This magician, who showed “what fools we mortals be,” and showed to what heights of wisdom men may attain—
Who held up his wonderful microscope and let mortals look through it into the inside of their own hearts and feelin’s and emotions. And who held up a lookin’-glass to Mom Nater, so she could see her old face in it, every beauty and every deformity—
Who plunged us into the depths of sorrerful and heart-breakin’ experience, bewitched us with his wit, and brung us up so clost to the divine good that we almost feel the beatin’ of the great heart of love.
Wonderful magician, indeed, and havin’ sech feelin’s for him for years and years (ketched a good deal from Thomas J., who admires him beyend any tellin’), I felt that it wuz strange indeed that she who wuz once Smith should stand right here in the place where he had once lived.
Al Faizi felt jest as I did, only more so—jest as still waters run deepest. I could talk with my companion yet, and the others, but he stood reverent and silent, and walked through the rooms like one in a dream, in which sech visions come that it “give us pause.”
But, as I say, I could still talk some—I seem to be made that way that conversation is hard to smother in my breast. Lots of wimmen are made jest so, and men too.
Martin wuz talkin’ fluently to Alice and Adrian as they went from spot to spot in the old house, and Martin wuz, I spozed, a-layin’ up a fount of memories that the public could tap, and valuable information would flow for their refreshin’.
But anon I missed my pardner; but even as my Thought wuz a-reachin’ after him, as it always must while it is yoked to my constant Heart, he come up to me with joy in his mean and a piece of paper in his hand, and sez he, with a glad and joyous axent, in which, too, pride wuz blendin’, about a third of each ingregient a-makin’ up his hull mean.
Sez he, “I have been a-writin’ a poem in the visitors’ book, Samantha, and I copied it off for you on a leaf out of my account book—I knew that you would want to see it, and then I shall keep the copy in my tin trunk with my money and deeds.”
I groaned instinctively, but suppressed it all I could as I sez—