St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1894-03-01
naiserllann.
SUNSHINE.

ne long. TdItllDS street Cal was
almost full on both sides. A damp
fog was sinking deeper and deeper
over the wide, endless street. and
penetrated chilly through the half
open door into the car. The con-
ductor had just lighted the green
lanterns, yet the street lay in gray
darkness. 1t was FIVE O'Clock in the
afternoon, in the beginning of
November. The car ran from west
to east in the city, to the place
where the rich banks, and other
companies of great money transac-
tons, have their palaces. Well-to-
do bankers came from their dinner in
the West, and went in this car to do
a few hours more of business in the
East, and formed the majority of the
passengers. They know each other
as one does in the Exchange, and
had nodded carelessly to each other
on entering the car; then each had
become absorbed in himself. They
were men capable of nothing but
dealing in stocks, and paid no at
tention to what was going on IN the
car.
The car ratified on. The sleepy,
horses sounded muffled in the fog,
which undulated thicker and dark
er without and within. How wear
lily, how like strangers they sat, OPP
posite to each other While one
thought for the most part about
himself, many thought of nothing at
all, no one thought of others; yet
they touched each other with their
clothes, and felt the bodily contact
of strangers. as they were closely
crowded together, and out of the
damp nantes and OvercOats came
the close, breath-laden air. In the
most distant corner grayhaired
sleeper had comfortably enveloped
himself in fur. He had short time
since enjoyed a good dinner, and his
hands were folded together as if to
offer thanksgiving but one needed
only to notice the plav of his swell
ing lips to understand that he was
not asleep. A shrinking face, like
eckoning board in activity, dotted
over with little reck oning balls, and
the little balls were necessarily
pushed here and there. The face
reckoned entirely for itself. Now the
knObby fingers, locked In one an
other, begin to reckon also, and the
somewhat aquiline nose, from time
to time corroborates the correctness
of the calculations by an approving
downward motion. The eyes only
remain peacefully closed; a nature
turned entirely within itself. Next
him sits his brother or cousin or
father-in-law. The two certainly be-
long to each other, for the latter
whispers occasionally to his neigh
Dor in the corner: First Mauer-
strasse!" first Friedrichstrasse !"
He whispers very softly, for he feels
that the other is making demands
upon his inmOst soul. This brother
or cousin or father-ln-laW is reading,
by the scanty light, the evening
paper which Is just out; that is, he
raises and lowers his head thought
fully over the long columns OF the
market reports. Next to him sits al
so another, examining the money
market, and next beyond still an
other. Then comes a slow, fat
market women, who Stares over the
handle OF her brown market-basket,
and next to her thin, jaundiced
statesman with pinched, boastful, |
important. secretary face, wearing
a shabby last years OvercOat, who |
regards peevishly the leather strap
above, dangling back and forth; be
You'd still another pair of individuals /
examining the money market, then
the cOuntenanCe of clerk, then a
tired attorney-at-law, who stares
before him and shlverS under the in /
coming fog-all tired and disafected,
all with faces that say: How full |
the world is of fog, how long we
have been without sunshine, how |
wearisOme!" Then even the stock |
brokers find the world tiresOme; they |
have given sufficient attention to the |
few figures, which are all important |
to them; and now they do not |
know what to do with themselves. |
They feel the cOmfortless, heavy fog
around them, even penetrating to
their souls. The reckoning board in
the corner, also, has finished work |
ing out his problem, and seeks to look |
out OF the opaque windows through |
the narrow aperture OF his half open |
eyelids. First CharlOttenstrasse!" !
said his neighbor.
Close by the entrance sit a married !
couple, both in deep mourning, and |
the wife with red eyelids, and eyes
that have wept either today or last
night She looks beyond the people |
into space, as if she would find |
something beloved in the fog, per-
haps a pair of bright, child eyes, |
whose light has been extinguished.
She cannot find them again-the |
open, child eyes. tor which her
memory seeks. The last picture
which she saw of the two fast-closed, |
dead lids was too deeply impressed |
upon her; she sees those dead, child |
eyes everywhere, wherever she looks. |