She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,—not with his own tears.
The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,—a heavy sound to the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty head.
Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune. Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere, beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,—but where?
In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter of introduction to the Rev. Mr. ——, who received him with hospitality, and used his influence to assist him in gaining a position. But the door of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path led farther.
So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the Frederick road to Washington.
Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination.
Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe also,—his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to dispense favors to him,—to receive him with cheerful look and cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and unknown,—a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him!
But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,—a prayer of earnest supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered?
The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted streets.
"Where do you stop?" asked the driver.