The city seemed but little changed.

It WAS greatly changed, but it did not seem so; because in St.Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new thing to look new; the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it.

The place had just about doubled its size, since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of 400,000 inhabitants; still, in the solid business parts, it looked about as it had looked formerly.

Yet I am sure there is not as much smoke in St.
Louis now as there used to be.

The smoke used to bank itself in a dense billowy black canopy over the town, and hide the sky from view.