the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.

Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She
walked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening
importance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and
coal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walked
bravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment and
delayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, and
a sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and force
which she did not understand. These vast buildings, what were
they? These strange energies and huge interests, for what
purposes were they there? She could have understood the meaning
of a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving little
pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of some
huge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks
and flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed
overhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost
all significance in her little world.

It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array of
vessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over the
way, lining the water's edge. Through the open windows she could
see the figures of men and women in working aprons, moving busily
about. The great streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; the
vast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals
of importance. She could only think of people connected with
them as counting money, dressing magnificently, and riding in
carriages. What they dealt in, how they laboured, to what end it
all came, she had only the vaguest conception. It was all
wonderful, all vast, all far removed, and she sank in spirit