"But, sometimes, mastered after long struggles, I seized my spectacles
and sauntered into the little town. Putting them to my eyes I peered
into the houses and at the people who passed me. Here sat a family at
breakfast, and I stood at the window looking in. O motley meal!
fantastic vision! The good mother saw her lord sitting opposite, a
grave, respectable being, eating muffins. But I saw only a bank-bill,
more or less crumpled and tattered, marked with a larger or lesser
figure. If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it tremble and flutter;
it was thin, flat, impalpable. I removed my glasses, and looked with
my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled to see the humid tenderness
with which she regarded her strange _vis-a-vis_. Is life only a game
of blind-man's-buff? of droll cross-purposes?
"Or I put them on again, and looked at the wife. How many stout trees
I saw,--how many tender flowers,--how many placid pools; yes, and how
many little streams winding out of sight, shrinking before the large,
hard, round eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude and shade,
with a low, inner song for their own solace.
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