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One day as he was walking along the miry road between Elstow and Bedford, which he had so often paced as a schoolboy, "the temptation came hot upon him" to put the matter to the proof, by saying to the puddles that were in the horse-pads "be dry," and to the dry places, "be ye puddles." He was just about to utter the words when a sudden thought stopped him.
He found a dirt alley with mud puddles, wandering chickens, barefoot children, and a grandmother with two gold teeth. He discovered small factories and, incredibly, in the middle of the city, a watercress farm. He read The Advertiser every morning in Tops. He got to know the city as well as he could in a few days. But no one called.
The colonel had often noticed the black children paddling around barefoot in the puddles on rainy days, but there was evidently some point of etiquette connected with attending school barefoot. He had passed more than twenty-five children on the streets, on his way to the schoolhouse. The building was even worse than that of the academy, and the equipment poorer still.
I really do not know, but it seems to me that I can still see the boots of the dear little one placed there on the mat beside my own, two grains of sand by two paving stones, a tom tit beside an elephant. They were his every-day boots, his playfellows, those with which he ascended sand hills and explored puddles.
With the coming of dawn the day cleared, the sun glistened on a thousand puddles, making them silver and gold.... By walking carefully on the side of the road, I made progress less muddy. I was used to the squashing of the water in my shoes. The weather turned warmer. I found myself on the usual long one-street called Main Street, in the prosperous little city of Osageville. It was Sunday.
The air was still and wintry; a sudden cold snap had set in and skims of ice had formed over puddles in the road; the smoke from the chimneys rose straight in the quiet air and voices sounded loud, as they do in frosty weather. Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip, poring laboriously over some account books.
Every Wrykinian had to learn to swim before he was allowed on the river; so that the peril of Jackson and his crew was not extreme: and it was soon speedily evident that swimming was also part of the Judy curriculum, for the shipwrecked ones were soon climbing drippingly on board the surviving ships, where they sat and made puddles, and shrieked defiance at their antagonists.
By the magic power of the shoes he was carried back to the times of King Hans; on which account his foot very naturally sank in the mud and puddles of the street, there having been in those days no pavement in Copenhagen. "Well! This is too bad! How dirty it is here!" sighed the Councillor. "As to a pavement, I can find no traces of one, and all the lamps, it seems, have gone to sleep."
"We're not afraid of good dogs," said Bunny. "And we've got a dog of our own," added Sue. "His name is Splash, 'cause he splashes through the muddy puddles so much that he gets us all wet when he's with us. That's why we don't take him so often, lessen we know it's going to be a dry day." "I see," said the ragged man. "Well, Tramp is pretty good, except that he loves children too much."
It was a very beautiful rapid, and the guide-book considers it equal in sublimity to Niagara. Likewise there were one or two lakes which the guide-book greatly admired, but which to me, who remembered a hundred sheets of blue water in New England, seemed nothing more than sullen and dreary puddles, with bare banks, and wholly destitute of beauty.
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