I shook my head.
"Well," he volunteered, "it's a great town. Greatest farm implement market in the world." (He drawled "world" as though it were spelled with a double R.) "Very little manufacturing but a great distributing point. All cattle and farming out here. Everything depends on the crops. Different from the East."
I looked out of the window.
It was different from the East. Even through the smoky fog I saw that.
"Kansas City!" called the negro porter.
I arose with a sigh, said good-by to the little man, and made my way from the car.
The heavy mist was laden with a smoky smell like that of an incipient London fog. Through it I discerned, dimly, a Vesuvian hill, piling up to the left, while, to the right, a maze of tracks and trains lost themselves in the gray blur. Immediately before me stood as disreputable a station as I ever saw, its platforms oozing mud, and its doorways oozing immigrants and other forlorn travelers. Of all the people there, I observed but two who were agreeable to the eye: a young girl, admirably modish, and her mother. But even looking at this girl I remained depressed. "You don't belong here," I wished to say to her, "that's clear enough. No one like you could live in such a place. You needn't think I live here, either; for I don't! Most decidedly I don't!"
We got into a taxi, my companion and I, and the taxi started immediately to climb with us, like a mountain goat, ascending a steep hill in leaps, over an atrocious pavement, and between vacant lots and shabby buildings which seemed to me to presage an undeveloped town and, worse yet, a bad hotel.
My companion must have thought as I did, for I remember his saying in a somber tone: "I guess we're in for it this time, all right!"
Those are the first words that I recall his having spoken that morning.