Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirge-like cry, and
toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the
alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one
step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.
When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his
dark-brown friend.
THE PACE OF YOUTH
I
Stimson stood in a corner and glowered. He was a fierce man and had
indomitable whiskers, albeit he was very small.
"That young tarrier," he whispered to himself. "He wants to quit makin'
eyes at Lizzie. This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know,
he'll get fired."
His brow creased in a frown, he strode over to the huge open doors and
looked at a sign. "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round," it read, and the
glory of it was great. Stimson stood and contemplated the sign. It was
an enormous affair; the letters were as large as men. The glow of it,
the grandeur of it was very apparent to Stimson. At the end of his
contemplation, he shook his head thoughtfully, determinedly. "No, no,"
he muttered. "This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know,
he'll get fired."
A soft booming sound of surf, mingled with the cries of bathers, came
from the beach. There was a vista of sand and sky and sea that drew to
a mystic point far away in the northward. In the mighty angle, a girl
in a red dress was crawling slowly like some kind of a spider on the
fabric of nature. A few flags hung lazily above where the bathhouses
were marshalled in compact squares. Upon the edge of the sea stood a
ship with its shadowy sails painted dimly upon the sky, and high
overhead in the still, sun-shot air a great hawk swung and drifted
slowly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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