could smell the flowers in the meadow. But the sun didn't shine, nor the
birds sing: it was a foggy day, but not cold.

The most curious thing was the little white angel-boy, like you see in
pictures, that run ahead of the music brook and led it on, and on, away
out of the world, where no man ever was, certain, I could see the boy
just as plain as I see you. Then the moonlight came, without any sunset,
and shone on the graveyards, where some few ghosts lifted their hands
and went over the wall, and between the black, sharp-top trees splendid
marble houses rose up, with fine ladies in the lit-up windows, and men
that loved 'em, but could never get anigh 'em, who played on guitars
under the trees, and made me that miserable I could have cried, because
I wanted to love somebody, I don't know who, better than the men with
the guitars did.

Then the sun went down, it got dark, the wind moaned and wept like a
lost child for its dead mother, and I could 'a' got up then and there
and preached a better sermon than any I ever listened to. There wasn't a
thing in the world left to live for, not a blame thing, and yet I didn't
want the music to stop one bit. It was happier to be miserable than to
be happy without being miserable. I couldn't understand it. I hung my
head and pulled out my handkerchief, and blowed my nose loud to keep me
from cryin'. My eyes is weak anyway; I didn't want anybody to be
a-gazin' at me a-sniv'lin', and it's nobody's business what I do with my
nose. It's mine. But some several glared at me mad as blazes. Then, all
of a sudden, old Rubin changed his tune. He ripped out and he rared, he
tipped and he tared, he pranced and he charged like the grand entry at a
circus. 'Peared to me that all the gas in the house was turned on at
once, things got so bright, and I hilt up my head, ready to look any man
in the face, and not afraid of nothin'. It was a circus and a brass band