met, left
him, and Luther stepped on to the platform. There was a long vista of
semi-light, down which crowds of people walked and baggagemen rushed.
The building, if it deserved the name, seemed a ruin, and through the
arched doors Luther could see men--hackmen--dancing and howling like
dervishes. Trains were coming and going, and the whistles and bells
kept up a ceaseless clangor. Luther, with his small satchel and uncouth
dress, slouched by the crowd unnoticed, and reached the street. He
walked amid such an illumination as he had never dreamed of, and paused
half blinded in the glare of a broad sheet of electric light that filled
a pillared entrance into which many people passed. He looked about him.
Above on every side rose great, many-windowed buildings; on the street
the cars and carriages thronged, and jostling crowds dashed headlong
among the vehicles. After a time he turned down a street that seemed to
him a pandemonium filled with madmen. It went to his head like wine, and
hardly left him the presence of mind to sustain a quiet exterior. The
wind was laden with a penetrating moisture that chilled him as the dry
icy breezes from Huron never had done, and the pain in his lungs made
him faint and dizzy. He wondered if his red-cheeked little sister could
live in one of those vast, impregnable buildings. He thought of stopping
some of those serious-looking men and asking them if they knew her,
but he could not muster up the courage. The distressing experience that
comes to almost every one some time in life, of losing all identity in
the universal humanity, was becoming his. The tears began to roll down
his wasted face from loneliness and exhaustion. He grew hungry with
longing for the dirty but familiar cabins of the camp, and staggered
along with eyes half closed, conjuring visions of the warm interiors,
the leaping fires, the groups of laughing men seen dimly through clouds
of tobacco smoke.

A delicious scent of coffee met his hungry sense and made him really
think he was taking the savory black draught from his familiar tin cup;
but the muddy streets, the blinding lights, the cruel, rushing people,
were still there. The buildings, however, now became different. They
were lower and meaner, with dirty windows. Women laughing loudly crowded
about the doors, and the establishments seemed to be equally divided
between saloon-keepers, pawnbrokers, and dealers in second-hand clothes.
Luther wondered where they all dr