A harsh
and rumbling noise as of heavy timbers falling tore through the
tissue of sweet sounds. The horses in the barn next door screamed
in their stalls to hear it. Ages and ages ago, on distant
wind-swept plains their ancestors had hearkened to that hunting-cry,
and summoned up their valor and their speed. It still thrilled in
the blood of these patient slaves of man, though countless
generations of them had never even so much as seen a lion.
"And is that all the difference, pa, that the lion roars at night
and the ostrich in the daytime?"
Out on the back porch in the deepening dusk we sat, with eyes
relaxed and dreaming, and watched the stars that powdered the
dark sky. Before our inward vision passed in review the day of
splendor and renown. We sighed, at last, but it was the happy
sigh of him who has full dined. Ambition was digesting. In our
turn, when we grew up, we, too, were to do the deeds of high
emprise. We were to be somebody.
(I never heard of anybody sitting up to see the show depart. And
yet it seems to me that would be the best time to run off with it.)
The next day we visited the lots. It was no dream. See the litter
that mussed up the place.
We were all there. None had heard the man that runs the show say
genially: "Yes, I think we can arrange to take you with us.
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