don't know what was in that young schoolmistress's head, nor
why she should have done it; but she took out the watch-paper and put it
softly to her lips, as if she were kissing the poor thing that made it so
long ago. The old gentleman took the watch-paper carefully from her,
replaced it, turned away and walked out, holding the watch in his hand. I
saw him pass the window a moment after with that foolish white hat on his
head; he couldn't have been thinking what he was about when he put it on.
So the schoolmistress and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade
nearer to her, and continued.]

And since I am talking of early recollections, I don't know why I
shouldn't mention some others that still cling to me,--not that you will
attach any very particular meaning to these same images so full of
significance to me, but that you will find something parallel to them in
your own memory. You remember, perhaps, what I said one day about smells.
There were certain _sounds_ also which had a mysterious suggestiveness to
me,--not so intense, perhaps, as that connected with the other sense, but
yet peculiar, and never to be forgotten.

The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, bringing their loads of oak
and walnut from the country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them along
over the complaining snow, in the cold, brown light of early morning.
Lying in bed and listening to their dreary music had a pleasure in it akin
to that which Lucretius describes in witnessing a ship toiling through the
waves while we sit at ease on shore, or that which Byron speaks of as to
be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one "who hath no friend, no
brother there."

There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and so connected with one of
those simple and curious superstitions of childhood of which I have
spoken, that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love for it.--Let
me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan "Sabbath," as everybody
knows, began at "sundown" on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I
was born and bred. As the large, round disk of day declined, a stillness,
a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for
work to cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life
passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should
sink again beneath the horizon.

It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul within that
the pulsating lullaby