Free Unto a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg

walkers did not look each other in the face when meeting, no one stared in curiosity at anyone else. Robert and Arvid kept as close to the Finn as they could; they were jostled and pushed a little when they failed to give way fast enough, and they felt dizzy and bewildered in this multitude, faced with the endless horde passing on this street, said to be the world’s broadest.
    Robert tried to estimate the breadth of Broadway and he thought it must be more than seventy-five feet wide. The Broad Way, he knew the meaning of the name from his language book. Once he had seen a picture with the same name, and this picture had illustrated the road Man walked through life, crowded with people indulging in sin. That road had led to the Gates of Hell. On this street, also, wherever it led, was a jostling crowd. Most people he saw had white-skinned faces and were shaped like his own people. But the great difference in dress surprised Robert. Here walked men in elegant, well-brushed, expensive clothes, with clean, white-shining linen around their necks and polished boots on their feet. He saw other men, too, in worn-out, ragged garments, dirty shirts, and with their feet wrapped in old rags; some even went barefoot; they must burn their feet on these hot stones. He thought those poorly dressed men must be new arrivals in this country; they had not yet had time to get rich.
    He saw many Negroes, all going about free and unchained. He had thought that black people held as slaves were in chains and led by guards, like dogs on leashes. He noticed Negroes laughing so broadly that their teeth gleamed white against their dark lips; but others looked so sad, shy, and downtrodden that the sight of them hurt him deep inside. He guessed that those who laughed had kinder masters than the others.
    The Finn said the houses on this street were the highest ever built in the world. Some were, indeed, as tall as six stories, and taller houses could not be built.
    “Danjel says we have arrived at the Tower of Babel,” volunteered Arvid.
    “Babel’s Tower fell long ago,” Robert informed his friend.
    They looked at the houses along Broadway; some were built of wood and stone, and painted in many colors—white, clear red, black, and yellow. Some houses even had walls with white stripes of plaster; this was a curious sight, striped houses.
    In the middle of the street rode men in black coats and high hats, their horses well fed, newly curried, with flanks shining. Wagons rolled by, gilded spring wagons bearing women in fine clothes; there were plain carts loaded with ale barrels, carriages with white teams, cabs, gigs, clumsy wagons drawn by oxen, light vehicles drawn by horses small as colts, four-wheelers, two-wheelers, big and small wagons, light and heavy ones. Everything that could be put on wheels and pulled by animals rolled by on this street.
    Arvid pointed in amazement at a small, gray, long-eared, long-haired animal which stood quite still between the shafts of a cart: “That thing is neither horse nor ox!”
    “It’s an ass,” said the Finn.
    Robert hurried to show what he knew: “One can ride on them too,” he said. “It’s told in the Bible that Jesus rode on an ass into Jerusalem.”
    “On an animal like that?” asked Arvid. “How could he sit straddle-legged on such a puny creature?”
    They slowly continued their walk up Broadway. A great fat sow with a litter of pigs was poking about in the gutter on their side of the street. The mother sow was as long legged as a calf, but her teats hung so low they almost reached the ground; the little piglets were light brown, almost like whelps, and ran between the legs of the walkers so that Robert almost tripped. Arvid counted fourteen in the litter and observed that American swine were longer legged than Swedish.
    Robert said the Americans didn’t seem afraid to lose their pigs, letting them run around at will, but the Finn informed him that every owner marked his swine with an ear