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.