This
faith is all the more touching, because the collector cannot expect to
live until the whole stock is disposed of, and because, in the order of
nature, much must at last fall to rein unbought, unless the reporter's
Devouring Element appears and gives a sudden tragical turn to the poem.
It is the whistle of a train drawing up at the neighboring station that
calls me away from the second-hand store; for I never find myself able to
resist the hackneyed prodigy of such an arrival. It cannot cease to be
impressive. I stand beside the track while the familiar monster writhes up
to the station and disgorges its passengers,--suburbanly packaged, and
bundled, and bagged, and even when empty-handed somehow proclaiming the
jaded character of men that hurry their work all day to catch the evening
train out, and their dreams all night to catch the morning train in,--and
then I climb the station-stairs, and "hang with grooms and porters on the
bridge," that I may not lose my ever-repeated sensation of having the
train pass under my feet, and of seeing it rush away westward to the
pretty blue hills beyond,--hills not too big for a man born in a plain-
country to love.
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