Human companionship is left behind – gone are the lamp-lit rooms, the lighted store windows – everyone has hurried home – he stands alone on a long  bleak plat-form – disused freight cars are standing near – the vast gray void of the east – it is black under the platform shelter – life is vast, lonely, insupportable – it is December.
     It is more “winter” (negation – void – absence of life) without snow that with – in January on bright snowy days, there is a vital quickening in the air, and sunlight, that already smacks of March fire – but now with no frost even in the soggy ground – no wind – an impenetrable blanket of cloud hanging low over the earth as if to smother it – dead weeds and grass uncrushed by snow – trees wet and black – a dense milky haze pervading the air, accentuating the distance between objects, between planes, there is an unutterable melancholy, a complete negation that is overwhelming – it seems as if at last the earth, and all things in it stood still and would never “move” again – never quicken again but moulder with a long-drawn out decay and reversion to earthy material-
     I stand spell-bound, unable myself to move for the power and wonder of it.
     I took the train from Pittsburgto Steubenville, with a certain misgiving in my mind – I was going[1]