d," jeering him for his
forwardness. "Load for Clinton! Western Railroad!" sung out a sharp
voice behind her, and, as she went into the street, a train of cars
rushed into the hall to be loaded, and men swarmed out of every
corner,--red-faced and pale, whiskey-bloated and heavy-brained, Irish,
Dutch, black, with souls half asleep somewhere, and the destiny of a
nation in their grasp,--hands, like herself, going through the slow,
heavy work, for, as Pike the manager would have told you, "three
dollars a week,--good wages these tight times." For nothing more?
Some other meaning may have fallen from their faces into this girl's
subtile intuition in the instant's glance,--cheerfuller, remoter aims,
hidden in the most sensual face,--homeliest home-scenes, low climbing
ambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come,--whiskey, if nothing
better: aims in life like yours differing in degree. Needing only to
make them the same----did you say what?

She had reached the street now,--a back-street, a crooked sort of lane
rather, running between endless piles of warehouses. She hurried down
it to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the country. It was a
long, tiresome walk through the outskirts of the town, where the
dwelling-houses were,--long rows of two-story bricks drabbled with
soot-stains. It was two years since she had been in the town.
Remembering this, and the reason why she had shunned it, she quickened
her pace, her face growing stiller than before. One might have fancied
her a slave putting on a mask, fearing to meet her master. The town,
being unfamiliar to her, struck her newly. She saw the expression on
its face better. It was a large trading city, compactly built, shut in
by hills. It had an anxious, harassed look, like a speculator
concluding a keen bargain; the very dwelling-houses smelt of trade,
having shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are
cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which some
deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown up
into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep out
of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply "for
keeps;" the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty crowds,
had speculative eyes, that measured their oats at night with a
"you-don't-cheat-me" look. Even the churches had not the grave repose
of the old brown house yonder in the hills, where the few
field-p