He would let it stay, and go on with the action of
the story. He put his head in his hands and began to think hard.
His mind soon passed from thought to reverie. He fell to wondering when
his friends would find work and relieve him of the burden--he
acknowledged it as such--of keeping them, and of letting another man
wear his best clothes on alternate Sundays. He wondered when his "luck"
would turn. There were one or two influential people in New York whom
he could go and see if he had a dress suit and the other conventional
uniforms. His thoughts ran on far ahead, and at the same time, by a sort
of double process, far behind as well. His home in the "old country"
rose up before him; he saw the lawn and the cedars in sunshine; he
looked through the familiar windows and saw the clean, swept rooms. His
story began to suffer; the psychological masterpiece would not make much
progress unless he pulled up and dragged his thoughts back to the
treadmill. But he no longer cared; once he had got as far as that cedar
with the sunshine on it, he never could get back again.
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