228 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 
towards the city. The sun sank in orange 
splendor behind the Ossipees, and then the 
night overwhelmed color and form in its shad¬ 
ows, and left the mind freer in its musings. 
What had the day brought forth at the polls ? 
Had the party of past glories and present decay 
won another of its wonderful series of victories, 
or had the people risen in their might and 
spoken for reform ? I hoped for some gleam of 
news before the journey was over, but Ports¬ 
mouth, Newbury port, Salem, and Lynn were 
all passed without tidings of what the day had 
done. Even in Boston, with its narrow streets 
filled with restless rivers of men and women, 
there seemed to be no word of victory or defeat. 
At half past ten I reached a small room high 
in one of the great newspaper offices on Wash¬ 
ington Street. Its windows looked out upon 
a -strange sight. Far below me was a vast ex¬ 
panse of human heads upon which shone the 
bluish white glare of the hooded electric lamps. 
As white bubbles, densely spread upon the pale 
green of the ocean’s water in some rock-rimmed 
grotto, surge now out, now in; to left, to right; 
advancing, retreating; crowding or separating; 
so those countless human heads swayed first one 
way, then another, moved by fickle eddies and 
forces hard to understand. Wild cries came 
from the crowd, cheers, jeers, and yells of pain 
or brutal merriment. 
