She drew aside the scrim curtains before a low bookcase. The shelves were packed with notebooks and loose pages covered with small, even writing, all lying in neat piles.
“Sit down, my dear, and let me tell you all about it.”
She pressed her guest into a little wicker chair trimmed with rose chintz, and then sat at the table, herself, with half a dozen of the manuscripts before her. Marking a place with her forefinger, she continued:
“You see, since my dear husband went away, these have been my companions.”
“He must have written a great deal that no one else knew about. Why were they never published?”
“Ah, that is the secret, dear! They will be published. These are all thoughts of his, fruits of experience, little jottings on life and human character as he had observed them, descriptive and philosophical essays: the result, as he said, of having been taught faithfully and diversely by youth for forty years.”
“Of being taught by youth!” Rosamond repeated. “Oh! what things youth could teach if age would only let it.” Her eyes sparkled.
“He often spoke of it in that way, as if he were the pupil, and a very fortunate one, of all the hundreds of boys who passed through his hands. And I know that he hoped, in these writings, to give back to his boys—in their maturer life, when they could appreciate it—some of the gold of their youth.”
“Did he care so much for all of them?”
“He cared for every living thing. In loving any individual it was all life that he loved with all its potentialities. It came to me that if I could only publish these notes and essays I would thus extend his influence although he is no longer personally here. I wrote to several of the boys about it. (I must still call them ‘boys,’ although some have their gray and their bald spots, no doubt—and their whiskers!)”