This was too large for their little hands to grasp, and by means of some grievance inside, or perhaps through a cruel trick of the plumber, up went the long handle every time small fingers were too confiding, and there it stood up like the tail of a rampant cow, or a branch inaccessible, until an old shawl or the cord of a peg-top could be cast up on high to reduce it.

But some engineering boy, "highly gifted," like Uncle Sam's self, "with machinery," had discovered an ingenious cure for this.

With the help of the girls he used to fasten a fat little thing, about twelve months old, in the bend at the middle of the handle, and there (like a ham on the steelyard) hung this baby and enjoyed seesaw, and laughed at its own utility.
I never saw this, and the splashing and dribbling and play and bright revelry of water, without forgetting all sad counsel and discretion, and rushing out as if the dingy pump were my own delicious Blue River.
People used to look at me from the windows with pity and astonishment, supposing me to be crazed or frantic, especially the Germans.

For to run out like this, without a pocket full of money, would have been insanity; and to run out with it, to their minds, was even clearer proof of that condition.

For the money went as quickly as the water of the pump; on this side and on that it flew, each child in succession making deeper drain upon it, in virtue of still deeper woes.