I sometimes get thinking of the long, unbroken
succession of these men, until they come to look like one Man; continuous
in being, unchanging as the stone he watches, looking upon the successive
generations of human beings as they come and go, and outliving all the
dynasties of the world in all probability. It has come to such a pass
that I never speak to the Man of the Monument without wanting to take my
hat off and feeling as if I were looking down a vista of twenty or thirty
centuries.
The "Man of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way, I
thought, that he had n't got so far as that. He was n't quite up to
moral reflections on toll-men and ticket-takers. Sentiment was n't his
tap.
He looked round triumphantly for a response: but the Capitalist was a
little hard of hearing just then; the Register of Deeds was browsing on
his food in the calm bovine abstraction of a quadruped, and paid no
attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and whisked himself
away with that peculiar alacrity which belongs to the retail dealer's
assistant; and the Member of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be
impressed with his "tahlented mahn's" air of superiority to the rest of
us, looked as if he thought the speaker was not exactly parliamentary.
So he failed to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not in the
best humor, I thought, when he left the table.
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