NEW YORK
Doubleday, Page & Co.
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
TO MY FRIEND
ARTHUR HENRY
WHOSE STEADFAST IDEALS AND SERENE
DEVOTION TO TRUTH AND BEAUTY
HAVE SERVED TO LIGHTEN THE METHOD
AND STRENGTHEN THE PURPOSE OF
THIS VOLUME.
SISTER CARRIE
| Contents | ||
|---|---|---|
| [ Chapter I. ] | The Magnet Attracting—A Waif Amid Forces | |
| [II. ] | What Poverty Threatened—Of Granite And Brass | |
| [III. ] | We Question of Fortune—Four-fifty a Week | |
| [IV. ] | The Spendings of Fancy—Facts Answer With Sneers | |
| [V. ] | A Glittering Night Flower—The Use of a Name | |
| [VI. ] | The Machine And The Maiden—A Knight of To-day | |
| [VII. ] | The Lure of the Material—Beauty Speaks for Itself | |
| [VIII. ] | Intimations By Winter—An Ambassador Summoned | |
| [IX. ] | Convention's Own Tinder-box—The Eye That Is Green | |
| [X. ] | The Counsel of Winter—Fortune's Ambassador Calls | |
| [XI. ] | The Persuasion of Fashion—Feeling Guards O'er Its Own | |
| [XII. ] | Of the Lamps of the Mansions—The Ambassador Plea | |
| [XIII. ] | His Credentials Accepted—A Babel of Tongues | |
| [XIV. ] | With Eyes and Not Seeing—One Influence Wanes | |
| [XV. ] | The Irk of the Old Ties—The Magic of Youth | |
| [XVI. ] | A Witless Aladdin—The Gate To the World | |
| [XVII. ] | A Glimpse Through the Gateway—Hope Lightens the Eye | |
| [XVIII. ] | Just Over the Border—A Hail And Farewell | |
| [XIX. ] | An Hour In Elfland—A Clamour Half Heard | |
| [XX. ] | The Lure of the Spirit—The Flesh In Pursuit | |
| [XXI. ] | The Lure of the Spirit—The Flesh In Pursuit | |
| [XXII. ] | The Blaze of the Tinder—Flesh Wars With the Flesh | |
| [XXIII. ] | A Spirit In Travail—One Rung Put Behind | |
| [XXIV. ] | Ashes of Tinder—A Face At the Window | |
| [XXV. ] | Ashes of Tinder—The Loosing of Stays | |
| [XXVI. ] | The Ambassador Fallen—A Search For the Gate | |
| [XXVII. ] | When Waters Engulf Us We Reach For a Star | |
| [XXVIII. ] | A Pilgrim, An Outlaw—The Spirit Detained | |
| [XXIX. ] | The Solace of Travel—The Boats of the Sea | |
| [XXX. ] | The Kingdom of Greatness—The Pilgrim a Dream | |
| [XXXI. ] | A Pet of Good Fortune—Broadway Flaunts Its Joys | |
| [XXXII. ] | The Feast of Belshazzar—A Seer to Translate | |
| [XXXIII. ] | Without the Walled City—The Slope of the Years | |
| [XXXIV. ] | The Grind of the Millstones—A Sample of Chaff | |
| [XXXV. ] | The Passing of Effort—The Visage of Care | |
| [XXXVI. ] | A Grim Retrogression—The Phantom of Chance | |
| [XXXVII. ] | The Spirit Awakens—New Search For the Gate | |
| [XXXVIII.] | In Elf Land Disporting—The Grim World Without | |
| [XXXIX.] | Of Lights and of Shadows—The Parting of Worlds | |
| [XL. ] | A Public Dissension—A Final Appeal | |
| [XLI. ] | The Strike | |
| [XLII. ] | A Touch of Spring—The Empty Shell | |
| [XLIII. ] | The World Turns Flatterer—An Eye In the Dark | |
| [XLIV. ] | And This Is Not Elf Land—What Gold Will Not Buy | |
| [XLV. ] | Curious Shifts of the Poor | |
| [XLVI. ] | Stirring Troubled Waters | |
| [XLVII. ] | The Way of the Beaten—A Harp In The Wind | |
CHAPTER I
THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.
To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hours—a few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions.