He sat alone at the table to eat, feeling very happy, and after his
hunger had been satisfied carefully brushed away the crumbs and fixed
everything nicely. Some other fellow might come along later and wander
into the same house.
The fancies young Webster had during that period of his life filled
him with delight. Sometimes he stopped in his night walks along dark
residence streets and stood looking up at the sky and laughing.
There he was in a world of fancies, in a place of dreams. His mind
plunged him back into the house he had visited in his dream-world. What
curiosity there was in him in regard to the people who lived there.
It was night, but the place was lighted. There were little lamps one
could pick up and carry about. There was a city, wherein each house was
a feasting place and this was one of the houses and in its sweet depths
things other than the belly could be fed.
One went through the house feeding all the senses. The walls had been
painted with strong colors that had now faded and become soft and
mellow with age. The time had passed in America when people continually
built new houses. They built houses strongly and then stayed in them,
beautified them slowly and with a sure touch. One would perhaps rather
be in such a house in the day-time when the owners were at home, but it
was fine to be there alone at night too.
The lamp held above one’s head threw dancing shadows on the walls. One
went up a stairway into bedrooms, wandered in halls, came down the
stairs again and putting the lamp back into its place passed out at the
open front door.
How sweet to linger on the front steps for a moment, having more
dreams. What of the people who lived in the house? In one of the
bedrooms upstairs he had fancied he knew that a young woman slept. Had
she been in the bed and asleep and had he walked in on her, what would
have happened?
Might there be in the world, well, one might as well say in some world
of the fancy--perhaps it would take too much time for an actual people
to create such a world--but might there not be a people, in the world
of one’s fancy, a people who had really developed the senses, people
who really smelled, saw, tasted, felt things with their fingers, heard
things with their ears? One could dream of such a world. It was early
evening and for several hours one did not have to go back to the little
dirty town hotel.
Some day there might be a world inhabited by people who lived. There
would be, then, an end of continual mouthings about death. People would
take life up firmly like a filled cup and carry it until the time came
to throw it away over the shoulder with a gesture. They would realize
that wine was made to drink, food to eat and nourish the body, the ears
to hear all manner of sounds, the eyes to see things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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