and yellowish-brown lumber-yards.

Here was life; he saw it at a flash. Here was a seething city in
the making. There was something dynamic in the very air which
appealed to his fancy. How different, for some reason, from
Philadelphia! That was a stirring city, too. He had thought it
wonderful at one time, quite a world; but this thing, while obviously
infinitely worse, was better. It was more youthful, more hopeful.
In a flare of morning sunlight pouring between two coal-pockets,
and because the train had stopped to let a bridge swing and half
a dozen great grain and lumber boats go by--a half-dozen in either
direction--he saw a group of Irish stevedores idling on the bank
of a lumber-yard whose wall skirted the water. Healthy men they
were, in blue or red shirt-sleeves, stout straps about their waists,
short pipes in their mouths, fine, hardy, nutty-brown specimens
of humanity. Why were they so appealing, he asked himself. This
raw, dirty town seemed naturally to compose itself into stirring
artistic pictures. Why, it fairly sang! The world was young here.
Life was doing something new. Perhaps he had better not go on
to the Northwest at all; he would decide that question later.

In the mean time he had letters of introduction to distinguished
Chicagoans, and these he would present. He wanted to talk to some
bankers and grain and commission men. The stock-exchange of Chicago
interested him, for the intricacies of that business he knew
backward and forward, and some great grain transactions had been
made here.

The train finally rolled past the shabby backs of houses into a
long, shabbily covered series of platforms--sheds having only