Phil Elderkin, too, after a little, writes long letters that are full of the daily boy-life at Ashfield:—how "the chestnutting has been first-rate this year," and he has a bushel of prime ones seasoning in the garret;—how Sam Throop, the stout son of the old postmaster, has had a regular tussle with the master in school, "hot and heavy, over the benches, and all about, and Sam was expelled, and old Crocker got a black eye, and, darn him, he's got it yet";—and how "somebody (name unknown) tied a smallish tin kettle to old Hobson's sorrel mare's tail last Saturday night, and the way she went down the street was a caution!"—and how Nat Boody has got a new fighting-dog, and such a ratter!—and how Suke, "the divine Suke, is, they say, going to marry the stage-driver. Sic transit gloria mulie—something,—for I'll be hanged, if I know the proper case."
And there are some things this boisterous Phil writes in tenderer mood:—how "Rose and Adèle are as thick as ever, and Adèle comes up pretty often to pass an evening,—glad enough, I guess, to get away from Aunt Eliza,—and I see her home, of course. She plays a stiff game of backgammon; she never throws but she makes a point; she beats me."
And from such letters the joyous shouts and merry halloos of the Ashfield boys come back to him again; he hears the rustling of the brook, the rumbling of the mill; he sees the wood standing on the hills, and the girls at the door-yard gates; the hum of voices in the old academy catches his ear, and the drowsy song of the locusts coming in at the open windows all the long afternoons of August; and he watches again the glancing feet of Rose—who was once Amanda—tripping away under the sycamores; and the city Mortimer bethinks him of another Amanda, of browner hue and in coquettish straw, idling along the same street, with reticule lightly swung upon her finger; and the boy bethinks him of tender things he might have said in the character of Mortimer, but never did say, and of kisses he might have stolen, (in the character of Mortimer,) but never did steal.
And now these sights, voices, vagaries, as month after month passes in his new home, fade,—fade, yet somehow abide. The patter of a thousand feet are on the pavement around him. What wonder, if, in the surrounding din, the tranquillity of Ashfield, its scenes, its sounds, should seem a mere dream of the past? What wonder, if the solemn utterances from the old pulpit should be lost in the roar of the new voices? The few months he was to spend in their hearing run into a score, and again into another score. Two or three years hence we shall meet him again,—changed, certainly; but whether for better or for worse the sequel will show.
And Rose?—and Adèle?
Well, well, we must not overleap the quiet current of our story. While the May violets are in bloom, let us enjoy them and be thankful; and when the autumn flowers are come to take their places, let us enjoy those, too, and thank God.
DEEP-SEA DAMSELS.
"Once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music."
A Midsummer Night's Dream.