The building of the distinguished name had, however, been continued, and the legend on the door was now, “J. Ledyard Symington-Symington, Bart.” The reception days had been effaced. The old man may have achieved that point in his social aspirations when he “didn’t care to know anybody who wasn’t anybody.” Like Don Quixote, he may have departed to battle with hostile windmills, or he may have walked into his estates “unknown,” to mingle in phantom social functions in ghostly halls and silent chambers in the Great Beyond.
Perhaps there are no “Tuesdays and Thursdays” there, and calling cards and stovepipe hats are unnecessary. His blighted hopes, and those that may have ended in fruition, concern the widely distributed gossips along the coast no more.
While we may be interested and amused with the petty gossip, the rude philosophy, the quaint humor, the little antagonisms, and the child-like foibles of these lonely dwellers in the dune country, the pathos that overshadows them must touch our hearts.
They have brought their life scars into the desolate sands, where the twilight has come upon them. The roar of a mighty world goes on beyond them. Unable to navigate the great currents of life, they have drifted into stagnant waters.
Happy Cal’s unwelcome guests and his blighted affections—Catfish John’s rheumatism and his pork that “them fellers” stole—Old Sipes’s lost “kittle”—Doc Looney’s unappreciative wives—J. Ledyard Symington’s “humiliations,” and all the other troubles of the old outcasts, will disappear into the oblivion of the years, with the rest of the affairs and happenings of this life.
If they have not been ambitious, their rapacity has not destroyed empires, or deluged the earth with blood. If they have not been learned, they have not used knowledge to devise means for the destruction of human life. If they have not been powerful, their greed has not oppressed and impoverished their fellow-beings.
Let us hope that the storms from the lake, and civilization on the shore, will deal gently with these poor derelicts, as they peacefully fade away into the elements from which they came.
(From the Author’s Etching)
“RESUMING THEIR MIGRATIONS”