In his feverish exaltation his powers of perception seemed to be
quickened: he was vividly alive to the incongruous, half-marine,
half-backwoods character of the warehouses and commercial buildings;
to the hull of a stranded ship already built into a block of rude
tenements; to the dark stockaded wall of a house framed of corrugated
iron, and its weird contiguity to a Swiss chalet, whose galleries were
used only to bear the signs of the shops, and whose frame had been
carried across seas in sections to be set up at random here.

Moving past these, as in a nightmare dream, of which even the turbulency
of the weather seemed to be a part, he stumbled, blinded, panting,
and unexpectedly, with no consciousness of his rapid pace beyond his
breathlessness, upon the dazzling main thoroughfare of the city. In
spite of the weather, the slippery pavements were thronged by
hurrying crowds of well-dressed people, again all intent on their own
purposes,--purposes that seemed so trifling and unimportant beside his
own. The shops were brilliantly lighted, exposing their brightest wares
through plate-glass windows; a jeweler's glittered with precious stones;
a fashionable apothecary's next to it almost outrivaled it with its
gorgeous globes, the gold and green precision of its shelves, and
the marble and silver soda fountain like a shrine before it. All this
specious show of opulence came upon him with the shock of contrast, and
with it a bitter revulsion of feeling more hopeless than his feverish
anxiety,--the bitterness of disappointment.

For during his journey he had been buoyed up with the prospect of
finding work and sympathy in this youthful city,--a prospect founded
solely on his inexperienced hopes. For this he had exchanged the poverty
of the mining district,--a poverty that had nothing ignoble about it,
that was a part of the economy of nature, and shared with his fellow men