Yet for all
their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them
managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of
evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and
cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of
existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices,
their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste,
every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those
houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to
make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the
dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the
only evidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all.
On Tuesday nights the Owl Club danced; then there was a little stir in the
streets, and here and there one could see a lighted window until midnight.
But the next night all was dark again.
After I refused to join `the Owls,' as they were called, I made a bold
resolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hall. I knew it
would be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfather
didn't approve of dancing, anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to
dance I could go to the Masonic Hall, among `the people we knew.
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