FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187  
188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202   203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   212   >>   >|  
he midst of this picture was another,--the precise outline of a map which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was built. We had all forgotten everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sin which has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self-recorded. The Professor lived in that house a long time,--not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time,--and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those walls, forever,--the Professor said,--for the many pleasant years he has passed within them! The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has been with him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him in imagination with tender interest wherever he goes.--In that little court, where he lived in gay loneliness so long,-- --in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from its mountain fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its lower shores,--up in that caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions, --where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor always called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to look through his old "Dollond" to see if the Shining Ones were not within range of sight,--sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks which carried them by the peaceful common, through the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187  
188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202   203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   212   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Professor

 

entered

 

shadows

 

passed

 

distance

 

loneliness

 
oxbows
 

autumnal

 
luxurious
 
overflows

memory

 
profligate
 
freshets
 

inhabitant

 
oldest
 

Northampton

 
meadows
 

quietly

 
Hartford
 

Connecticut


mountain

 
fastnesses
 

loitering

 

sojourn

 

swallowing

 

swollen

 

wantons

 

proprietary

 

rivulets

 

Dollond


Shining

 

Heavenward

 

climbing

 
masses
 
suggestive
 

Pilgrim

 

carried

 

peaceful

 

common

 

Sunday


sweetest

 

visions

 
horizon
 

jovial

 
Colonel
 
launched
 

Ledyard

 
shores
 
caravansary
 

stream