Life was no
morbid nightmare now; her weak woman's heart found it near,
cruel. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb question
in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's
hopeless fancies, that did not touch her sharply through her own
loss, with a keen pity, a wild wish to help to do something to
save others with this poor life left in her hands.
So the day wore on in the town and country; the old sun glaring
down like some fierce old judge, intolerant of weakness or
shams,--baking the hard earth in the streets harder for the
horses' feet, drying up the bits of grass that grew between the
boulders of the gutter, scaling off the paint from the brazen
faces of the interminable brick houses. He looked down in that
city as in every American town, as in these where you and I live,
on the same countless maze of human faces going day by day
through the same monotonous routine. Knowles, passing through
the restless crowds, read with keen eye among them strange
meanings by this common light of the sun,--meanings such as you
and I might read, if our eyes were clear as his,--or morbid, it
may be, you think? A commonplace crowd like this in the street
without: women with cold, fastidious faces, heavy-brained,
bilious men, dapper 'prentices, draymen, prize- fighters,
negroes. Knowles looked about him as into a seething caldron, in
which the people I tell you of were atoms, where the blood of
uncounted races was fused, but not mingled,-- where creeds,
philosophies, centuries old, grappled hand to hand in their
death-struggle,-- where innumerable aims and beliefs and powers
of intellect, smothered rights and triumphant wrongs, warred
together, struggling for victory.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88