Trolley-cars and
long interurban cars, built to split the wind like torpedo-boats,
clanged and shrieked their way round swarming corners; motor-cars
of every kind and shape known to man babbled frightful warnings and
frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored wildly for passage;
steam-whistles signaled the swinging of titanic tentacle and claw;
riveters rattled like machine-guns; the ground shook to the thunder
of gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate sound of it all was the sound
of earthquake playing accompaniments for battle and sudden death. On
one of the new steel buildings no work was being done that afternoon.
The building had killed a man in the morning--and the steel-workers
always stop for the day when that "happens."
And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers
and the pagan women--there would be work to-day and dancing to-night.
For the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot
in the rush and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be "to the minute" or his father
would consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's
office marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in.
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