It was still in its infancy, a chrysalis as yet sleeping within its golden cocoon.
Keith had no idea there were so many handsome and stylish young women in the world as he now saw.

He had forgotten how handsome the American girl is in her best appointment.

They sailed down the avenue looking as fine as young fillies at a show, or streamed through the best shopping streets as though not only the shops, but the world belonged to them, and it were no longer the meek, but the proud, that inherit the earth.
If in the throngs on the streets there were often marked contrasts, Keith was too exhilarated to remark it--at least, at first.

If women with worn faces and garments unduly thin in the frosty air, carrying large bundles in their pinched hands, hurried by as though hungry, not only for food, but for time in which to earn food; if sad-eyed men with hollow cheeks, sunken chests, and threadbare clothes shambled eagerly along, he failed to note them in his first keen enjoyment of the pageant.

Old clothes meant nothing where he came from; they might be the badge of perilous enterprise and well-paid industry, and food and fire were at least common to all.
Keith, indeed, moved about almost in a trance, absorbing and enjoying the sights.