He longs for daylight, hoping that the voices of the night will then
cease, and that sleep will come with the blessed morning. But he has
forgotten the birds, who at the first streak of gray in the east have
assembled in the trees near his chamber-window, and keep up for an
hour the most rasping dissonance,--an orchestra in which each artist
is tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play a
different tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings
"Annie Laurie,"--to pervert Bayard Taylor's song.
Give us the quiet of a city on the night before a journey. As we
mounted skyward in our hotel, and went to bed in a serene altitude,
we congratulated ourselves upon a reposeful night. It began well.
But as we sank into the first doze, we were startled by a sudden
crash. Was it an earthquake, or another fire? Were the neighboring
buildings all tumbling in upon us, or had a bomb fallen into the
neighboring crockery-store? It was the suddenness of the onset that
startled us, for we soon perceived that it began with the clash of
cymbals, the pounding of drums, and the blaring of dreadful brass.
It was somebody's idea of music. It opened without warning. The men
composing the band of brass must have stolen silently into the alley
about the sleeping hotel, and burst into the clamor of a rattling
quickstep, on purpose.
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