...
The mysterious swaying to and fro of the curtains in the sleeper
thrilled me, as I looked out from my narrow berth.
In the smoker I listened till late to the talk of the drummers who
clenched big black cigars between their teeth, or slender Pittsburgh
stogies, expertly flicking off the grey ash with their little fingers,
as they yarned.
I wore a tag on my coat lapel with my name and destination written on
it. My grandmother had put it there in a painful, scrawling hand.
* * * * *
The swing out over wide, salt-bitten marshes, the Jersey marshes grey
and smoky before dawn!... then, far off, on the horizon line, New York,
serrate, mountainous, going upward great and shining in the still dawn!
* * * * *
Beneath a high, vast, clamorous roof of glass....
As I stepped down to the platform my father met me.
I knew him instantly though it had been years since I had seen him.
* * * * *
My father whisked me once more across the long Jersey marshes. To
Haberford. There, on the edge of the town, composed of a multitude of
stone-built, separate, tin-roofed houses, stood the Composite Works. My
father was foreman of the drying department, in which the highly
inflammable sheets of composite were hung to dry....
My father rented a large, front room, with a closet for clothes, of a
commuting feed merchant named Jenkins .
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