She walked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening importance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and coal-yards, and finally verged upon the river.

She walked bravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment and delayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, and a sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and force which she did not understand.

These vast buildings, what were 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 mysterious to her; the vast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals of importance.