Herself the mere ignorant human being, eager to learn, innocent of class-illusion, intensely alive to “differences,” yet knowing which of them were only skin-deep, or rather education-deep; young, yes; attractive, too; a girl going into a strange new world who yet goes fearlessly, hopefully, carrying faith in human nature along for her shield and her buckler. If this is an apparition new upon the earth, then perhaps the modern world has something to be proud of beyond the things it has celebrated more. Not that she encountered no difficult moments. She was stared at, and she could see that she was speculated about. Well, that was no killing matter. Perhaps it was because she was so tall. When in the thronged and noisy offices she was crowded and pushed by an excited horde—though shown no special disrespect as a woman—she was certainly not comfortable, and was even a little forlorn. When a brow-beating passenger-agent vented his ill-temper upon her refusal to buy a ticket forthwith without waiting “to inquire further,” she felt the man’s rudeness keenly, absurdly. But it was not till some “masher” of a clerk spoke to her with a vulgar familiarity that discomfort went down before humiliation in the thought, “What would Louis say if he knew?” However, the clerk soon saw his error, and the tall, quiet girl was taken at a different valuation. Men, even the most ignorant men, learn these lessons more quickly than is supposed. But, oh, it wasn’t easy to do the work of preparation alone! comparing, eliminating, deciding all by oneself. For at every step, upon every question, one encountered conflicting testimony. Every store-window that one passed displayed things “Indispensable for Nome.” Every ship that sailed was the best, and bound to be first at the goal. Now and then to some one of the besieging hundreds at the offices, Hildegarde would put a question. The women looked askance. The men answered civilly enough. But if they knew little more than Hildegarde, they entertained darker fears. And still, and always, testimony was in conflict. The firm that impressed her most favorably, whose office she had just left “to think it over”—why they, it seemed, were a set of thieves. Passage on one of their ships meant ten to twenty days’ starvation on short rations of sour bread and salt horse. Heavens, what an escape! But that other firm she was on her way to interrogate—they were traffickers in human life! Didn’t she know they had been buying disabled craft of every description, even hauling up abandoned wrecks out of the sea, sweeping the entire Pacific for derelict and rotten craft that they might paint and rename, and make a fortune out of crowding such crazy vessels full of ignorant human cattle for Cape Nome?