Jest half a acre more than Silenas Bobbetses farm, that he broke old
Squire Bobbetses will to git, and he and his twin brother Zebulin come
to hands and blows about, in front of the Jonesville post-office.
Zebulin said it wuz too much land to give to one of the children--they
wuz leven of 'em--and the farm didn't go round--the others didn't have
only fifteen acres apiece.
Yes; this one buildin' covered as much ground as Silenas Bobbet gits a
good livin' from, a-raisin' cabbage and spinach.
And the buildin' wuz seemin'ly all wrought of white marble, with
statutes, and colonnades, and towers, and everything else for its
comfort, and inside wuz every machine that wuz ever made or thought on,
from a sassage-cutter and apple-parer to a steam engine in full blast.
I believe they tuned up higher and louder when I went in--it wouldn't be
nothin' surprisin' if they did, some as the brass band strikes up as the
hero enters.
This song wuz the loud, strong chorus of Labor, that echoes all over the
world, grand chorus that is played by the full orkestry of the sons and
daughters of toil.
Oh, how many notes there is in this strong, ail-pervadin' anthem!
Genius, and Patience, and Ambition, and Enterprise, and Ardent
Endeavor--high notes, and low ones, all blent together, all tuned to the
hauntin' key. It is a sam that shakes the hull earth with its might.
As I entered this palace, sacred to its song, how its echoes rolled
through my ear pans, how them pans seemed to fairly shiver under the
mighty strokes of the song, and its weird, painful accompaniment of
boilers a-boilin', rollin' mills a-rollin'!
Water wheels, freight elevators--cranes a-cranin', derricks
a-derrickin', divin' apparatus, fire-extinguishin' apparatus--
Machines of all sorts and kinds to manufacture all sorts of goods, and
all hands to work at it--silk, cotton, wool, linen, ingy-rubber, ropes,
and paper.
Saw-mills, wind-mills, printin'-presses a-pressin'. All sorts of tools
to make all sorts of picters--engravin's, color printin'--picters from
the 16th century up to 1893--they wuz relief engravin's.
I spoze they are called so because it is such a relief to think we
don't have to look at them old picters now.
And there wuz half-tone processes, mechanical and medicinal processes,
and every other process you ever hearn on, and didn't ever hear on,
right there in a procession in front of me, and all a-processin'.
And there wuz machines for makin' clocks, and watches, and jewelry, and
buttons, and pins, and all kinds of appliances ever used in machinery,
and stun, sawin', and glass-grindin' machinery a-grindin' and makin'
bricks and pottery, and used in makin' artificial stun--the idee!
You'd a thought the stun wuz all made before the Lord rested.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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