CHAPTER XI.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 91, 28 February 1885, Page 4

CHAPTER XI.

HOME AGAIN. " Morning came. Furrowing all the orient into K^ld " Shakespe ake. Dawn ! Over a great city it broke, cool, fair, silvery. A new day A coin of pure trold tossed down by God's hand, fresh from Hismiat, stamped with tii* image. Another day to be ennobled, beuitified, blessed, honoured, cherished, remembei-erl, exalted, gloiitied, en joyed, consecrated ; tobedscried, bemired, trampled, ignored, lost, despised, unreveienced, even crime - encrimsoned. Already the city stirred as may a *le*ping lion, giew sentient, restless. Belated revellers boaideJ street-cars and tumbled into hacks, leaden-eyed and haggard-faced. Now and then flitted by the repellent visage of some nocturnal prowler, owl-like, seeking snadow. Boys j of all ages and sizes hurried down to wards the offices of the great "dailies," some striding over manhood's threshold, some mere ''bairnies," almost too tiny still to run without the stea lying guidance of a mother's hand, but all filled with the spirit of a busy city, inspirited by its thunder, fired by its progress, ambitious because of its examples. At the Union depot a train had just arrived It stood on the wide track, panting, puffing, steaming, like a huge exhausted beast. Disgorging, too. Down its few st ep steps poured travellers -prosperous, poor, shabby genteel, weary, energetic, wrap-bu'dened, basket-incumbered. And leaping liyhtly from the platform, walking rapidly the high, gaping gates, pa*t the blue-* o-ited, bra 8 buttoned actendacits, up 'he flight of wide shallow s f one steps, across the tiled entrance floor, through the mapsive doors of the " new depOt" out on Canal-street, went Captain Marc Tracy. At the curb stone the usual close files of equippage? werestanrling while before them their drivers paraded, cajoled, gesticulated. " Cab, f.ir I" " Hack,' sir I" " Carriage, «r !" Tracy shook his head. To enter a close, etuffy vehicle this glorious morning ! No, indeed ; not he ! He felt younp*, elastic, vigorous—as if he could walk miles without discomfort or fatigue. • Half way to New York he had received a telegram stating the financial enterprise concerning which he had been summoned had. steadied itself on its paralytic legs, grown in a marvellously short space conval-

ascent, and was now completely out of danger, so there remained no necessity for the continuation of his journey. | Gladly he had turned back, back to Chicago to Vella. And what a wonderful, i fair, bright world it was, to be sure 1 And what a dear, delightful city, after all, was this same Bm' iky, dusty, buny, bustling, wicked, lovablo Chicago ! How stolidly cheerful looked the fat old policeman at the corner of Canal and Madison Bt reets I tiow much life and fellowship, and warm, close humanity was suggested by the steady procession beginning to flow down over \ladisoi. -street Br dge ! A gr jatdeal which at another time he would not have notioed judt now touched Marc strangely— touched him, too, as '"ronuntic. poetic, and tender." Che cars crowded with down town clerks, labour in cairying lunch cans, prompt business men ; the few boats on the muddy liver ; the goscipy, fussy little tugs jerking lakeward great, white, stately, submissive ships ; the hum, stir, commotion — all. And he heard everything with such eager ears, saw everything with such clear, glad eyes telt everything with euch a quick, gay, thankful heurt, because within this big, prosaic town which he had iHeilisecl dwelt a gill who had lilted to his her sweet brown eyes and said in answer to his pleading, " 1 do love you. Mure I will love you ulways l" And this made Chicago heaven. Ah, truly, '• All is ori.ht, and beauteous, and clear, I An* 1 tiiomcane-t thing most prociousaud dear, ] When »ho manic <>f love i» pros i<t. ( Lovo that lends a sweetness and trico To the humbl'"*t pot and the plainest face. That turns Wi dernesd Row into Paradise Place And Garlic Hill to Mount Pleasant." Over the bridge he strode lown to Market- 1 street, and still on cas-tward. He walked I W q\[ — a 3imple accomplishment, but one by no means common. The tall, well-knit tigu>'e in the grey tweed suit wont past Ulark^treet to Deai born. More than one abstracted countenance broke into a sympathetic emile as thehai.d some, boyishly radiant face Hashed by. " Youth, youth !" sighed an old man, and j shook his head with the half- pitying envy of age. "My love she's but a lassie yet !" he hummed, blithely, as he walked.