Page:My father as I recall him (IA cu31924013473610).djvu/142

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
120
LAST WORDS.

become more associated with the place, and his desire to be buried near it.

On the morning of the eighth he was in excellent spirits, speaking of his book, at which he intended working through the day, and in which he was most intensely interested. He spent a busy morning in the châ1et, and it must have been then that he wrote that description of Rochester, which touched our hearts when we read it for the first time after its writer lay dead: "Brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beautiful with the lusty ivy gleaming in the sun and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods and fields, or rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its yielding time, penetrate into the cathedral, subdue its earthly odor, and preach the Resurrection and the Life."

He returned to the house for luncheon,