its big black buildings towering in the distance, unable to realize that
they had arrived, and why, when they said "Chicago," people no longer
pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed,
or went on without paying any attention. They were pitiable in their
helplessness; above all things they stood in deadly terror of any sort
of person in official uniform, and so whenever they saw a policeman they
would cross the street and hurry by. For the whole of the first day they
wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion, utterly lost; and
it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of a house, they
were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station. In the
morning an interpreter was found, and they were taken and put upon a
car, and taught a new word--"stockyards." Their delight at discovering
that they were to get out of this adventure without losing another share
of their possessions it would not be possible to describe.

They sat and stared out of the window. They were on a street which
seemed to run on forever, mile after mile--thirty-four of them, if they
had known it--and each side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched
little two-story frame buildings. Down every side street they could see,
it was the same--never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same
endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and there
would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores
and dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be a railroad
crossing, with a tangle of switches, and locomotives puffing, and
rattling freight cars filing by; here and there would be a great
factory, a dingy building with innumerable windows in it, and immense
volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys, darkening the air above and
making filthy the earth beneath. But after each of these interruptions,
the desolate procession would begin again--the procession of dreary
little buildings.