A company of the city soldiery,
with a full military band, marched in front of the hotel, invisible
to me, but stirringly audible both by its foot-tramp and the clangor
of its instruments. Once or twice all the city bells jangled
together, announcing a fire, which brought out the engine-men and
their machines, like an army with its artillery rushing to battle.
Hour by hour the clocks in many steeples responded one to another.
In some public hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an
exhibition of a mechanical diorama; for three times during the day
occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the
rattle of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion.
Then ensued the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands and
thump of sticks, and the energetic pounding of their heels. All this
was just as valuable, in its way, as the sighing of the breeze among
the birch-trees that overshadowed Eliot's pulpit.
Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy tide of human
activity and pastime. It suited me better, for the present, to
linger on the brink, or hover in the air above it. So I spent the
first day, and the greater part of the second, in the laziest manner
possible, in a rocking-chair, inhaling the fragrance of a series of
cigars, with my legs and slippered feet horizontally disposed, and in
my hand a novel purchased of a railroad bibliopolist. The gradual
waste of my cigar accomplished itself with an easy and gentle
expenditure of breath.
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