"And that little thing of mine," he queried modestly, "about the dear old homestead."
"I've got it," I replied.
"I hand quite a few little things to writers," Ab continued cheerfully. "If you'll just give me some idea of what it is you're looking for——"
"I'm looking for the punch," I answered promptly.
"Then we'll get on fine," he said. "The editor got me worried some. He said you'd trained in Paris."
"Oh, that was only a starter," I told him.
Presently he went into the dockshed on his unending quest of "the punch." And left to myself I got thinking. What did Paris know about us? De Maupassant's methods wouldn't do here. I noticed two painters in overalls at work on that large freighter. With long brooms that they held in both hands they were slapping a band of crude yellow paint along her scarred and rusted side. That was what I needed, the broom! All at once the harbor took hold of me hard. And exulting in its bigness, the bold raw splattering bigness of my native Yankee land, "Now for some glory stories," I said.
I went into the dockshed, and there I stayed right through until night, till my mind was limp and battered from the rush of new impressions. For in this long sea station, under the blue arc-lights, in boxes, barrels, crates and bags, tumbling, banging, crashing, came the products of this modern land. You could feel the pulse of a continent here. From the factories, the mines and mills, the prairies and the forests, the plantations and the vineyards, there flowed a mighty tide of things—endlessly, both day and night—you could shut your eyes and see the long brown lines of cars crawl eastward from all over the land, you could see the stuff converging here to be gathered into coarse rope nets and swept up to the liners. The pulse beat fast and furious. In gangs at every hatchway you saw men heaving, sweating, you heard them swearing, panting. That day they worked straight through the night. For the pulse kept beating, beating, and the ship must sail on time!
And now I too worked day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here, making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at home—slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean ship, in their immaculate "stalls de luxe," came two black Arab horses, glistening, quivering creatures, valued by the customhouse at twenty thousand dollars each. And into the same ship that week, as though in payment for these two, in dust and heavy smell of sweat I saw a thousand cattle driven, bellowing and lowing.
I exulted in these symptoms of our crude and lusty youth. I watched my countrymen going abroad. Not only through the Summer but straight on into the Fall they came by tens of thousands out of the West, people who had made some money and were going to blow it in, to buy things and to see things, to learn things and to eat things. One day at noon, on the end of a dock, when the ship was already far out in midstream and all the crashing music and cheers had died away, a meek old lady wiped her eyes and murmured very tearfully, "I suppose they'll be eating their luncheon soon." And then the loud voice of her daughter replied: