I don't know what has come over the town."
And he slams down the shutter with a fretful jerk. I grope my way
home in Egyptian darkness, thanking in my heart the town council
for its forethought in painting the lamp-posts white. It was when
a dispute sprang up about the price of gas, or something. Danish
disputes are like the law the world over, slow of gait; and it was
in no spirit of mockery that a resolution was passed to paint the
lamp-posts white, pending the controversy, so that the good people
in the town might avoid running against them in the dark and getting
hurt, if by any mischance they strayed from the middle of the road.
[Illustration: The Extinct Chimney-sweep]
Bright and early the next morning I found women at work sprinkling
white sand in the street in front of my door, and strewing it
with winter-green and twigs of hemlock. Some one was dead, and the
funeral was to pass that way. Indeed they all did. The cemetery
was at the other end of the street. It was one of the inducements
held out to my mother she told me, when father died, to move from
the old home into that street.
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