e
lived in the garden spot of the world, an Eden with all things
sufficient for a simple life.

As she stood at the station, waiting for her train, an old negro
shuffled by. He hummed the refrain of "Old Kentucky Home," "Fare you
well, my lady!" It seemed meant for her. The longing was strong within
her to fly back to the old town she loved so well; but the train,
roaring in just then, intimidated her by its unaccustomed turmoil and
she allowed herself to be hauled on board by the brakeman and placed
in the car.

Passing into the open country, the speed of the train increased. The
smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her
strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering
into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in
the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was
too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and
began silently to weep.

A terrible night of travel began. It was a day car. Celia crouched
into her seat, trying to sleep, afraid of everything, of the staring
eyes of the porter, of the strange faces about her, of the jet black
of the night that gloomed portentously through the window.

Then came the dawn and with it the long gray bridge spanning the drab
and sullen Mississippi, then St. Louis, with its bustle and rush and
more and more strange faces, a sea of strange faces through which she
must pass.

After another weary day of travel through which she dozed, too tired
to think, too tired to move, at twilight she reached Kansas City, a
little town on the edge of the desert. Here, worn out mentally and
physically, she was forced to stop and rest a night and sleep in a
bed.

And the next day the wind!

A little way out from the town she could see it beginning, bending
the pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward,
crushing them flat again and pressing them there, whistling,
whistling, whistling!

The car moved fairly fast for a car of that day, but the wind moved
faster. It shook the windows with terrific force. It blew small grains
of sand under the sill to sting Celia, moaning, moaning, moaning in
its mad and unimpeded march across the country straight to the skies.

She looked out in dismay.

Back of her, on either side of her and beyond, stretched this vast
prairie country, desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren
waste, different from the beautiful, still,