Domestic fiction; Short stories; Suburban life -- Fiction
There was yet another Jubilee Day, on the morning of which the thousands
of public-school children clustered in gauzy pink and white in the place
of the mighty chorus, while the Coliseum swarmed once more with people
who listened to those shrill, sweet pipes blending in unison; but I
leave the reader to imagine what he will about it. A week later, after
all was over, I was minded to walk down towards the Coliseum, and behold
it in its desertion. The city streets were restored to their wonted
summer-afternoon tranquillity; the Public Garden presented its customary
phases of two people sitting under a tree and talking intimately
together on some theme of common interest,--“Bees, bees, was it your
hydromel?”--of the swans sailing in full view upon the little lake of
half a dozen idlers hanging upon the bridge to look at them; of
children gayly dotting the paths here and there; and, to heighten the
peacefulness of the effect, a pretty, pale invalid lady sat, half in
shade and half in sun, reading in an easy-chair. Far down the broad
avenue a single horse-car tinkled slowly; on the steps of one of the
mansions charming little girls stood in a picturesque group full of the
bright color which abounds in the lovely dresses of this time. As I drew
near the Coliseum, I could perceive the desolation which had fallen
upon the festival scene; the white tents were gone; the place where the
world-renowned cloggist gave her serio-comic dances was as lonely and
silent as the site of Carthage; in the middle distance two men were
dismantling a motionless whirligig; the hut for the sale of French soups
was closed; farther away, a solitary policeman moved gloomily across the
deserted spaces, showing his dark-blue figure against the sky. The vast
fabric of the Coliseum reared itself, hushed and deserted within and
without; and a boy in his shirt-sleeves pressed his nose against one
of the painted window-panes in the vain effort to behold the nothing
inside. But sadder than this loneliness surrounding the Coliseum, sadder
than the festooned and knotted banners that drooped funereally upon its
facade, was the fact that some of those luckless refreshment-saloons
were still open, displaying viands as little edible now as carnival
_confetti_. It was as if the proprietors, in an unavailing remorse, had
condemned themselves to spend the rest of their days there, and, slowly
consuming their own cake and pop-corn, washed down with their own
soda-water and lemonade, to perish of dyspepsia and despair.
SOME LESSONS FROM THE SCHOOL OF MORALS.
Any study of suburban life would be very imperfect without some glance
at that larger part of it which is spent in the painful pursuit
of pleasures such as are offered at the ordinary places of public
amusement; and for this reason I excuse myself for rehearsing certain
impressions here which are not more directly suburban, to say the least,
than those recounted in the foregoing chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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