels. There does not exist any third level. The modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war and worries. Charley just wants to escape. So he wanders into the fanciful world of 1894 which is much away from the harsh realities of life. The writer Jack Finney uses the Third Level on Grand Central Station as a medium of escape. Consequently Charley wants to escape in the old world. Even his psychiatrist Sam calls it just a waking-dream wish fulfilment.

The psychiatrist of Charley called him having a waking-dream-wish-fulfilment. Since the Third Level was all his fantasy, his wife Louisa too asked him not to look for the Third Level anymore. The narrator took to stamp collecting. One day while looking through his worthy collection, Charley noticed a first day cover which he believed not to have seen before. This cover was addressed to his grandfather and mailed to him at his home in Galesburg. It was on July 18, 1894. Definitely his grandfather must have put it in his collection and the same must be lying there since long. Since it was a first day cover, consequently, it was not opened.

There was a blank paper in it. By chance Charley opened it. On opening it was found that it had a letter from Sam. He had reached Galesburg and was living very happily. He had found the place very charming, peaceful and serene. It was also written in the letter that Charley should come to Galesburg and look for the Third Level. In other words, the letter appeared to be Charley's imagination like his escape into the Third Level. The psychiatrist too had warned him that his stamp collection was a mode of escaping into the past.

Sam had gone to the Third Level of Grand Central Station from where, he arrived in Galesburg of 1894, an imaginary refuge from rushing lives of the modern world. In 1894, Galesburg was a peaceful city. It had forgotten the First World War, which was twenty years back and no chances of Second World War for another over forty years. It was a city of huge frame houses with wonderful lawns and big trees forming a sort of umbrella on the roads.

People had very leisurely life style and there were no competitions among them. They liked sitting in their lawns and enjoyirig together in each other's company. So every thing was well placed and well settled with complete mental peace. They had no tensions, stresses or embedded fears in their minds and thus no mental ailments. Sam, being a psychiatrist, would not find any patient there, that is why it was said that he certainly can't go back to his old business in Galesburg of 1894.