Web and the Rock Read Online Free PDF Page B

chirping loudly and excitedly; and the dejected, pock-marked nigger and his tremendous dog going away up the street, the big dog drop ping big blood flakes on the pavement as he goes. And finally, silence as before, the quiet street again, the rustling of young maple leaves in the light wind, the brooding imminence of three o'clock, a few bright blood-flakes on the pavement, and all else the way that it had always been, and George Webber as before stretched out upon the grass be neath the tree there in his uncle's yard, chin cupped in hands, adrift on time's great dream, and thinking: "Great God, this is the way things are, I see and know this is the way things are, I understand this is the way things are: and, Great God!
 Great God! this being just the way things are, how strange, and plain, and savage, sweet and cruel, lovely, terrible, and mysterious, and how unmistakable and familiar all things are!"
 Three o'clock!
 "Child, child!--Where are you, child?"
 So did he always know Aunt Maw was there!
 "Son, son!--Where are you son?"
 Too far for finding and too near to seek!
 "Boy, boy!--Where is that boy?"
 Where you, at any rate, or any other of the apron-skirted kind, can never come.
 "You can't take your eye off him a minute...."
 Keep eye on, then; it will do no good.
 "The moment that your back is turned, he's up and gone...."
 And out and off and far away from you--no matter if your back is turned or not!
 "I can never find him when I need him...."
 Need me no needs, sweet dame; when I need you, you shall be so informed!
 "But he can eat, all right.... He's Johnny-on-the-spot when it is time to eat...."
 And, pray, what is there so remarkable in that? Of course he eats- more power to his eating, too. Was Hercules a daffodil; did Adam toy with water cress; did Falstaff wax fat eating lettuces; was Dr. Johnson surfeited on shredded wheat; or Chaucer on a handful of parched corn?
 No! What is more, were campaigns fought and waged on empty bel lies; was Kublai Khan a vegetarian; did Washington have prunes for breakfast, radishes for lunch; was John L. Sullivan the slave of Holland Rusk, or President Taft the easy prey of lady fingers? No! More--who drove the traffic of swift-thronging noon, perched high above the hauling rumps of horses; who sat above the pistoned wheels of furious day; who hurled a ribbon of steel rails into the West; who dug, drove through gulches, bored through tunnels; whose old gloved hands were gripped on the throttles; who bore the hammer, and who dealt the stroke?--did such of these grow faint with longing when they thought of the full gluttony of peanut-butter and ginger snaps? And finally, the men who came back from the town at twelve o'clock, their solid liquid tramp of leather on the streets of noon, the men of labor, sweat, and business coming down the street--his uncle, Mr. Potterham, Mr. Shep perton, Mr. Crane--were fence gates opened, screen doors slammed, and was there droning torpor and the full feeding silence of assuagement and repose--if these men had come to take a cup of coffee and a nap?
 "He can eat, all right!... He's always here when it is time to eat!"
 It was to listen to such stuff as this that great men lived and suf fered, and great heroes bled! It was for this that Ajax battled, and Achilles died; it was for this that Homer sang and suffered--and Troy fell! It was for this that Artaxerxes led great armies, it was for this that Caesar took his legions over Gaul; for this that Ulysses had braved strange seas, encompassed perils of remote and magic coasts, survived the Cyclops and Charybdis, and surmounted all the famed enchantments of Circean time--to listen to such damned and dismal stuff as this--the astonishing discovery by a woman that men eat!
 Peace, woman, to your bicker--hold your prosy tongue! Get back into the world you know, and do the work for which you were in tended; you intrude--go back, go back to all your kitchen scourings, your pots and