But the man did not think of this that day when he left the scene of
his labor in such anger. He thought only of that which he was trying
to do. When he went back to his work, the next day, he was still angry
and with his anger, now, came discontent, doubt, and fear, to cloud
his vision, to clog his brain and weaken his heart.
A friend, at lunch, said: "You look fagged, knocked out, done up, old
man. You've been pegging away too long and too steadily. Why don't you
let up for awhile? Lay off for a week or two. Take a vacation."
Again and again, that hot, weary, afternoon, the words of the man's
friend came back to him until, by evening, he was considering the
suggestion seriously. "Why not?" he asked himself. He was
accomplishing little or nothing in his present mood. Why not accept
the friendly advice? Perhaps--when he came back--perhaps, he could
again laugh at the world that denied him freedom.
So he came to considering places and plans. And, as he considered,
there was before him, growing always clearer as he looked, the scenes
of his boyhood--the old home of his childhood--the place of his
Yesterdays. There were many places of interest and pleasure to which
the man might go, but, among them all, there was no place so
attractive as the place of his Yesterdays. There was nothing he so
wished to do as this: to go back to the old home and there to be, for
a little while, as nearly as a man could be, a boy again.
If the man had thought about it, he would have seen in this desire to
spend his vacation at the old home something of the same force that so
angered him by hindering his work. But the man did not think about it.
He wrote a letter to see if he might spend two weeks with the people
who were living in the house where he was born and, when the answer
came assuring him a welcome, quickly made his arrangements to go.
With boyish eagerness, he was at the depot a full half hour before the
time for his train. While he waited, he watched the crowd, feeling an
interest in the people who came and went in the never ending
profession that he had not felt since that day when he had first come
to the city to work out his dreams among men. In the human tide that
ebbed and flowed through this world gateway, he saw men of wealth and
men of poverty--people of culture and position who had come or were
going in Pullman or private cars and illiterate, stupid, animal
looking, emigrants who were crowded, much like cattle, in the lowest
class. There were business men of large affairs; countrymen with
wondering faces; shallow, pleasure seekers; artists and scholars; idle
fools; vicious sharks watching for victims; mothers with flocks of
children clinging to their skirts; working girls and business women;
chattering, laughing, schoolgirls; and wretched creatures of the
outcast life--all these and many more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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