The things about me and before me made me feel like a boy again–
convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply been
dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all that;
for they forced me to say, ‘I see fifty old houses down yonder,
into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a woman
who was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a
grandmother who was a plump young bride at that time.’
From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river,
and wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful–
one of the most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which is
a hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred miles of river
between St. Louis and St. Paul afford an unbroken succession
of lovely pictures. It may be that my affection for the one in
question biases my judgment in its favor; I cannot say as to that.
No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me, and it had this
advantage over all the other friends whom I was about to greet again:
it had suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and comely and gracious
as ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the others would be old,
and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked with their griefs
and defeats, and would give me no upliftings of spirit.
An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along, and we
discussed the weather, and then drifted into other matters. I could not
remember his face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight years.
So he had come after my time, and I had never seen him before.
I asked him various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday school–
what became of him?
‘He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off into
the world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of knowledge
and memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.’
‘He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.’
‘Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it all.’
I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our village
school when I was a boy.
‘He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern college;
but life whipped him in every battle, straight along, and he died
in one of the Territories, years ago, a defeated man.’
I asked after another of the bright boys.
‘He is a success, always has been, always will be, I think.’
I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to study
for one of the professions when I was a boy.
‘He went at something else before he got through–went from medicine
to law, or from law to medicine–then to some other new thing;
went away for a year, came back with a young wife; fell to drinking,
then to gambling behind the door; finally took his wife and two young
children to her father’s, and went off to Mexico; went from bad
to worse, and finally died there, without a cent to buy a shroud,
and without a friend to attend the funeral.’
‘Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and hopeful
young fellow that ever was.’
I named another boy.
‘Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and children,
and is prospering.’
Same verdict concerning other boys.
I named three school-girls.
‘The first two live here, are married and have children;
the other is long ago dead–never married.’
I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.
‘She is all right. Been married three times; buried two husbands,
divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting ready to marry
an old fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She’s got children scattered
around here and there, most everywheres.’
The answer to several other inquiries was brief and simple–
‘Killed in the war.’
I named another boy.
‘Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn’t a human being
in this town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;