These vast buildings, what were they?
These strange energies and huge interests, for what purposes were they there?
She could have understood the meaning of a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving little pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of some huge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks and flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed overhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost all significance in her little world.
It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array of vessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over the way, lining the water's edge.

Through the open windows she could see the figures of men and women in working aprons, moving busily about.

The great streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; the vast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals of importance.

She could only think of people connected with them as counting money, dressing magnificently, and riding in carriages.

What they dealt in, how they laboured, to what end it all came, she had only the vaguest conception.