e numbing cold.

This, then, was the North!

He watched with interest the few other passengers board the little car:
two fruit vendors and after them were amiably lifted in great bunches of
bananas. Antony asked himself the question whether this new country
would be friendly to him, what would its spirit be toward him, and as
he asked this question of the cold winter air the city suddenly took
reality and formed for him out of his dreams. Would it be kind or cruel?
The coming days would answer: meanwhile he could wait. Some places, like
some people whom we meet, at once extend to us a hand; there are some
that even seem to offer an embrace. Through the car blew a sudden icy
blast and New York's welcome to Fairfax was keen as a blow. There was an
actual physical affront in this wind that struck him in the face.

Suppose the elements were an indication of what the rest would be? But
no--that was ridiculous! There would be certainly warm interiors behind
the snow-fretted panes of the windows in the houses that lined the
streets on either side. There would be warm and cordial hearts to
welcome him somewhere. There would be understanding of heart, indulgence
for youth. He would find open doors for all his ambitions, spurs to his
integrity and effort. He would know how to make use of these ways and
means of progress. For years he had dreamed of the galleries of pictures
and of the museum. It was from this wonderful city whose wideness had
the intense outreach of the unknown that Fairfax had elected to step
into the world.

New York was to be his threshold. There was no limit to what he intended
to do in his special field of work. From his boyhood he had told himself
that he would become great. He was too young to have discovered the
traitors that hide in the brain and the emptiness of the deepest tears.
He was a pioneer and had the faith of the pioneer. According to him
everything was real, the beauty of form was enchanting, all hearts were
true, and all roads led to fame. His short life focused now at this
hour.

Life is a series of successive stages to which point of culmination a
man brings all he has of the past and all his hopes. All along the road
these blessed visions crowd, fulminate and form as it were torches, and
these lights mark the road for the traveller. Now all Antony's life came
to a point in this hour. He had longed to go to New York from the day
when in New Orleans he had completed his first bust. He h