CHAPTER VII
THE GREAT CITY
Helen Morrell never forgot her initial impressions of the great city.
These impressions were at first rather startling—then intensely interesting. And they all culminated in a single opinion which time only could prove either true or erroneous.
That belief or opinion Helen expressed in an almost audible exclamation:
“Why! there are so many people here one could never feel lonely!”
This impression came to her after the train had rolled past miles of streets—all perfectly straight, bearing off on either hand to the two rivers that wash Manhattan’s shores; all illuminated exactly alike; all bordered by cliffs of dwellings seemingly cut on the same pattern and from the same material.
With clasped hands and parted lips the girl from Sunset Ranch watched eagerly the glowing streets, parted by the rushing train. As it slowed down at 125th Street she could see far along that broad thoroughfare—an uptown Broadway. There were thousands and thousands of people in sight—with the glare of shoplights—the clanging electric cars—the taxicabs and autos shooting across the main stem of Harlem into the avenues running north and south.