It was almost upon him; he involuntarily drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of where he stood, and resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk, whose vagueness, topped by enormous towers, was yet illuminated by those open squares of light that he had taken for stars, but which he saw now were brilliantly lit windows.
Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across the meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen.

But all this was nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted curtains and open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this strange and wonderful spectacle.

Elegantly dressed men and women moved through brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one a banquet seemed to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants; in another were men playing cards around marble-topped tables; in another the light flashed back again from the mirrors and glistening glasses and decanters of a gorgeous refreshment saloon; in smaller openings there was the shy disclosure of dainty white curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate apartments.
Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified.

It was as if some invisible Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world of which he had never dreamed.

It was THE world--a world of which he knew nothing in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western isolation--sweeping by him with the rush of an unknown planet.