From the eminence of my conceit I got a full view of its languor and littleness. Even the river slowed its pace half a mile above and came on like a spent horse. Near the Mill House half a mile below it began to hurry, and always I had the stir of the rapids in me.
Feet accustomed to the pace of the plow were going into town. The clink of an anvil broke the silence. I had often watched the great blacksmith as he worked. That clinking indicated the flow of his thought and the strength of his convictions. Words fell between hammer-strokes, and were often as hot as the beaten metal.
The shop of B. Crocket & Son, whither I was bound, stood on a narrow byway bordered with small wooden buildings. The shop itself had a little door-yard where headstones and monuments stood among blocks of marble. Inside were benches on which the stone was being trimmed, lettered, and polished. There everything was white with marble-dust. Mr. B. Crocket—called “Judge Crocket” by all who knew him, and so called because, in his own way, he pronounced judgment on those who lived and died about him—stood over a headstone cutting an epitaph. A number of men past middle age sat around a small table in one corner playing old sledge. They looked up at me as I entered. A man and a red-headed boy, the latter of about my age, were polishing a block of granite near the far end of the shop. I approached the Judge and bade him good-morning. He looked down out of gray eyes colder than the marble on which he leaned. His pale, wizened face was itself a wonderful bit of sculpture.
“Are you the young Heron?” he asked.
The men who were playing cards began to laugh, and I was a bit stung by it, having a strong sense of dignity.
“I am Mr. Heron,” was my answer.
“Huh!” my new employer grunted. “Take off your mister and your coat and vest and put on a pair of overalls.”
The men laughed loudly, in spite of the fact that I had been to Buffalo. I felt inclined to resent his words, but held my tongue and did as he bade me, for I had brought some overalls in my satchel.
He went on with his work, and said, presently, that his son would tell me what to do. The latter did not give me a mallet and chisel, as I had hoped, but set me polishing with the redheaded boy of my own age, familiarly known as “Swipes.” I had been reading the life of Michelangelo, which my mother had bought for me, and dreaming of high achievements. It had come to nothing but sweating over a hand-lathe and slopping in dirty water.
Two of those who played at the table were old soldiers, the third a business man, the fourth a retired farmer. One, with an empty sleeve, entered presently and sat on a half-finished monument that lay near them, as if accepting the invitation cut in its polished face, “Requiescat in pace.” He begged a chew of tobacco, and began to talk, telling how he got tobacco hunger in a battle and searched for it in the pockets of the dead. The other soldiers took the cue and told of many a like adventure as they played their game. The retired farmer was not unlike them, for he, too, had begun his long rest. He of the one arm passed a bottle as the game ended. Then all seemed to pry themselves out of their chairs with levers of necessity.