they
do not walk, they fly. So they would go flying about streets out of
which the bottoms had dropped, and look right through far down to the
earth, which to their sight would doubtless resemble the raised map of
America in our school, that stood on a table in the corner and always
had chalk dust, like snow, in the inch-deep ravines of the Rocky
Mountains. I wondered if the lower stories of the houses would have
any floors. The cellars wouldn't, anyway. What kept the furnaces in
position? Perhaps they didn't need furnaces in heaven; it was the
other place where the furnaces were. Then I dozed.

In our church Sunday School began at noon, immediately following the
church service, in a large room at the rear, known as the vestry. The
first small boy on his way to school stamped by on the walk outside,
with what sounded like defiant aggressiveness. I roused from my doze
in time to see the old man in front of me wake up with a start at the
sound and reach quickly for his hymn book, as if he supposed the
sermon were over. Then the stamping of other children was heard on the
walk. The scholars passed in groups, talking shrilly. I knew it must
be nearly twelve o'clock. In the congregation there was a rustle of
gathering restlessness; women put on their gloves, tried to glance
back at the clock without seeming to do so, stirred in their seats.
The last vestige of sleep mysteriously yielded to this influence and
left me. At last the minister came to the conclusion of his discourse,
and instantly there was a sound all over the church as of waters
released and hurrying over dead leaves. It was the congregation
shifting their positions, expelling their breaths, and turning the
pages of their hymn books. I listened curiously for the next sound.
It was the clearing of a hundred throats, getting ready to sing. I too
arose and in my tuneless treble made a joyful noise unto the Lord.
Then church was over.

And my peppermints are all eaten, too, and the gossamer web of memory
dissolves, the picture fades, and I see before me this room of mine,
littered with some learned literature but more pipes and prints and
miscellaneous rubbish, and I hear outside in the Square, not the
spring wind racing among the budding branches, but the coughing of a
consumptive motor car, the penetrating squeak of a trolley rounding a
curve on a dry track, the irritating jolt of heavy drays, and a great,
subdued, never-ceasing rumble and roar, the key-note of