And I pick out from the rubbish, or take down from the edges of beams and rafters, remnants of ancient China sets, with their quaint devices shattered into other and stranger ones—all of them faithful souvenirs of the days and the habits of our godly grandmothers. And hidden away in the dusty lumber, are a few old and badly bedimmed portraits—coarsely enough done, but once probably sources of secret pride and gratification to their owners.
And then when I stand in the midst of these rare collections of time, and perceptibly feel the influence of the deep silence and the faded light, I say to my heart—Why should not a Garret be the place, of all others, the fullest of living Fancies?
—I had thrown myself into my arm-chair one day—it was in the latter part of a protracted and severe winter—and was gradually losing myself in the sweet and soothing play of feelings that always hover about me here. The wintry winds had bawled themselves hoarse over the snowy fields in the distance, and were charging in thick squadrons down the wooded road, to attack the first chance traveler. I could hear them piping shrilly at the crannies and beneath the eaves; and their whistling voices had, I confess, a secret charm for me. I knew they could not reach me with their frost-biting breath; and I unconsciously drew a bit nearer the fire, and wrapped myself more closely in the feeling of comfort that I had drawn about me.
It was already past mid-afternoon; and the pale and lifeless sun threw itself across my floor more like a veritable shadow, than like the cheerful sun it should have been.
I tried to lose myself entirely—to sleep; but that was only impossible. My thoughts would not wholly sleep. Yet they were, for all that, disposed to drowsiness.
Every thing I had ever heard, or read, seemed crowding back on my memory. Chance sayings from lips that had not spoken in long years; and quaint lines from quaintest authors. Old books sifted out their piquancies into my lap, that I should pick them up and examine them over again, one at a time. My mind was, for the moment, converted into a crowded museum. Every thing was huddled together there; yet not so confusedly as that I could not lay my hand—so to say—on whatever I wanted.
By some unknown association, the line of Banquo, in his questioning of Macbeth respecting the three witches, came to me; and I know not if I repeated it aloud to myself or not, in the state of reverie into which my mind was lapsing:
“The earth has bubbles, as the water hath.”
At all events, the line kept running and spinning round in my brain—I all the while trying to deduce some hidden meaning from it. I had it over and over again; and in time, my thoughts began to weave themselves together somewhat after this wise:—