Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness,
and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring,
and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some
of whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate,
but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other,
so many years gone by–and, Lord, where be they now!
I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be allowed
to remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendent
who had been a tow-headed Sunday-school mate of mine on that spot
in the early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wild
nonsense to those children to hide the thoughts which were in me,
and which could not have been spoken without a betrayal of feeling
that would have been recognized as out of character with me.
Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine;
and I was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but in
the next and larger Sunday-school I found myself in the rear
of the assemblage; so I was very willing to go on the platform
a moment for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars.
On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic
talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there;
and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time
and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look
at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young
comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size.
As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung
out the random rubbish solely to prolong the inspection,
I judged it but decent to confess these low motives,
and I did so.
If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see him.
The Model Boy of my time–we never had but the one–was perfect:
perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in
filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a
prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed
place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse off
for it but the pie. This fellow’s reproachlessness was a standing
reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the
mothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what became
of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into
details. He succeeded in life.
Chapter 55
A Vendetta and Other Things
DURING my three days’ stay in the town, I woke up every morning
with the impression that I was a boy–for in my dreams the faces
were all young again, and looked as they had looked in the old times–
but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night–for meantime I
had been seeing those faces as they are now.
Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first,
before I had become adjusted to the changed state of things.
I met young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all;
but they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladies
I had in mind–sometimes their grand-daughters. When you
are told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is
nothing surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she is
a person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.
You say to yourself, ‘How can a little girl be a grandmother.’
It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you
have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still,
in that matter.
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women,
not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly;
but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing