Ah! those were the days when brick side-walks were as elastic as
India rubber beneath your feet; shop windows were an exhibition of
transparencies to amuse children and young people, and the world in
prospect was one long pleasure excursion. Then you drank the bright
effervescence in your glass of soda-water, and now you must swallow
the cold, flat settlings, or not get your money's worth. Long ago
you found out that the moon is the origin of moonshine, that blue
eyes are not quite as fascinating under gray hair and behind
spectacles, and that "money answereth all things."
You say so, clerk or bank-teller, when you look up from your books
at the new-fallen snow glistening in the morning light, and feel
something like the prancing of horses' hoofs in the soles of your
boots, and hear the jingling of sleigh bells in your mind's ear,
long after the sound of them has passed from your veritable
auriculars.
You say so, teacher, while going through the daily drill of your A B
C regiments, your multiplication table platoons, and your
chirographical battalions.
You say so, factory girl, passing backward and forward from the
noise and whirl of wheels in the mills, to the whirl and noise of
wheels in your dreams.
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