There would be no dusty winds in New York, but only mellow breezes over
marble palaces of efficient business. No Henry Carsons, but slim, alert
business men, young of eye and light of tongue.

Sec. 2

Una Golden had expected to thrill to her first sight of the New York
sky-line, crossing on the ferry in mid-afternoon, but it was so much
like all the post-card views of it, so stolidly devoid of any surprises,
that she merely remarked, "Oh yes, there it is, that's where I'll be,"
and turned to tuck her mother into a ferry seat and count the suit-cases
and assure her that there was no danger of pickpockets. Though, as the
ferry sidled along the land, passed an English liner, and came close
enough to the shore so that she could see the people who actually lived
in the state of blessedness called New York, Una suddenly hugged her
mother and cried, "Oh, little mother, we're going to live here and do
things together--everything."

The familiar faces of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sessions were awaiting them at
the end of the long cavernous walk from the ferry-boat, and New York
immediately became a blur of cabs, cobblestones, bales of cotton, long
vistas of very dirty streets, high buildings, surface cars, elevateds,
shop windows that seemed dark and foreign, and everywhere such a rush of
people as made her feel insecure, cling to the Sessionses, and try to
ward off the dizziness of the swirl of new impressions. She was daunted
for a moment, but she rejoiced in the conviction that she was going to
like this madness of multiform energy.

The Sessionses lived in a flat on Amsterdam Avenue near Ninety-sixth
Street. They all went up from Cortlandt Street in the Subway, which was
still new and miraculous in 1905. For five minutes Una was terrified by
the jam of people, the blind roar through tunneled darkness, the sense
of being powerlessly hurled forward in a mass of ungovernable steel. But
nothing particularly fatal happened; and she grew proud to be part of
this black energy, and contentedly swung by a strap.

When they reached the Sessionses' flat and fell upon the gossip of
Panama, Pennsylvania, Una was absent-minded--except when the Sessionses
teased her about Henry Carson and Charlie Martindale. The rest of the
time, curled up on a black-walnut couch which she had known for years in
Panama, and which looked plaintively rustic here in New York, Una gave
herself up to impressions of the city: the voices of many children down