tain in its
shade continued its tuneful melody as if it were a little hurdy-gurdy
celebrating my return to health.

To-day that old plum tree is dead and its trunk the only thing left of
it, and spared out of respect, is covered, like a ruin, with ivy vines.

But the pond, with its grottoes and islets, still remains intact; time
has given it the appearance of genuine nature herself. Its greenish
stones look old and decayed; the mosses, the delicate little plants
brought from the river, and the rushes and wild iris have acclimated
themselves, and dragon flies that stray through the town take refuge
there--a bit of wild nature has established itself in that little corner
and I hope it will never be disturbed.

I am more loyally attached to that spot than to any other, although
I have loved many places; in no other one have I found so much peace;
there I feel tranquil, there I refresh myself and acquire youth and new
life. That little corner is my sacred Mecca, so much indeed is it to me
that should any one destroy it I would feel as if some vital thing in
my life had lost balance, would feel that I had missed my footing, or
almost imagine that it presaged the beginning of my end.

The reverent feeling that I have for the place has been born, I believe,
from my sea-faring life, with its long voyages to distant places and its
dreary exiles during which I thought and dreamed of it constantly.

There is in particular one little grotto for which I have an especial
affection: the memory of it has often, in times of depression and
melancholy, during the years of weary exile heartened me.

After the angel Azrael had so cruelly passed our way, after reverses of
many sorts, and during that sad term when I was a wanderer on the face
of the earth, and my widowed mother and my aunt Claire were left alone
in the beloved but deserted home that was almost as silent as a tomb, I
experienced many a heartache as I thought of the dear hearthstone and of
the things so familiar to my childhood that were doubtless going to
ruin through neglect. I felt especially anxious to know if the storms
of winter and the hands of time had destroyed the delicate arch of that
grotto; and strange as it may seem, if those little moss-covered rocks
had fallen in I would have felt that an almost irreparable breach had
been made in my own life.

At the side of the pond there is an old gray wall which is an integral
part of the corner that I call my Holy Me