The stock-exchange of Chicago interested him, for the intricacies of that business he knew backward and forward, and some great grain transactions had been made here.
The train finally rolled past the shabby backs of houses into a long, shabbily covered series of platforms--sheds having only roofs--and amidst a clatter of trucks hauling trunks, and engines belching steam, and passengers hurrying to and fro he made his way out into Canal Street and hailed a waiting cab--one of a long line of vehicles that bespoke a metropolitan spirit.

He had fixed on the Grand Pacific as the most important hotel--the one with the most social significance--and thither he asked to be driven.

On the way he studied these streets as in the matter of art he would have studied a picture.
The little yellow, blue, green, white, and brown street-cars which he saw trundling here and there, the tired, bony horses, jingling bells at their throats, touched him.

They were flimsy affairs, these cars, merely highly varnished kindling-wood with bits of polished brass and glass stuck about them, but he realized what fortunes they portended if the city grew.

Street-cars, he knew, were his natural vocation.