After a few blocks walking through the falling snow Jan paused. “Mister Randy, this must be January, virtually all of the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Mid January is more like it; the Christmas trees have all been picked up. This just looks like a flurry—no accumulation.”

Mister Bracken gave no answer, content to gaze about suspiciously, as if they would be accosted by bandits at any moment. They walked another two blocks in silence and were crossing an alley to a busy marketplace kept in a dreadfully squat long building. Jan began to sound like a country gentlemen introducing a visitor to the features of the local village. “Richard, this is the Cross Street Market. I’d like to stay and have a beer but we have to get clear of our access signature.”

As the man was drawing breath to extol the virtues of this market Mister Bracken’s raspy voice cut in, “Sensei, that scrawny Ukrainian cabby is waving us over. Want to take the lift?”

Jan had a positive tone to his voice, “Let’s roll boys.”

With that the three of them crossed the alley and piled into the back of the comfortable but low-riding conveyance. As Jan commanded the driver to head through town and up the East Side by way of an Orleans Street, desiring not to take the most obvious route, Richard noticed that the carriage was equipped with a suspension to absorb the shock of the tires striking ruts and rolling over humps. Jan, seeming to read his mind, smiled nervously and patted him on the thigh as Randy peered through the windows suspicious of everything and everyone, even children, and particularly the two uniformed policemen they saw as the carriage turned north on the next street and the driver made his way through an astounding flow of traffic, including massive conveyances that seemed to have replaced trolleys.*

The snow is abating. Perhaps it was due to our transit.

Richard felt his jaw drop as the carriage picked up speed and they hummed along under the towering monoliths of a much changed city.

“Jan, the height of these buildings, they are engineering marvels!”

Jan seemed pleased. “They are called skyscrapers Richard, and we have no tall ones in Baltimore. Wait until you see New York or Chicago. I think fifty stories are as high as any of these go.”

Remembering the coachman, who eyed them in a mirror as he piloted the carriage, Richard whispered, “I should enjoy this colossal century of yours Jan!”

Richard now busied himself sight-seeing, keeping his thoughts to himself as they cruised as if in a swift ketch around the harbor, but rather than cutting through waves, rolling almost noiselessly over the impeccably engineered roadways, which were now some of them, paved with concrete, all sloped to permit efficient drainage.

If these are but city streets I cannot wait to see the scale of their highways. The harbor is not busy with freighters but pleasure craft. I see no rails. Most goods must be shipped by road in those huge horseless wagons.

Surely people of culture must keep horse farms in the countryside. We can’t have changed that much in 150 years.

Or might we have?

Regardless, much remains the same. Three men of means hire a carriage and make their way across the city. That much remains the same.

Indeed, but most of the carriages, with room for four, are occupied by only the driver. This argues for carriage ownership on a massive and wasteful scale; what is more a crowded overbearing society where the individual is forced to find solitude in transit, even at great financial cost.

What an endlessly fascinating polyglot society this is. I could spend volumes unraveling the layers of church, state, commerce and this reactionary nomadism...

Look man, look, in the morning sky, a mechanical bird trailing steam like a Congreve rocket! Note the distance, it is miles overhead, and must therefore be massive!

He looked open-mouthed and bug-eyed at Jan as he pointed with his finger. The man smiled and nodded yes, with an apologetic tone, “Sorry, I left that out of the brochure.”

“No offense taken or slight inferred. It would be a chore even to remember the wonders that must be related to the neophyte in this age.”

Yes, but you shall remember and record all; leave a record for the ages in case this one falls as did Egypt.

They were now headed out of the towering edifices of commerce and muscular industrialism into what seemed an older portion of the city, with narrower but still quite wide streets winding through stacked rows of brick houses; a residential section similar to, but apparently less ancient than the southern quarter of the city whence they had come.

We are headed northeast now, veering I suppose around some great complex to our right as the coachman takes us ultimately to our easterly destination.

Relax and enjoy the humanity, the staggering variety of carriages, and the stifling architecture.

Yes, the pedestrians are becoming darker by the block. We enter a 21st Century slum.

Oh my, this has more the look of a crumbled ruin of some past city than of a sprawling shantytown. What a tragically curious slum this is, and how proud the poor are!

You must return to this place on leave and sketch the dwellings and the inhabitants.

Oh, Mister Bracken is becoming agitated even as Jan relaxes. Your companions bear watching.

*The Trolleys of Burton's day were horse drawn, not cable cars, and had to be a horse's worst nightmare.

The next installment of this novel concludes the online serialization with Chapter 17: The Perfect Freak

The print novel of the complete novel The World is our Widow is now available at www.amazon.com