In all her life Celia had not travelled further from her native town than Lexington, which was thirty miles away. It was not necessary. She lived in the garden spot of the world, an Eden with all things sufficient for a simple life.
As she stood at the station, waiting for her train, an old negro shuffled by. He hummed the refrain of "Old Kentucky Home," "Fare you well, my lady!" It seemed meant for her. The longing was strong within her to fly back to the old town she loved so well; but the train, roaring in just then, intimidated her by its unaccustomed turmoil and she allowed herself to be hauled on board by the brakeman and placed in the car.
Passing into the open country, the speed of the train increased. The smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and began silently to weep.
A terrible night of travel began. It was a day car. Celia crouched into her seat, trying to sleep, afraid of everything, of the staring eyes of the porter, of the strange faces about her, of the jet black of the night that gloomed portentously through the window.
Then came the dawn and with it the long gray bridge spanning the drab and sullen Mississippi, then St. Louis, with its bustle and rush and more and more strange faces, a sea of strange faces through which she must pass.
After another weary day of travel through which she dozed, too tired to think, too tired to move, at twilight she reached Kansas City, a little town on the edge of the desert. Here, worn out mentally and physically, she was forced to stop and rest a night and sleep in a bed.
And the next day the wind!
A little way out from the town she could see it beginning, bending the pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward, crushing them flat again and pressing them there, whistling, whistling, whistling!
The car moved fairly fast for a car of that day, but the wind moved faster. It shook the windows with terrific force. It blew small grains of sand under the sill to sting Celia, moaning, moaning, moaning in its mad and unimpeded march across the country straight to the skies.