Gala-Days | Page 8

the Sun? I should like to see her come out again, and clothe herself in splendor. I think I will go back to Walden. Ah! even my philosopher, aping Homer, nods. It shimmers a little, on the lake, among the mountains--of the moon.
I declare! I believe I have been asleep. What of it? It is just as well. I have no doubt the moon will come out again all right,--which is more than I shall do if I go on in this way. I feel already as if the top of my head was coming off. Once I was very unhappy, and I sat up all night to make the most of it. It was many hundred years ago, when I was younger than I am now, and did not know that misery was not a thing to be caressed and cosseted and coddled, but a thing to be taken, neck and heels, and turned out doors. So I sat up to revel in the ecstasy of woe. I went along swimmingly into the little hours, but by two o'clock there was a great sameness about it, and I grew desperately sleepy. I was not going to give it up, however, so I shocked myself into a torpid animation with a cold bath, it being mid-winter, and betwixt bath and bathos, managed to keep agoing till daylight. Once since then I was very happy, and could not keep my eyes shut. Those are the only two times I ever sat up all night, and, on the whole, I think I will go to bed; wherefore, O people on the earth, marking eagerly the moon's eclipse, and O people on the moon, crowding your craggy hills to see an eclipse of the sun, Good night!
Then the lost June came back. Frost melted out of the air, summer melted in, and my book beckoned me onward with a commanding gesture. Consequently I took my trunk, Halicarnassus his cane, and we started on our travels. But the shadow of the eclipse hung over us still. An evil omen came in the beginning. Just as I was stepping into the car, I observed a violent smoke issuing from under it. I started back in alarm.
"They are only getting up steam," said Halicarnassus. "Always do, when they start."
"I know better!" I answered briskly, for there was no time to be circumlocutional. "They don't get up steam under the cars."
"Why not? Bet a sixpence you couldn't get Uncle Cain's Dobbin out of his jog-trot without building a fire under him."
"I know that wheel is on fire," I said, not to be turned from the direct and certain line of assertion into the winding ways of argument.
"No matter," replied Halicarnassus, conceding everything, "we are insured."
Upon the strength of which consolatory information I went in. By and by a man entered and took a seat in front of us. "The box is all afire," chuckled he to his neighbor, as if it were a fine joke. By and by several people who had been looking out of the windows drew in their heads, went into the next car.
"What do you suppose they did that for?" I asked Halicarnassus.
"More aristocratical. Belong to old families. This is a new car, don't you see? We are parvenus."
"Nothing of the sort," I rejoined. "This car is on fire, and they have gone into the next one so as not to be burned up."
"They are not going to write books, and can afford to run away from adventures."
"But suppose I am burned up in my adventure?"
"Obviously, then, your book will end in smoke."
I ceased to talk, for I was provoked at his indifference. I leave every impartial mind to judge for itself whether the circumstances were such as to warrant composure. To be sure, somebody said the car was to be left at Jeru; but Jeru was eight miles away, and any quantity of mischief might be done before we reached it,--if indeed we were not prevented from reaching it altogether. It was a mere question of dynamics. Would dry wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire for half an hour? Of course the conductor thought it would; but even conductors are not infallible; and you may imagine how comfortable it was to sit and know that a fire was in full blast beneath you, and to look down every few minutes expecting to see the flames forking up under your feet. I confess I was not without something like a hope that one tongue of the devouring element would flare up far enough to give Halicarnassus a start; but it did not. No casualty occurred. We reached Jeru in safety; but that does not prove that there was no danger, or that indifference was anything but the most