The old man was returning from work one evening when he saw the hoop of
an old barrel lying in the street. It was a rough, dirty object. The
old man trembled with happiness, and tears appeared in his dull eyes. A
sudden, almost irresistible desire took possession of him.
He glanced cautiously around him; then he bent down, picked up the hoop
with trembling hands, and smiling shamefacedly, carried it home with
him.
No one noticed him, no one questioned him. Whose concern was it? A
ragged old man was carrying an old, battered, useless hoop—who cared?
He carried it stealthily, afraid of ridicule. Why he picked it up and
why he carried it, he himself could not tell. Still, it was like the
boy’s hoop, and this was enough. There was no harm in it lying about.
He could look at it; he could touch it. It would stimulate his
reveries; the whistle and turmoil of the factory would grow fainter,
the escaping vapours less dense....
For several days the hoop lay under the bed in the old man’s poor,
cramped quarters. Sometimes he would take it from its place and look at
it; the dirty, grey hoop soothed the old man, and the sight of it
quickened his persistent thoughts about the happy little boy.
V
It was a clear, warm morning, and the birds were chirping away in the
consumptive urban trees somewhat more cheerfully than usual. The old
man rose early, took his hoop, and walked a little distance out of
town.
He coughed as he made his way among the old trees and the thorny bushes
in the woods. The trees, covered with their dry, blackish, bursting
bark, seemed to him incomprehensibly and sternly silent. The odours
were strange, the insects astonishing, the ferns of gigantic growth.
There was neither dust nor din here, and the gentle, exquisite morning
mist lay behind the trees. The old feet glided over the dry leaves and
stumbled across the old gnarled roots.
The old man broke off a dry limb and hung his hoop upon it.
He came upon an opening, full of daylight and of calm. The dewdrops,
countless and opalescent, gleamed upon the green blades of newly mown
grass.
Suddenly the old man let the hoop slide off the stick. He struck with
the stick, and sent the hoop rolling across the green lawn. The old man
laughed, brightened at once, and pursued the hoop like that little boy.
He kicked up his feet and drove the hoop with his stick, which he
flourished high over his head, just as that little boy did.
It seemed to him that he was small, beloved, and happy. It seemed to
him that he was being looked after by his mother, who was following
close behind and smiling. Like a child on his first outing, he felt
refreshed on the bright grass, and on the still mosses.
His goat-like, dust-grey beard, that harmonized with his sallow face,
trembled, while his cough mingled with his laughter, and raucous sounds
came from his toothless mouth.