Читать книгу The Four-Masted Cat-Boat, and Other Truthful Tales онлайн

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How the bells jangled! Surely it was not seeming, but actuality. They were right outside on the street.

Impulsively he ran to the office window and looked down with boyish anticipation.

“Jingle-jangle!” went the bells. “Rha-ags, rha-ags, any ol’ rha-ags!” shouted the ragman.

It was a bright morning in the early spring, a time to call forth poetic fancies in the mind of the most prosaic; and Jack was more imaginative than many boys. He had been spending the winter at his uncle’s in the country, and these warm, languorous days had made him long for New York once more. He sat astride of a maple-branch, on which the crimson leaves were just peeping out. Ah me, what would he not give to be back in the city! He leaned back against the tree-trunk and gave himself over to day-dreams.

The boys on his block were spinning tops. Oh, for a good hard city pavement for just five minutes, that he might do the same. Through the hazy air came the anything but drowsy tinklings of the grip-men’s gongs; a scissors-grinder blew his horn; and the exciting clang of an ambulance-gong split the air as the ambulance rattled over the Belgian blocks. Oh, for an hour of the dear city in the happy springtime! To hear once more the piano-organ and the harp, and the thousand delightful sounds that were so lamentably absent from the country!