ing--a reaching forth to a throbbing future. So,
as the boat landed, she mentally identified herself with this city,
labeled herself New-Yorker, and became one of its millions.

Her rapture lasted throughout her first stay. She tasted romance
glancing in shop windows or moving in a crowd or riding in an elevated
train. A letter of introduction to a friend of her mother's secured her
a companion, who "showed her the sights" and helped her choose her
boarding-house in East Eightieth Street. And then came the examinations
for public-school teaching; and after these she went home for the
summer, returning to New York in the fall.

Then her new life began, the rapture ceased, and Myra Craig, like so
many others, found that her existence in the city was just as narrow as
it had been in the town. In some ways, more narrow. She was quite
without friends, quite without neighborhood. Her day consisted in
teaching from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., correcting papers and planning lessons
and making reports until well into the evening, sometimes until late in
the night, and meeting at meals unfriendly people that she disliked. Her
class was composed of rather stupid, rather dirty children. They
_smelled_--a thing she never forgave them. And what could one woman do
with fifty or sixty children? The class was at least three times too big
for real teaching, and so almost inevitably a large part of the work
became routine--a grind that spoiled her temper and embittered her
heart. Her fellow-teachers were an ignorant lot; the principal himself
she thought the biggest lump of stupidity she had ever met--a man
demanding letter-perfection and caring not one rap for the growth of
children. Her week-ends were her only relief, and she used these partly
for resting and partly in going to theater and concert.

Such for ten years--with summers spent at home--was Myra's life. It was
bounded by a few familiar streets; it was largely routine; it was hard
and bitter; and it had no future. It was anything but what she had
dreamed. New York was anything but what she had dreamed. She never saw
again that Vision of the City; never felt again that throb of life, that
sense of pioneering and of human power. And yet in those years Myra had
developed. She was thrown back on books for friendship, and through
these and through hard work and through very routine she developed
personality--grew sensitive, mentally quick, metropolitan. She had, as
it were, her own personal