earlier period of life than the habit of romancers authorizes.--Love, of course.--She was a famous beauty afterwards.--I am satisfied that many children rehearse their parts in the drama of life before they have shed all their milk-teeth.--I think I won't tell the story of the golden blonde.--I suppose everybody has had his childish fancies; but sometimes they are passionate impulses, which anticipate all the tremulous emotions belonging to a later period. Most children remember seeing and adoring an angel before they were a dozen years old.
[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, a little way from the table.--It's true, it's true,--said the old gentleman.--He took hold of a steel watch-chain, which carried a large, square gold key at one end and was supposed to have some kind of timekeeper at the other. With some trouble he dragged up an ancient-looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. He looked at it for a moment,--hesitated,--touched the inner corner of his right eye with the pulp of his middle finger,--looked at the face of the watch,--said it was getting into the forenoon,--then opened the watch and handed me the loose outside case without a word.--The watch-paper had been pink once, and had a faint tinge still, as if all its tender life had not yet quite faded out. Two little birds, a flower, and, in small school-girl letters, a date,--17...--no matter.--Before I was thirteen years old,--said the old gentleman.--I 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 of the evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard,--so that I well remember I used to think
