He took Prudence with him, not daring to leave her behind.
She went with high hopes, alive with new sensations.

Another world lay outside her valley of the mountains, and she was going to peep over the edge at its manifold fascinations.

She had been there before as a child; now she was going as a woman.

She remembered the city, bigger and grander than fifty Amalons, with magnificent stores filled with exotic novelties and fearsome luxuries from the land of the wicked Gentile.

She recalled even the strange advertisements and signs, from John and Enoch Reese, with "All necessary articles of comfort for the wayfarer, such as flour, hard bread, butter, eggs and vinegar, buckskin pants and whip-lashes," to the "Surgeon Dentist from Berlin and Liverpool," who would "Examine and Extract Teeth, besides keeping constantly on hand a supply of the Best Matches, made by himself." From William Hennefer, announcing that, "In Connection with my Barber Shop, I have just opened an Eating House, where Patrons will be Accommodated with every Edible Luxury the Valley Affords," to William Nixon, who sold goods for cash, flour, or wheat "at Jacob Hautz's house on the southeast corner of Council-House Street and Emigration Square, opposite to Mr.Orson Spencer's." She remembered the hunters and trappers in bedraggled buckskin, the plainsmen with revolvers in their belts, wearing the blue army cloak, the teamsters in leathern suits, and horsemen in fur coats and caps, buffalo-hide boots with the hair outside, and rolls of blankets behind their high Mexican saddles.
More fondly did she recall two wonderful evenings at the theatre.