But the life was tremendous. All around, on every side, in every
direction the vast machinery of Commonwealth clashed and thundered from
dawn to dark and from dark till dawn. Even now, as the car carried her
farther into the business quarter, she could hear it, see it, and feel
in her every fibre the trepidation of its motion. The blackened waters
of the river, seen an instant between stanchions as the car trundled
across the State Street bridge, disappeared under fleets of tugs, of
lake steamers, of lumber barges from Sheboygan and Mackinac, of grain
boats from Duluth, of coal scows that filled the air with impalpable
dust, of cumbersome schooners laden with produce, of grimy rowboats
dodging the prows and paddles of the larger craft, while on all sides,
blocking the horizon, red in color and designated by Brobdignag
letters, towered the hump-shouldered grain elevators.

Just before crossing the bridge on the north side of the river she had
caught a glimpse of a great railway terminus. Down below there,
rectilinear, scientifically paralleled and squared, the Yard disclosed
itself. A system of grey rails beyond words complicated opened out and
spread immeasurably. Switches, semaphores, and signal towers stood here
and there. A dozen trains, freight and passenger, puffed and steamed,
waiting the word to depart. Detached engines hurried in and out of
sheds and roundhouses, seeking their trains, or bunted the ponderous
freight cars into switches; trundling up and down, clanking, shrieking,
their bells filling the air with the clangour of tocsins. Men in
visored caps shouted hoarsely, waving their arms or red flags; drays,
their big dappled horses, feeding in their nose bags, stood backed up
to the open doors of freight cars and received their loads. A train
departed roaring. Before midnight it would be leagues away boring
through the Great Northwest, carrying Trade--the life blood of
nations--into communities of which Laura had never heard. Another
train, reeking with fatigue, the air brakes screaming, arrived and
halted, debouching a flood of passengers, business men, bringing
Trade--a galvanising elixir--from the very ends and corners of the
continent.

Or, again, it was South Water Street--a jam of delivery wagons and
market carts backed to the curbs, leaving only a tortuous path between
the endless files of horses, suggestive of an actual barrack of
cavalry. Provisions, market produce, "garden truck" and fruits, i