A GLIMPSE OF A NEW WORLD But Tommy’s sorrow did not endure long. How could it in face of the wonders to be seen every minute through the window? For a time the old familiar mountains closed in the view, but they assumed strange and unaccustomed shapes as they whirled backward past him, with the foreground all and the more distant peaks turning in stately line, like soldiers. A hand on his shoulder brought him from the window.
 
“Let’s have your ticket, sonny,” said the conductor.
 
Tommy produced it from the inside pocket of his coat. The conductor took it, unfolded it, and then glanced in surprise from it to the boyish face.
 
“You’re going a good ways, ain’t you?” he remarked pleasantly. “You’ll have to change cars at Washington. We get there at three thirty-nine this afternoon. I’ll get somebody there to look out after you.”
 
“Thank you, sir,” answered Tommy. It was good to find that friendly and helpful people lived out in the big world.
 
“That’s all right,” and the conductor punched his ticket and handed it back to him. “You haven’t got a thing to do now but to sit here and look out the window. Got anything to eat?”
 
“Yes, sir,” said Tommy, and to a box which his mother had filled for him.
 
“All right. You’ll find drinking water up there at the end of the car. Mind you don’t try to leave the car or get off when we stop, or you’ll be left.” And with this final warning, he passed on to his other duties.
 
But Tommy had no desire whatever to move from his seat. The train flew on past miners’ cabins and hamlets, till at last the mines were left behind, and the mountains began to fall back from the river which they had crowded so closely. The great white inn at Clifton Forge, with its stately court and playing fountains, gave him a glimpse of fairyland. Soon he was looking out miles and miles across a wide valley, dotted like a great chess-board with fields of corn and , and with the white farm-houses here and there peeping through their sheltering of oaks and . It seemed a peaceful, happy, country, and Tommy’s eyes dwelt upon it wistfully. Wide, level fields were something new to his experience, and he longed to have a good run across them. The mountains fell farther and farther away, until at last not one remained to the line where the sky stooped to the horizon.
 
At Charlottesville Tommy caught his first glimpse of what a great city may be. Now Charlottesville is not by any means a great city, but the crowds which the long platform and away into the streets drew from him a of . And then the houses, built one against another in long rows that seemed to have no end! He had not thought that people could live so close together.
 
The train hurried on over historic ground, if Tommy had only known it,—Gordonsville, Culpeper, Manassas,—where thirty-five years before every house and fence and of trees had been contested stubbornly and by blue and gray. Another historic place they touched, Alexandria, where the church George Washington attended and the very pew he sat in still remain. Then along the bank of the Potomac, whose two miles or more of width made the boy gasp again, across a long bridge, and in a moment Tommy found himself looking out at a tall, massive of stone that resembled nothing so much as a gigantic chimney, and beyond it great buildings, and still other great buildings, as far as the eye could reach.
 
“Washington!” yelled the brakeman, slamming back the door. “All out fo’ Washington!”
 
Tommy grasped his box convulsively,—it was the only part of his baggage that had been left to his care, for his trunk was ahead in the baggage-car,—and looked anxiously around for his friend the conductor. That blue-coated official had not forgotten him, and in a moment Tommy saw him coming.
 
“Now you stay right where you are,” he said, “till I get all the other passengers off, and then I’ll come back after you.”
 
“All right, sir,” answered Tommy, breathing a sigh of relief. “I’ll be right here, sir.”
 
The crowds at Charlottesville were nothing to those that hurried past him now, and he sat watching them, fascinated, until he heard the conductor calling from the door.
 
“Step lively, sonny,” he called, and as they jumped down together to the platform, he saw that Tommy was carrying the unopened box in which his dinner was. “Why, look here,” he said, “didn’t you eat anything?”
 
Tommy looked down at the box, and hesitated a moment in the effort at recollection.
 
“I don’t believe I did,” he said at last. “I forgot about it. I wasn’t hungry.”
 
“I’ll bet it’s the first time you ever forgot your dinner,” the conductor. “Here, now,” he added, as they entered the great waiting-room, “you sit down in this seat and wait for me. I have to go and make my report, but it won’t take me long.”
 
Tommy sat down obediently, and watched the crowds surging back and through the station and out upon the long stone platforms. It seemed to him that all the residents of Washington must be either leaving the trains or crowding into them. He wondered why so many people should have to travel, but before he could make any progress toward solving the question, the conductor was back again, bringing another official with him.
 
“This is the boy, Jim,” he said. “By the way, what’s your name, sonny?”
 
“Tommy—Tommy Remington.”
 
“Well, Tommy, Jim here is one of the callers. He’ll have to take the four-fifty for Trenton, Jim. Don’t let him miss it.”
 
“I won’t. I’ll look out for him.”
 
“All right. Good-by, Tommy.”
 
“Good-by, sir,” and Tommy placed his hand in the great paw that the good-natured official held out to him. “And thank you again, sir.”
 
“You’re welcome”; and he gave Tommy’s hand a squeeze that made him . “Wait a minute,” he added suddenly, turning to Jim. “An hour and a half is a long time for the boy to wait. Can’t he see some of the sights?”
 
“We might put him on the street-car,” said Jim, “and let him ride out to Georgetown and back. That’ll give him enough to think about for a week.”
 
“All right.” And the conductor slipped a into the other’s hand. “Here, you pay the car conductor and tell him to look out after the boy. I’ve sort o’ taken a to him,” he added shamefacedly, and hurried away toward the home where his wife and another little chap, not half so large as Tommy, were waiting to welcome him.
 
Jim went back to Tommy.
 
“Come on,” he said. “You’re going to take a street-car ride along the most famous street in the country. Here, give me the box. I’ll take care of it till you get back.”
 
Tommy handed over the box, and followed him to the entrance, where queer open cars, such as he had never seen before, were dashing up and departing every minute. Jim said a few words to the conductor of one of these, and gave him the dime.
 
“Jump up there on the front seat,” he said to Tommy, “and don’t get off the car till you get back here.”
 
Tommy up beside the motorman, who had been watching the with interest, and in a moment the car turned out into Pennsylvania Avenue.
 
To those who visit Washington straight from the stately thoroughfares of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, this famous street may at first prove something of a disappointment, although its beauty improves on closer acquaintance; but to this boy, coming straight from the West Virginia mountains, it seemed a very vision of loveliness, and he gazed at it with dazzled eyes. The broad avenue, ............