The Doctor started as this voice came from behind his chair. Tabitha, who had disappeared as soon as her attendance on the table was no longer needed, had reëntered unobserved, and stood, her basket of vegetables poised on her head, absorbed in our conversation, until she forgot herself into joining in it.
Sunday, April 7, 1844.
The storm which has been gathering since Friday evening came on last night. This morning the rain pelts heavily against the windows. This is not the Easter-Sunday I was looking forward to when I urged Harry Dudley to stay for it. He would have been glad to stay, I know; but he did not think it right to ask Dr. Borrow to change his plans again, and merely for a matter of pleasure. When I addressed the Doctor himself on the subject, he showed me a paper on which he had planned out occupation for every day and almost for every hour of the two weeks that were to pass before our meeting at Omocqua. I had not the courage to remonstrate.
I am afraid we shall have none of the neighbors here to-day. But the table is set out with all the prettiest things the house affords, ready for the collation which is to follow the morning reading. This is a munificence we allow ourselves at Christmas and Easter. We keep ceremoniously and heartily the chief holy days, the religious and the national. In your large cities, where sources of emotion and instruction are open on every hand, where the actual day is so full and so animated that it is conscious of wanting nothing outside of itself, it is not strange, perhaps, that men should become careless of these commemorations or yield them only a formal regard. Our life must widen and enrich itself, by stretching its sympathies and claims far beyond its material limits. We cannot forego our part in the sorrows and joys of universal humanity.
It was a pleasure to me to find that Harry, who has lived so long in countries where the public observance of the Christian festivals is too marked to allow even the indifferent to overlook them, remembers them from affection as well as by habit. When I came into the parlor, early last Sunday morning, I saw by the branches over the windows that he had not forgotten it was Palm-Sunday. He was sitting on the doorstep trimming some long sprays of a beautiful vine, which he had brought from the thicket. As soon as I appeared, he called on me to help him twine them round the engraving of the Transfiguration. You did right to tell me to bring that engraving down-stairs. It hangs between the windows. I have made a simple frame for it, which answers very well; but next winter I am going to carve out quite an elaborate one, after an Italian pattern which Harry has sketched for me. If I could think that you would ever see it!
Harry and I had a walk before breakfast,—the first of the early morning walks that were afterwards our rule. He is not a great talker. The sweet modesty of his nature retains its sway even in the most familiar moments. He is earnest; sometimes impassioned; but never voluble, never excited, never diffuse. What he has to say is generally put in the form of simple and concise statement or suggestion; but he gives, and perhaps for that very reason, a great deal to be thought and felt in an hour.
The bouquet that Harry brought in that morning was of green of different shades, only in the centre there were a few delicate wood-flowers.
"Has Dr. Borrow seen these?" my mother asked, looking at them with pleasure.