"Good day, Sir," said she, offering me her hand,--and then slightly hesitating,--"Grandmother is very old. I thank you, Sir! I thank you kindly!"
As she turned and went toward the house, I saw the glitter of the Panama chain about her thin and sallow throat, and, by the motion of her hands, that she was retwisting the same wire fastening that Eben Jackson had manufactured for it.
Five years after, last June, I went to Simsbury with a gay picnic party. This time Lizzy was with me; indeed, she generally is now.
I detached myself from the rest, after we were fairly arranged for the day, and wandered away alone to "Miss Buel's."
The house was closed, the path grassy, a sweetbrier bush had blown across the door, and was gay with blossoms; all was still, dusty, desolate. I could not be satisfied with this. The meeting-house was as near as any neighbor's, and the graveyard would ask me no curious questions; I entered it doubting; but there, "on the leeward side," near to the grave of "Bethia Jackson, wife of John Eben Jackson," were two new stones, one dated but a year later than the other, recording the deaths of "Temperance Buel, aged 96," and "Hester Buel, aged 44."
Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages, Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption, abide? Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find, comprehend not, Here to entice and confuse, tempt and evade us, abide? Lives in the exquisite grace of the column disjointed and single, Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gayly with vine, E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin, E'en in the people itself? Is it illusion or not? Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim Transalpine, Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare? Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger, Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?
What do the people say, and what does the government do?--you Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favor your hopes; and I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it. I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,--I, who sincerely Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot, Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven Right on the Place de la Concorde,--I, ne'ertheless, let me say it, Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates, shed One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman republic!