There were echoes in our valley. We could shout and hear the shout repeated, rolling and reflected in the hilly distances, And at night we could hear the lonesome rumbling of trains, the most disturbing of all our sounds. All that was dissatisfied within us was wrought upon by that rumbling— all that soared and searched and sought, that groped and reached beyond. The trains that screamed through our lonesome country were not bound to schedules, at least not in our imaginations. They were not plodding cars making their way, over and over again, from station to station, working like a clock. They were free agents, roaring through the night, speeding off into distance. They had shed the routine of existence, the humdrum, and the everyday and had struck away into the depths. Trains made us realize how much there was to do that we would never do, how much there was to tap if only we could touch it. How our spirits were bound to our bodies, to crumbs and the ground.
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