MY FRIENDS AND I: MEMORIES.
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��ilee! Didst never think, oh, friend of mine, that that same calm moon and those changeless watchers in heaven's blue vault , which we so love to worship, looked down, in the ages that were, upon the scenes and incidents of ' Holy Laud ? ' Didst never ask them, in your home in the up country, to tell you the story of that legendary eastern clime and the 'Boy of Nazareth?'"
I bade Wilbur Austin a reluctant good- bye that night, and saw him not again for many months ; then our meeting was in this wise: In one of those far-off years of mine, full of rovings here and there, a soft, star-lit evening in early au- tumn found me at a quiet New Hamp- shire village. Many such are found at short intervals, scattered throughout the Connecticut valley, set like constellation gems along that watery way.
You may know the place ; near where a spur of those grand old hills sets down his granite foot far across the valley, and the river goes fretting around it as though disturbed at the intended barrier. " Moosilauke," overlooking his humbler neighbors, lifts his shaggy summit into cloud-land toward the east.
There is a long avenue, the village street, stretching away beneath a shad- ow of wide-spreading elms, older than the century. A miniature park invites the wayfarer into its semi-solitude, and here the purple twilight falls early, for the sun sets before its time to the villag- ers atween the hills, and night comes down slowly.
Leisurely sauntering, almost unmind- ful, I lent a listening ear to the quaint song of a whippoorwill, sent from the gray cliffs a little back from the village street, and heard above the whisperings of winds and waters down below.
But now voices, less inspiring perhaps, but quite as familiar, aroused me from dreamy reveries, and, pausing, I became an involuntary though not an unwilling listener. I could not be mistaken ; it was the voice of my old friend, though to- night somewhat tremulous and sad, and I knew the deep springs of his soul were stirred to their lowest depths and were welling up, up. I fancied I could hear
��other tones, too, of a crushed and fear- ful anguish, as of a heart bowed down.
" Yes, dear Ellen, it must be so ; the cup is bitter, but it must be drained. I had anticipated no objection from your father to the realization of our fondest hopes. I know I am altogether unwor- thy your hand or your love, but some- how I had dared to hope, too fondly, alas, that our happiness was not to be disturbed in this way ; but since the fiat has been spoken, I shut my eyes upon the bright picture of our future, tinted by ' love's young dream,' and shall open them on the morrow to the stern realities of the ' it must be so.' I love you too well to have you incur parental displeas- ure or sow the seeds for future unhappi- ness and sorrowful regrets. To-morrow I go to wander I know not whither, and we may never meet again, but I would not have you forget me soon, nor our brief dream of bliss, whether I tarry among the sunny scenes of life or go away beyond the hills of earth. On some quiet evening of midsummer, when there are no dampening shadows between the flowers and the stars we so love for com- panionship, and when the silvery moon- light creeps over the hilltop yonder and down into the valley, weaving around the soul its wizard spell, go out then upon the river's bank, and beneath the
- old oak ' whose waving branches shel-
ter the rock-hewn seat where we so oft have sat in the gloaming, listening to the wild songs of evening and watching the night come down with all the stars — sit there, I say, in the old familiar spot, and know for a verity, if the soul is superior to the clay, I will sit beside you, and we will talk of the past and its memories. And why not? Since sprits may com- mune with each other after this earthy form is abandoned, why may they not, too, while the blood is warm and the cheeks aglow and the eyes -are bright?"
For many minutes there was no re- sponse, save in stifled sobs, and I could almost realize there was raging in the depths of some pure soul a tempest of in- tense love and emotion, and in his an in- describable and tumultuous agony. At length she spoke, and her voice was
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