They seem a
feature of the bygone village life of Charlesbridge, and accord pleasantly
with the town-pump and the public horse-trough, and the noble elm that by
night droops its boughs so pensively, and probably dreams of its happy
younger days when there were no canker-worms in the world. Sometimes this
choice company sits on the curbing that goes round the terrace at the elm-
tree's foot, and then I envy every soul in it,--so tranquil it seems, so
cool, so careless, so morrowless. I cannot see the faces of that luxurious
society, but there I imagine is the local albino, and a certain blind man,
who resorts thither much by day, and makes a strange kind of jest of his
own, with a flicker of humor upon his sightless face, and a faith that
others less unkindly treated by nature will be able to see the point
apparently not always discernible to himself. Late at night I have a fancy
that the darkness puts him on an equality with other wits, and that he
enjoys his own brilliancy as well as any one.
At the Port station Frank was pleased and soothed by the tranquil air of
the policeman, who sat in his shirt-sleeves outside the door, and seemed
to announce, by his attitude of final disoccupation, that crimes and
misdemeanors were no more.
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