When the sunlight blazes upon the crisped shingles, it seems to me that it is night; and that I behold innumerable stars, where, the light streams through the hundred holes in the roof. The effect is singular enough. And I go groping about in the darkness and the dust—crouching beneath huge beams—crawling carefully into dim archways and quaint-looking angles—ransacking the lumber of years’ accumulation—and raising clouds of dust, which the slender lines of sunlight through the roof fashion into shining threads of gold.
All the influences here at times are sombre; yet they are not so sad as to depress me. I have a strange feeling of being momentarily out of the world. I do not feel lost: only isolated. Neither do I feel myself wholly lonely; for olden and strange associations come thronging to me, so that I may easily imagine myself surrounded with beings of life and thought.
I wander and grope about in this spacious garret, and lose myself sometimes in the varied play of my feelings. My eyes light on old bits of trumpery, that were vastly counted on fifty years ago. Here are children’s worn and faded playthings—the baubles and hobby-horses, that absorbed minds which are now impressing an influence upon the world. Here, still clasping an open beam, are the ends of the rope by which children swung themselves, full a half century ago; and the whole dusky beam seems circled round and round with rings of childish laughter. Here are dark corners, and cosy angles, and curious spaces, where each erected spacious playhouses, that might, in mimicry, have rivaled the establishments of the jealous Montagues and Capulets.
And I pick out from the rubbish, or take down from the edges of beams and rafters, remnants of ancient China sets, with their quaint devices shattered into other and stranger ones—all of them faithful souvenirs of the days and the habits of our godly grandmothers. And hidden away in the dusty lumber, are a few old and badly bedimmed portraits—coarsely enough done, but once probably sources of secret pride and gratification to their owners.
And then when I stand in the midst of these rare collections of time, and perceptibly feel the influence of the deep silence and the faded light, I say to my heart—Why should not a Garret be the place, of all others, the fullest of living Fancies?