The breakfast passed in constrained silence, save for Albert, who delivered a monologue on the evils of city life, and the political and ethical debauchery of the press, to which Seth tried dutifully to pay attention--thinking all the while how to say goodbye to Isabel, how to invest his words with a fervor the others would not suspect. When the time came, all this planning proved of no avail. He found himself shaking hands as perfunctorily with her as with her husband, and his father and aunt. Only the latter kissed him, and she did it with awkward formality. Then he climbed into the buggy where Milton and the carpet bag were already installed, and, answering in kind a chorus of “Good-byes” drove out into the rain--and the World. CHAPTER XI.--ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE WORLD. Seth’s first impressions of the World, gathered when he found himself and his valise alone on the sidewalk of one of Tecumseh’s chief streets, were distinctly gloomy. Other passengers who had left the train here, and in whose throng he had been borne along thus far, started off briskly in various directions once they reached the busy thoroughfare, elbowing their way through the horde of clamorous hotel porters much as one might push through a clump of obstructing bushes. He had firmly fixed in his mind the cardinal rule of traveling countrymen, that these shouting runners were brigands intent upon robbing him, and he was clear in his resolution to give them no hold upon him, not even by so much as a civil expression of countenance. He said “No, thank you!” sternly to at least a dozen solicitations, so it seemed to him, and walked away steadily, fearful that their practised eyes had detected in him an utter stranger, and intent only upon proving to them that he knew where he was going. When at last it seemed likely that they were no longer watching him, he stopped, put his bag down in a door way, and looked about. It was half-past six of a summer afternoon (for a failure to make connections had prolonged the sixty-mile journey over eight hours), and the sun, still high, beat down the whole length of the street with an oppressive glare and heat. The buildings on both sides, as far as eye could reach, were of brick, flat-topped, irregular in height, and covered with flaring signs. There was no tree, nor any green thing, in sight. Past him in a ceaseless stream, and all in one direction, moved a swarm of humanity--laborers and artisans with dinner-pails, sprucely dressed narrow-chested clerks and book-keepers, and bold faced factory-girls in dowdy clothes and boots run down at the heels--a bewildering, chattering procession. No one of all this throng glanced at him, or paid the slightest attention to him, until one merry girl, spying his forlorn visage, grinned and called out with a humorous drawl “Hop-pick--ers!” and then danced off with her laughing companions, one of whom said, “Aw, come off! You’re rushin’ the season. Hop’s ain’t ripe yet.”