"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

of all places. In the country stretching away from the river where all had
been peace and quiet, all was now agitation and unrest. Houses were
destroyed and instantly rebuilt. People gathered in whirling crowds.

The dreaming man felt himself a part of something significant and terrible
that was happening to the earth and to the peoples of the earth. Again
he struggled to awake, to force himself back out of the dream world into
consciousness. When he did awake, day was breaking and he sat on the very
edge of the cliff that looked down upon the Mississippi River, gray now in
the dim morning light.

* * * * *

The towns in which Hugh lived during the first three years after he began
his eastward journey were all small places containing a few hundred people,
and were scattered through Illinois, Indiana and western Ohio. All of
the people among whom he worked and lived during that time were farmers
and laborers. In the spring of the first year of his wandering he passed
through the city of Chicago and spent two hours there, going in and out at
the same railroad station.

He was not tempted to become a city man. The huge commercial city at the
foot of Lake Michigan, because of its commanding position in the very
center of a vast farming empire, had already become gigantic. He never
forgot the two hours he spent standing in the station in the heart of the
city and walking in the street adjoining the station. It was evening when
he came into the roaring, clanging place. On the long wide plains west of
the city he saw farmers at work with their spring plowing as the train went
flying along. Presently the farms grew small and the whole prairie dotted
with towns. In these the train did not stop but ran into a crowded network
of streets filled with multitudes of people. When he got into the big dark
station Hugh saw thousands of people rushing about like disturbed insects.
Unnumbered thousands of people were going out of the city at the end of
their day of work and trains waited to take them to towns on the prairies.
They came in droves, hurrying along like distraught cattle, over a bridge
and into the station. The in-bound crowds that had alighted from through
trains coming from cities of the East and West climbed up a stairway to the
street, and those that were out-bound tried to descend by the same stairway
and at the same time. The result was a whirling churning mass of humanity.
Every one pushed and crowded his way along. Men swore, women grew angry,
and children cried. Near the doorway that opened into the street a long
line of cab drivers shouted and roared.

Hugh looked at the people who were whirled along past him, and shivered
with the nameless fear of multitudes, common to country boys in the city.
When the rush of people had a little subsided he went out of the station
and, walking across a narrow street, stood by a brick store building.
Presently the rush of people began again, and again men, women, and boys
came hurrying across the bridge and ran wildly in at the doorway leading
into the station. They came in waves as water washes along a beach during