As first the thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors,
into which there presently crept form and order.
. . . A boy who had cried to get on, and was now crying to get off.
. . . Old Rube Hobson and his young wife; Rube looking white
and scared, partly by the whizzing motion, and partly by the
prospect of paying out ten cents for the doubtful pleasure.
. . . Pretty Hetty Dunnell with that young fellow from Portland;
she too timid to mount one of the mettle-some chargers, and snuggling
close to him in one of the circling seats. The, good Got!--
Dell! sitting on a prancing white horse, with the man he knew,
the man he feared, riding beside her; a man who kept holding on her
hat with fingers that trembled,--the very hat she "'peared bride in"
a man who brushed a grasshopper from her shoulder with an air
of ownership, and, when she slapped his hand coquettishly,
even dared to pinch her pink cheek,--his wife's cheek,--
before that crowd of on-lookers! Merry-go-round, indeed!
The horrible thing was well named; and life was just like it,--
a whirl of happiness and misery, in which the music cannot play
loud enough to drown the creak of the machinery, in which one
soul cries out in pain, another in terror, and the rest laugh;
but the prancing steeds gallop on, gallop on, and once mounted,
there is no getting off, unless .
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