A full hour before the party reached the city they had
begun to note the perplexing changes in the atmosphere.
It grew darker all the time, and upon the earth the grass
seemed to grow less green. Every minute, as the train
sped on, the colors of things became dingier; the fields
were grown parched and yellow, the landscape hideous and
bare. And along with the thickening smoke they began
to notice another circumstance, a strange, pungent odor.
They were not sure that it was unpleasant, this odor;
some might have called it sickening, but their taste in
odors was not developed, and they were only sure that it
was curious. Now, sitting in the trolley car, they real~
ized that they were on their way to the home of it --
that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it.
It was now no longer something far-off and faint, that you
caught in whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as
smell it -- you could take hold of it, almost, and examine
it at your leisure. They were divided in their opinions
about it. It was an elemental odor, raw and crude; it
was rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong. There were
some who drank it in as if it were an intoxicant; there
were others who put their handkerchiefs to their faces.
The new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder,
when suddenly the car came to a halt, and the door was
flung open, and a voice shouted -- "Stockyards!"

They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down
a side street there were two rows of brick houses, and be~
tween them a vista: half a dozen chimneys, tall as the
tallest of buildings, touching the very sky -- and leaping
from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily,
and black as night. It might have come from the center
of the world, this smoke, where the fires of the ages still
smoulder. It came as if self-impelled, driving all before
it, a perpetual explosion. It was inexhaustible; one
stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great streams
rolled out. They spread in vast clouds overhead, writh~
ing, curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they
streamed away down the sky, stretching a black pall as
far as the eye could reach.

[[28]]

p027 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p028w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p029

v?