And if he peered at them closely and marked down face after face in
the crowds it was as a sitter in the great game of business that he
looked, exercising his mind by imagining this or that one arrayed against
him in deals, and planning the method by which he would win in the
imaginary struggle.
There was at that time in Chicago a place, to be reached by a bridge above
the Illinois Central Railroad track, that Sam sometimes visited on stormy
nights to watch the lake lashed by the wind. Great masses of water moving
swiftly and silently broke with a roar against wooden piles, backed by
hills of stone and earth, and the spray from the broken waves fell upon
Sam's face and on winter nights froze on his coat. He had learned to
smoke, and leaning upon the railing of the bridge would stand for hours
with a pipe in his mouth looking at the moving water, filled with awe and
admiration of the silent power of it.
One night in September, when he was walking alone in the streets, an
incident happened that showed him also a silent power within himself, a
power that startled and for the moment frightened him. Walking into a
little street back of Dearborn, he was suddenly aware of the faces of
women looking out at him through small square windows cut in the fronts of
the houses.
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