The Village Uncle

An Imaginary Retrospect.

Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
comfortable, especially here, where the old man sits in his old arm-
chair; but on Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance high up the
chimney, and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss
on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relics of the Mermaid's
knee-timbers, the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and
clearer be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in
the village, and the light of our household mirth flash far across
the bay to Nahant. And now, come, Susan, come, my children, draw
your chairs round me, all of you. There is a dimness over your
figures! You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the
blaze, which eddies about you like a flood, so that you all have the
look of visions, or people that dwell only in the fire light, and
will vanish from existence, as completely as your own shadows, when
the flame shall sink among the embers. Hark! let me listen for the
swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile inland, on a night
like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but only an uncertain
murmur, as if a good way down over the beach; though, by the almanac,
it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must now be dashing
within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man's ears are failing
him; and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind; else you would not
all be so shadowy, in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire.

How strangely the Past is peeping over the shoulders of the Present!
To judge by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in
another room; yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old
chest of drawers, nor Susan's profile and mine, in that gilt frame;
nothing, in short, except this same fire, which glimmered on books,
papers, and a picture, and half discovered my solitary figure in a
looking-glass. But it was paler than my rugged old self, and younger,
too, by almost half a century. Speak to me, Susan; speak, my beloved
ones; for the scene is glimmering on my sight again, and as it
brightens you fade away. O, I should be loath to lose my treasure of
past happiness, and become once more what I was then; a hermit in the
depths of my own mind; sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes, and anon
a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read; a man who had wandered
out of the real world and got into its shadow, where his troubles,
joys, and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff, that he hardly knew
whether he lived, or only dreamed of living. Thank Heaven, I am an old
man now, and have done with all such vanities!

Still this dimness of mine eyes! Come nearer, Susan, and stand before
the fullest blaze of the hearth.