And Martin, seein’ my enthoosiasm, and though he didn’t share it, not at all, he asked me if I didn’t want to go up and walk on the great wall—which I did. So we had the carriage stopped at one of the gates, and he and I and Alice and Al Faizi went up and walked on the parapets.
And I probble had as many as 70 or 80 emotions as I felt that eight-foot wall under my feet and looked up at the solid, round watch-towers, with narrer slits in the stun, for arrers to be shot out of onto the enemies, and way up above ’em the little turrets for the sentinuls to look out.
I wonder how that sentinul felt there on cool moonlight nights twelve or fourteen hundred years ago—I wonder what century old grief or pain hanted his lonely heart through the night-watches—Love, Hope, mebby they lightened his lonely watch jest as they do in 1900.
Tenny rate, the same sun and moon looked down on him, and Love and Hope is as old as they be—as old as the world.
Al Faizi, I believe, had a sight of emotions, too. He stood still and looked off with a dreamy look on his face.
Martin thought the stun wuz good and solid, and might be utilized for buildin’ depots and grain elevators and sech.
Alice looked good-natered and didn’t say much.
Josiah wuz a-makin’ a cat’s cradle with Adrian when we went back to the buggy. And I told him I didn’t see how he could be a-playin’ with weltin’ cord at sech a time as this, when he could see this wall.
And he sez, “Dum it all! mebby you wouldn’t take so to stun walls if you had broke your back, and got so many stun bruises as I have a-layin’ ’em.”
“Wall,” sez I soothin’ly, “do jest as you feel, Josiah. But I wouldn’t have missed the sight for a dollar bill.”