e. The alien surroundings all spoke to him
of his home. He could have jumped from the car and taken the snow in his
hands, not only to look upon it, but to feel that it was the very same
snow which as a schoolboy he had rolled into balls for bombarding his
playmates. He felt as a spoiled child feels which is torn from its
mother's arms and thrown upon a heartless world of strangers and, after
a long period of anguish, unexpectedly meets a sister of his mother in
a dreary country far, far from home. He feels the blood-tie, he feels how
like he is to her and she to him, how surprisingly, how delightfully she
resembles his mother, feature by feature.

At last, it seemed to Frederick, the great Atlantic Ocean was really
behind him. Though he had landed in New York, he felt that until now he
had not planted his feet firmly on the ground. Great well-established
mother earth, the breadth and extent of her solidity, which he beheld
again after so long a separation, at last set bounds in his soul to the
fearful expanse and might of the ocean. Mother earth was a good and great
giantess who had cunningly snatched the lives of her children from the
giantess ocean and had put everything on a firm, everlasting basis with a
hedge of safety all around.

"Forget the tumbling waters, forget the ocean, strike root into the
soil," a voice within Frederick spoke; and while the train rolled
smoothly and faster and further inland, he had a sense of being on a
blissful flight.

Frederick was so lost in meditation that he started when someone
without saying a word took the ticket from his hatband. It was a
cultivated-looking man in a simple uniform, the conductor, who punched
the card, said not a word, moved not a muscle of his face, and travelled
from seat to seat, performing the same operation and always returning the
punched tickets to the men's hats, which they kept on their heads. Nobody
paid the least attention to him. Frederick smiled when he thought of
Germany, where every train was received with the clanging of a bell and
set in motion with three soundings of a gong, amid the general uproar
of the officials, who bellowed like a horde of Apaches; and where the
conductors demanded the tickets from the passengers with much rough,
awkward ceremony.

The whirring of the wheels made a pleasant accompaniment to his thoughts.
He was enjoying his flight, which signified anything but shame and
disgrace. In his complete absorption, he discove