r. The cab stopped before a
mammoth doorway in a long, low building and a person in uniform opened
the door. The wide street was crowded with vehicles and from them were
descending people attired as if for a party rather than an ocean voyage.
I helped Hephzy to alight and, while I was paying the cab driver, she
looked about her.

"Hosy! Hosy!" she whispered, seizing my arm tight, "we've made a
mistake. This isn't the steamboat; this is--is a weddin' or somethin'.
Look! look!"

I looked, looked at the silk hats, the opera cloaks, the jewels and
those who wore them. For a moment I, too, was certain there must be a
mistake. Then I looked upward and saw above the big doorway the flashing
electric sign of the "Trans-Atlantic Navigation Company."

"No, Hephzy," said I; "I guess it is the right place. Come."

I gave her my arm--that is, she continued to clutch it with both
hands--and we moved forward with the crowd, through the doorway, past
a long, moving inclined plane up which bags, valises, bundles of golf
sticks and all sorts of lighter baggage were gliding, and faced another
and smaller door.

"Lift this way! This way to the lift!" bawled a voice.

"What's a lift?" whispered Hephzy, tremulously, "Hosy, what's a lift?"

"An elevator," I whispered in reply.

"But we can't go on board a steamboat in an elevator, can we? I never
heard--"

I don't know what she never heard. The sentence was not finished. Into
the lift we went. On either side of us were men in evening dress and
directly in front was a large woman, hatless and opera-cloaked, with
diamonds in her ears and a rustle of silk at every point of her persons.
The car reeked with perfume.

The large woman wriggled uneasily.

"George," she said, in a loud whisper, "why do they crowd these lifts
in this disgusting way? And WHY," with another wriggle, "do they permit
PERSONS with packages to use them?"

As we emerged from the elevator Hephzy whispered again.

"She meant us, Hosy," she said. "I've got three of those books of yours
in this bundle under my arm. I COULDN'T squeeze 'em into either of the
valises. But she needn't have been so disagreeable about it, need she."

Still following the crowd, we passed through more wide doorways and into
a huge loft where, through mammoth openings at our left, the cool air
from the river blew upon our faces. Beyond these openings loomed an
enormous something with rows of railed walks leading up its sides.
Hephzibah a