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Hecht, Ben, 1894-1964

"A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago"

A
dream, perhaps, buried long ago. A hope, an emotion successfully interred
under the amiable rubbish the days have piled up.
Then, too, there is the question, "Where you going?" And an answer to it
that seems to come out of the long reaches of water--"Come with
me--somewhere--nowhere."
These thoughts play in people's minds without words. They are almost more
a part of the lake than of their thinking, as if they were, in fact, lake
thoughts.
Another reason why people grow sad when they look at the water of the lake
is perhaps that the lake offers them an escape from the tawdry, nagging
little responsibilities of the day that go with being a citizen and a
breadwinner. Not that it invites to suicide. Quite the reverse; it invites
to living. To doing something that has a sweep to it; that has a swagger
to it. To setting sail for strange ports where strange adventures wait.
So, as the I. C. trains rush their thousands to work and home again the
citizens and breadwinners let their imaginations gallop toward a faraway
horizon. And these imaginations came galloping back again and the
breadwinners are saddened--by a memory. Yes, they were for a moment
rovers, egad! swashbucklers, gentlemen and ladies of fortune free of the
rigamarole burdens that keep them on the I.


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