"Good-by, Father."

For weeks I had been eager to be off, but as the train began to move and I
looked back at his patient figure--he made no more show of his deep
emotion than if the parting were for a day--a big lump rose in my throat
at leaving him and Ma--old before their time with toil and privation and
planning and striving for me.

I knew how lonely it would be in the sitting room that night without me.
Father with closed eyes jogging away in his chair, Mother bolt upright and
thin and prim, forever at her knitting or sewing; no sound but the chair
and the ticking clock upon the shelf--that night and every night. And the
early bedtime and the early morning and the long, long day--what a
contrast to this!

I pressed my face against the window, but a rush of tears blurred all the
dear, familiar landmarks--Barzillai Foote's red barn, the grain elevator
at the siding, the Hartsville road trailing off over the prairie; I would
have given worlds to be in the top buggy again, moving homeward, instead
of going swiftly out, out, alone, into the world. Three months ago! I did
not dream what miracles were in store!

And so one day I reached the New York I had dreamed about. It wasn't as a
shrine of learning that it appealed to me, altogether; but as a wonderful
place, beautiful, glittering, feverish with motion, abounding with gayety,
thronged with people, bubbling with life.

How it fascinated me!