with the old German who raised canaries
for sale, and look at his stuffed birds. But whatever you began with him,
the talk went back to taxidermy. There was the depot, of course; I often
went down to see the night train come in, and afterward sat awhile with
the disconsolate telegrapher who was always hoping to be transferred to
Omaha or Denver, "where there was some life." He was sure to bring out his
pictures of actresses and dancers. He got them with cigarette coupons, and
nearly smoked himself to death to possess these desired forms and faces.
For a change, one could talk to the station agent; but he was another
malcontent; spent all his spare time writing letters to officials
requesting a transfer. He wanted to get back to Wyoming where he could go
trout-fishing on Sundays. He used to say "there was nothing in life for
him but trout streams, ever since he'd lost his twins."

These were the distractions I had to choose from. There were no other
lights burning downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used to
pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little,
sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back
porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light
wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe.
Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness
some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to
me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save
washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This
guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's
speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed.
Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution.
The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice
in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over
the surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders
in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful, consuming
process of life went on at all. On Tuesday nights the Owl Club danced;
then there was a little stir in the streets, and here and there one could
see a lighted window until midnight. But the next night all was dark
again.

After I refused to join "the Owls," as they were called, I made a bold
resolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hal