Their Silver Wedding Journey — Complete by William Dean Howells
page 57 of 522 (10%)
page 57 of 522 (10%)
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quarters with the daily drama of humanity, as you call it. And I don't
believe that the large English ships are built so that the steerage passengers can stare in at the saloon windows while one is eating; and I'm sorry we came on the Norumbia." "Ah, you think the Norumbia doesn't hide anything," he began, and he was going to speak of the men in the furnace pits of the steamer, how they fed the fires in a welding heat, and as if they had perished in it crept out on the forecastle like blanched phantasms of toil; but she interposed in time. "If there's anything worse, for pity's sake don't tell me," she entreated, and he forebore. He sat thinking how once the world had not seemed to have even death in it, and then how as he had grown older death had come into it more and more, and suffering was lurking everywhere, and could hardly be kept out of sight. He wondered if that young Burnamy now saw the world as he used to see it, a place for making verse and making love, and full of beauty of all kinds waiting to be fitted with phrases. He had lived a happy life; Burnamy would be lucky if he should live one half as happy; and yet if he could show him his whole happy life, just as it had truly been, must not the young man shrink from such a picture of his future? "Say something," said his wife. "What are you thinking about?" "Oh, Burnamy," he answered, honestly enough. "I was thinking about the children," she said. "I am glad Bella didn't try to come from Chicago to see us off; it would have been too silly; she |
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