To know that in the woods the brooks were singing over pebbly bottoms,
that in the fields the air was filled with the fragrance of blossoming
flowers, that everywhere the free wind rioted at will, and then to
sit in such a prison-house as this all day, and breathe an atmosphere
so thick with dust that even the bits of blue sky framed in by
the open windows in the summer time were like strips of some dark
thunder-cloud,--it was this, this dull monotony of dizzy sight and
doleful sound and changeless post of duty, that made their task a hard
one.
There came a certain summer day at Burnham Breaker when the labor and
confinement fell with double weight upon the slate-pickers in the
screen-room. It was circus day. The dead-walls and bill-boards of the
city had been gorgeous for weeks and weeks with pictures heralding the
wonders of the coming show. By the turnpike road, not forty rods from
where the breaker stood, there was a wide barn the whole side of which
had been covered with brightly colored prints of beasts and birds, of
long processions, of men turning marvellous somersaults, of ladies
riding, poised on one foot, on the backs of flying horses, of a
hundred other things to charm the eyes and rouse anticipation in the
breasts of boys.
Every day, when the whistle blew at noon, the boys ran, shouting, from
the breaker, and hurried, with their dinner-pails, to the roadside
barn, to eat and gaze alternately, and discuss the pictured wonders.
And now it was all here; beasts, birds, vaulting men, flying women,
racing horses and all.
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