The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oldport Days, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

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Title: Oldport Days

Author: Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Posting Date: March 23, 2009 [EBook #2418]
Release Date: December, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLDPORT DAYS ***

Produced by Judy Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.

Transcriber's Note: I have closed contractions in the text, e.g., "did
n't" becoming "didn't" for example; I have also added the missing
period after "caress" in line 11 of page 61, and have changed "ever" to
"over" in line 16 of page 121.

OLDPORT DAYS.

BY

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM.
1888.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

CONTENTS.

OLDPORT IN WINTER
OLDPORT WHARVES
THE HAUNTED WINDOW
A DRIFT-WOOD FIRE
AN ARTIST'S CREATION
IN A WHERRY
MADAM DELIA'S EXPECTATIONS
SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH
A SHADOW
FOOTPATHS

OLDPORT DAYS.

OLDPORT IN WINTER.

Our August life rushes by, in Oldport, as if we were all shot from the
mouth of a cannon, and were endeavoring to exchange visiting-cards on
the way. But in September, when the great hotels are closed, and the
bronze dogs that guarded the portals of the Ocean House are collected
sadly in the music pavilion, nose to nose; when the last four-in-hand
has departed, and a man may drive a solitary horse on the avenue
without a pang,--then we know that "the season" is over. Winter is yet
several months away,--months of the most delicious autumn weather that
the American climate holds. But to the human bird of passage all that
is not summer is winter; and those who seek Oldport most eagerly for
two months are often those who regard it as uninhabitable for the other
ten.

The Persian poet Saadi says that in a certain region of Armenia, where
he travelled, people never died the natural death. But once a year they
met on a cer