I'm translating a novel by John Galsworthy, A Stoic, written at the beginning of the XX century (full text on Project Gutenberg), and I've come across a sentence I’m finding quite tricky to understand:
The crowded street had all that prosperous air of catching or missing something which characterises the town where London and New York and Dublin meet.
The problem here is with “catching or missing something”. Do you think it has anything to do with catching or missing a bus/tram or any other means of transport? Or is it to be understood more generally (e.g. triumphs and failures)?