They are not
the two dusty millers in the white mill down by the river, where
the great water-wheel goes heavily round and round, like the
monotonous days and nights in this forgotten place. Then who are
they, for there is no one else? No; this deponent maketh oath and
saith that there is no one else, save and except the waiter at the
Dodo, now laying the cloth. I have paced the streets, and stared
at the houses, and am come back to the blank bow window of the
Dodo; and the town clocks strike seven, and the reluctant echoes
seem to cry, 'Don't wake us!' and the bandy-legged baby has gone
home to bed.
If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird - if he had only some
confused idea of making a comfortable nest - I could hope to get
through the hours between this and bed-time, without being consumed
by devouring melancholy. But, the Dodo's habits are all wrong. It
provides me with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a chair
for every day in the year, a table for every month, and a waste of
sideboard where a lonely China vase pines in a corner for its mate
long departed, and will never make a match with the candlestick in
the opposite corner if it live till Doomsday.
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