The anticipation of the ball stirred Black Rock and the camps with a
thrill of expectant delight. Nowadays, when I find myself forced to
leave my quiet smoke in my studio after dinner at the call of some
social engagement which I have failed to elude, I groan at my hard lot,
and I wonder as I look back and remember the pleasurable anticipation
with which I viewed the approaching ball. But I do not wonder now any
more than I did then at the eager delight of the men who for seven days
in the week swung their picks up in the dark breasts of the mines, or
who chopped and sawed among the solitary silences of the great forests.
Any break in the long and weary monotony was welcome; what mattered
the cost or consequence! To the rudest and least cultured of them the
sameness of the life must have been hard to bear; but what it was to men
who had seen life in its most cultured and attractive forms I fail to
imagine. From the mine, black and foul, to the shack, bare, cheerless,
and sometimes hideously repulsive, life swung in heart-grinding monotony
till the longing for a 'big drink' or some other 'big break' became too
great to bear.
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