, I have found a pleasure that seemed even
to exalt my mind in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls
as they wheeled and hovered about each other with hoarse screams, one
moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft till
their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the
summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of
activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There
I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from
afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern steamboat;
there, too, is the sun, going down, but not in gloom, and there the
illimitable ocean mingling with the sky, to remind me of eternity.

But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk
that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing
fireside. And never, even on the first Thanksgiving-night, when Susan
and I sat alone with our hopes, nor the second, when a stranger had
been sent to gladden us and be the visible image of our affection, did
I feel such joy as now. All that belongs to me are here: Death has
taken none, nor Disease kept them away, nor Strife divided them from
their parents or each other; with neither poverty nor riches to
disturb them, nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have
kept New England's festival round the patriarch's board. For I am a
patriarch. Here I sit among my descendants, in my old arm-chair and
immemorial corner, while the firelight throws an appropriate glory
round my venerable frame.--Susan! My children! Something whispers me
that this happiest hour must be the final one, and that nothing
remains but to bless you all and depart with a treasure of recollected
joys to heaven. Will you meet me there? Alas! your figures grow
indistinct, fading into pictures on the air, and now to fainter
outlines, while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar
room, and shows the book that I flung down and the sheet that I left
half written some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the
looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless those be the
mermaid's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a
tender and melancholy smile.

Ah! One feels a chilliness--not bodily, but about the heart--and,
moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes.
I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and
terror after dismissing the shado