lmost immediately, but coming at so slow a
pace, that the fall of the horses' feet was not audible until we were
close upon them. I mention the case for the sake of the undying
impressions which connected themselves with the circumstances. The first
notice of the approach was the sudden emerging of horses' heads from the
deep gloom of the shady lane; the next was the mass of white pillows
against which the dying patient was reclining. The hearse-like pace at
which the carriage moved recalled the overwhelming spectacle of the
funeral which had so lately formed part in the most memorable event of
my life. But these elements of awe, that might at any rate have struck
forcibly upon the mind of a child, were for me, in my condition of
morbid nervousness, raised into abiding grandeur by the antecedent
experiences of that particular summer night. The listening for hours to
the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant roads, rising and falling,
caught and lost, upon the gentle undulation of such light, fitful airs
as might be stirring--the peculiar solemnity of the hours succeeding to
sunset--the gorgeousness of the dying day--the gorgeousness which, by
description, so well I knew of those West Indian islands from which my
father was returning--the knowledge that he returned only to die--the
almighty pomp in which this great idea of Death appareled itself to my
young suffering heart--the corresponding pomp in which the antagonistic
idea, not less mysterious, of life, rose, as if on wings, to the
heavens, amidst tropic glories and floral pageantries, that seemed even
_more_ solemn and more pathetic than, the vapory plumes and trophies of
mortality--all this chorus of restless images, or of suggestive
thoughts, gave to my father's return, which else had been fitted only to
interpose a transitory illumination or red-letter day in the calendar of
a child, the shadowy power of an ineffaceable agency among my dreams.
This, indeed, was the one sole memorial which restores my father's image
to me as a personal reality. Otherwise, he would have been for me a bare
_nominis umbra_. He languished, indeed, for weeks upon a sofa; and,
during that interval, it happened naturally, from my meditative habits
and corresponding repose of manners, that I was a privileged visitor to
him during his waking hours. I was also present at his bed-side in the
closing hour of his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of
delirious conversation with some i