between the hills, dinner in a huge station amidst a pleasant buzz of
excitement and the ringing of many bells. Then into another train,
through valleys and factory towns and cities until they came, at
nightfall, to the metropolis itself.

Cynthia will always remember the awe with which that first view of New
York inspired her, and Ephraim confessed that he, too, had felt it, when
he had first seen the myriad lights of the city after the long, dusty
ride from the hills with his regiment. For all the flags and bunting it
had held in '61, Ephraim thought that city crueller than war itself. And
Cynthia thought so too, as she clung to Jethro's arm between the
carriages and the clanging street-cars, and looked upon the riches and
poverty around her. There entered her soul that night a sense of that
which is the worst cruelty of all--the cruelty of selfishness. Every man
going his own pace, seeking to gratify his own aims and desires,
unconscious and heedless of the want with which he rubs elbows. Her
natural imagination enhanced by her life among the hills, the girl
peopled the place in the street lights with all kinds of strange
evil-doers of whose sins she knew nothing, adventurers, charlatans, alert
cormorants, who preyed upon the unwary. She shrank closer to Ephraim from
a perfumed lady who sat next to her in the car, and was thankful when at
last they found themselves in the corridor of the Astor House standing
before the desk.

Hotel clerks, especially city ones, are supernatural persons. This one
knew Jethro, greeted him deferentially as Judge Bass, and dipped the pen
in the ink and handed it to him that he might register. By half-past nine
Cynthia was dreaming of Lem Hallowell and Coniston, and Lem was driving a
yellow street-car full of queer people down the road to Brampton.