The dust was blown about in clouds; and here and there, sitting upon
the vacant steps that led up and down among the booths, were dejected and
motionless men and women, passively gathering dust, and apparently
awaiting burial under the accumulating sand,--the mute, melancholy
sphinxes of the Jubilee, with their unsolved riddle, "Why did we come?" At
intervals, the heavens shook out fierce, sudden showers of rain, that
scattered the surging masses, and sent them flying impotently hither and
thither for shelter where no shelter was, only to gather again, and move
aimlessly and comfortlessly to and fro, like a lost child.
So the multitude roared within and without the Coliseum as I turned
homeward; and yet I found it wandering with weary feet through the Garden,
and the Common, and all the streets, and it dragged its innumerable aching
legs with me to the railroad station, and, entering the train, stood up on
them,--having paid for the tickets with which the companies professed to
sell seats.
How still and cool and fresh it was at our suburban station, when the
train, speeding away with a sardonic yell over the misery of the
passengers yet standing up in it, left us to walk across the quiet fields
and pleasant lanes to Benicia Street, through groups of little idyllic
Irish boys playing base-ball, with milch-goats here and there pastorally
cropping the herbage!
In this pleasant seclusion I let all Bunker Hill Day thunder by, with its
cannons, and processions, and speeches, and patriotic musical uproar,
hearing only through my open window the note of the birds singing in a
leafy coliseum across the street, and making very fair music without an
anvil among them.
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