I can remember in my boyhood once
I was waked from my reveries. I was walking beneath a high stone-wall,
with my eyes and head bent down as usual, when I was roused by a shower
of rose-buds that fell over my shoulders and folded arms. I heard
laughter, and looked up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls
tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is
looking up!" The picture of the face hung in my memory long after, with
the sound of the happy voice, as though it came out of another world.
But it remained only a picture, and I never asked myself whether that
sunny face ever made any home happy, nor did I ever listen for that
voice again from behind the high stone-wall.
Many years of my life passed away. There were changes in the factories.
The machines grew more like human beings, and we men could act more like
machines. There were fewer of us needed; but I still held my place, and
my steadiness gave me a position.
One day, in the end of May, I was walking early in the morning towards
the factories, as usual, when suddenly there fell across my path a
glowing beam of sunshine that lighted up the grass before me.
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