to know, at least, until they reached the city. Then,
tumbled out of the cars without ceremony, they were no
better off than before; they stood staring down the vista
of Dearborn Street, with its big black buildings towering
in the distance, unable to realize that they had arrived,
and why, when they said "Chicago," people no longer
pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed,
or laughed, or went on without paying any attention.
They were pitiable in their helplessness; above all things
they stood in deadly terror of any sort of person in official
uniform, and so whenever they saw a policeman they would
cross the street and hurry by. For the whole of the first
day they wandered about in the midst of deafening con~
fusion, utterly lost; and it was only at night that, cower~
ing in the doorway of a house, they were finally discovered
and taken by a policeman to the station. In the morning
an interpreter was found, and they were taken and put
upon a car, and taught a new word -- "stockyards."
Their delight at discovering that they were to get out
of this adventure without losing another share of their
possessions, it would not be possible to describe.

They sat and stared out of the window. They were on
a street which seemed to run on forever, mile after mile --
thirty-four of them, if they had known it -- and each side
of it one uninterrupted row of wretched little two-story
frame buildings. Down every side street they could see,
it was the same, -- never a hill and never a hollow, but
always the same endless vista of ugly and dirty little
wooden buildings. Here and there would be a bridge
crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores and
dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be
a railroad crossing, with a tangle of switches, and loco~
motives puffing, and rattling freight-cars filing by; here
and there would be a great factory, a dingy building with
innumerable windows in it, and immense volumes of smoke
pouring from the chimneys, darkening the air above and
making filthy the earth beneath. But after each of these
interruptions, the desolate procession would begin again
-- the procession of dreary little buildings.

[[27]]

p026 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p027w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p028

v?