el the pulse of a continent here. From the
factories, the mines and mills, the prairies and the forests, the
plantations and the vineyards, there flowed a mighty tide of
things--endlessly, both day and night--you could shut your eyes and see
the long brown lines of cars crawl eastward from all over the land, you
could see the stuff converging here to be gathered into coarse rope nets
and swept up to the liners. The pulse beat fast and furious. In gangs at
every hatchway you saw men heaving, sweating, you heard them swearing,
panting. That day they worked straight through the night. For the pulse
kept beating, beating, and the ship must sail on time!

And now I too worked day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner
Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though
small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in
years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my
glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here,
making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at
home--slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its
punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and
piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of
millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and
tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling
torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean
ship, in their immaculate "stalls de luxe," came two black Arab horses,
glistening, quivering creatures, valued by the customhouse at twenty
thousand dollars each. And into the same ship that week, as though in
payment for these two, in dust and heavy smell of sweat I saw a thousand
cattle driven, bellowing and lowing.

I exulted in these symptoms of our crude and lusty youth. I watched my
countrymen going abroad. Not only through the Summer but straight on
into the Fall they came by tens of thousands out of the West, people who
had made some money and were going to blow it in, to buy things and to
see things, to learn things and to eat things. One day at noon, on the
end of a dock, when the ship was already far out in midstream and all
the crashing music and cheers had died away, a meek old lady wiped her
eyes and murmured very tearfully, "I suppose they'll be eating their
luncheon soon." And then the loud voice of her daughter replied:

"Eat? Why, ma, God bless th