A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the
perplexing changes in the atmosphere. It grew darker all the time, and
upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green. Every minute, as
the train sped on, the colors of things became dingier; the fields were
grown parched and yellow, the landscape hideous and bare. And along
with the thickening smoke they began to notice another circumstance, a
strange, pungent odor. They were not sure that it was unpleasant, this
odor; some might have called it sickening, but their taste in odors was
not developed, and they were only sure that it was curious. Now, sitting
in the trolley car, they realized that they were on their way to the
home of it--that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it.
It was now no longer something far off and faint, that you caught in
whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as smell it--you could
take hold of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure. They were
divided in their opinions about it. It was an elemental odor, raw and
crude; it was rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong. There were some
who drank it in as if it were an intoxicant; there were others who put
their handkerchiefs to their faces. The new emigrants were still tasting
it, lost in wonder, when suddenly the car came to a halt, and the door
was flung open, and a voice shouted--"Stockyards!"

They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down a side street
there were two rows of brick houses, and between them a vista: half
a dozen chimneys, tall as the tallest of buildings, touching the very
sky--and leaping from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily,
and black as night. It might have come from the center of the world,
this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder. It came as if
self-impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual explosion. It was
inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great