f Toronto--and
Hometon. Some were clever, and some were ignorant and dull. All of
them were trying to make a living (except the predatory class) just as
the farmers in Ontario were. Young men fell in love with girls and
married them (occasionally), three meals a day were eaten, and sleep
was popular.

And yet there was something about New York that was new and mysterious;
its life was extraordinarily exhilarating. So many ten-thousands went
to work and came from work every day at the same hours, it was like
gazing upon the Creation to watch them. They lost their individuality,
their human, insignificant (?) individuality, in the mass, and became a
part of Adam's seed. Country people were less interesting than these
New Yorkers, because country people were more independent. New Yorkers
never looked at each other, but they felt each other; the atoms of the
great mass, though separated by never-closing spaces, were held
together by an eternal potentiality. There was a sympathy in the mass
of city-folk, unspoken and even unobserved by many, but mighty--it was
much more wonderful than the simple, verbal friendship between Jake
Zeigler and Mat Carrol, neighbors at Bill's Corners. The power that
held the atoms of the great mass together was the very same that gave
each atom its individuality. Evan was impressed with the magnetism of
New York, but he did not comprehend its strength. He came across atoms
that had strayed off gradually, and been drawn back like lightning; but
he understood but vaguely how the force operated, and why. In fact,
who does understand?

The life he led, which was the New York life, kept the Canadian
ex-clerk stimulated to a point beyond his power of physical resistance;
he worked harder than the cashier wanted him to work. Those crowds
that surged in every thoroughfare seemed to be behind him pushing him,
and he could not take things easy. The strain was telling on him,
though he tried to convince himself that it was not. Probably the lure
of a great city would have held him up to the point of a break-down,
had not a letter from his father set him thinking thoughts that changed
his life once more.

"When you build a house, Evan," said the letter, "you always want to
have a solid foundation. So it is with a career. I hope you will,
after a while, find your niche--I'm quite sure you have not found it
yet. But don't worry--you'll get there: you have Grandpa Nelson in you.

"P.S.--I