The Old Stone House

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

HUGH.

One bright morning towards the last of June, Bessie and Hugh were together in the studio; Bessie was working at her picture, and her cousin, seated in an old arm-chair, was gazing dreamily out through the open window over the pasture, and grove, and the blue lake beyond. "I think life is very beautiful," he said, after a long pause. "I have no patience with people who are always sighing and complaining, always talking of the cold world, the hard lot of man, and the sufferings of humanity. I always felt sure that they themselves have no taste for beauty, no affection for their friends, or enthusiasm for great deeds, and, judging others by themselves, of course they are always looking for double motives in the kindest actions, and hypocrisy in the most unselfish impulses."

"What has brought these thoughts to the surface, Hugh?"

"The beauty of the sky and the lake. How can any one look at them and not be happy?"

"If you were very poor, Hugh, you might not have time to look at them," said Bessie, taking up the other side.

"Why not? One can work and not be blind! I expect to work all my life, but I am going to be happy too."

"But suppose you should lose all those you love,—suppose they should all die," said Bessie, pursuing the argument.

"Even then I should be happy on such a day and with such a sky. I cannot understand how people who believe God's word can brood over their sorrows in such a gloomy way. Are not the dead with their great Creator? Can we not trust them to Him? Why, when I look up into this blue sky, I can almost see them there. My mother,—how often I think of her; not with sadness, always with pleasure, and a bright anticipation of meeting her again. Bessie, if I should die, you must not mourn for me. Think of me as gone into another world where sooner or later you will come too."

"Why do you say such things, Hugh?" said Bessie, laying down her brush with her eyes full of tears.

"Because they happened to come into my mind, I suppose. Why, you are not crying! Nonsense, Brownie! look at me. Do I look like dying? Am I not a young giant, with every prospect of outliving all my family? I fully expect to live to a hale old age, and you have no idea how full and busy my life is going to be. Go to work again, and I will tell you all my plans; I have never told them to any one before. In the first place, I shall go, of course, to New York, and enter Cousin John's establishment. I shall work with all my might, and, with the aid of my relationship, I shall no doubt be able to obtain a good position there in the course of a few years. Gradually I shall mount higher and higher, I shall make myself indispensable to the firm, and at the end of ten years you will see me a partner; at the end of twenty, a rich man. I shall then retire from active business, and spend part of my time in travelling, although I intend to be very domestic, also. I shall buy beautiful pictures, choice books, and fine statues; I shall give private concerts, and, if possible, have a small orchestra of my own; I shall entertain my friends in the easiest and most charming manner. In addition to my city home, I shall have a yacht for summer cruises, and a pretty cottage on the seashore, and I shall invite pleasant people to visit me; not the rich and the fashionable merely, but others who are shut out from all such luxuries, young authors, poor artists, musicians, and many others who are obliged to work night and day while their intellectual inferiors live in ease. Oh! I shall have a beautiful, happy life, Bessie. Do you not think so?"