FullReads

During the meaner hours of daylight it is my privilege to occupy a desk and chair at a window that overlooks this street. Of the details of my activity I shall make no mention, such level being far below the flight of these enfranchised hours of night wherein I write. But in the pauses of this activity I see below me wagon loads of nails go by and wagon loads of hammers hard after, to get a crack at them. Then there will be a truck of saws, as though the planking of the world yearned toward amputation. Or maybe, at a guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on down the street. It’s sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager to lay their ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such prodigious marshaling, but I hear you ask what this has to do with truantry.

It was near quitting time yesterday that a dray was discharging cases down a shoot. These cases were secured with metal reinforcement, and this metal being rubbed bright happened to catch a ray of the sun at such an angle that it was reflected in my eye. This flash, which was like lightning in its intensity, together with the roar of the falling case, transported me–it’s monstrous what jumps we take when the fit is on us–to the slopes of dim mountains in the night, to the heights above Valhalla with the flash of Valkyrs descending. And the booming of the case upon the slide–God pity me–was the music. It was thus that I was sent aloft upon the mountains of the North, into the glare of lightning, with the cry of Valkyrs above the storm….

But presently there was a voice from the street. “It’s the last case to-night, Sam, you lunk-head. It’s quitting time.”

The light fades on Long Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls of Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of bread on their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await expectant the oncoming of the rats. And in your own basement–the shadows having prospered in the twilight–it is sure (by the beard of the prophet, it is sure) that the ash-pit door is again ajar and that a pair of eyes gleam upon you from the darkness. If, on the instant, you will crouch behind the laundry tubs and will hold your breath–as though a doctor’s thermometer were in your mouth, you with a cold in the head–it’s likely that you will see a Persian climb from the pit, shake the ashes off him, and make for the vantage of the woodpile, where–the window being barred–he will sigh his soul for the freedom of the night.