At last I was left alone, to plod the same way, every night and
morning,--out with the sunrise from the skirts of the town, over the
bridge across the stream that fell into our great river which has worked
for us so long, to the tall, grim factory-building where my work awaited
me, and home again at night. I lived on in the house we all of us had
lived in. At first it was alone in the wood. But the town crept out to
meet it, and soon but little woodland was left around it. "Gloomy
Robert" they called me, as I walked back and forth upon the same track,
seldom lifting my head to greet friend or stranger. Though I walked over
well-known ground, my thoughts were wandering in strange romances. My
evening-readings furnished the land I lived in,--seldom this Western
home, but the East, from Homer's time to the days of Haroun Alraschid. I
was so faithful at my work that my responsibilities were each year
increased; and though my brain lived in dreams, I had sufficient use of
it for my little needs each day. I never forgot to answer the wants of
the greedy machines while I was within sound of them; but away from them
I forgot all external sight and sound. I can remember in my boyhood once
I was waked from my reveries. I was walking beneath a high stone-wall,
with my eyes and head bent down as usual, when I was roused by a shower
of rose-buds that fell over my shoulders and folded arms. I heard
laughter, and looked up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls
tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is
looking up!" The picture of the face hung in my memory long after, with
the sound of the happy voice, as though it came out of another world.
But it remained only a picture, and I never asked myself whether that
sunny face ever made any home happy, nor did I ever listen for that
voice again from behind the high stone-wall.

Many years of my life passed away. There were changes in the factories.
The machines grew more like human beings, and we men could act more like