Chapter 53 - Page 2

could mark and fix
every locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved.
I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of my
childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.'
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