I fancy
he was then ailing with premonitions of the disorder which a few years
later proved mortal, but he still bore himself with sufficient vigor, and
he walked the distance between his house and mine, though once when I
missed his visit the family reported that after he came in he sat a long
time with scarcely a word, as if too weary to talk. That winter, I went
into Boston to live, and I saw him only at infrequent intervals, when I
could go out to Elmwood. At such times I found him sitting in the room
which was formerly the drawing-room, but which had been joined with his
study by taking away the partitions beside the heavy mass of the old
colonial chimney. He told me that when he was a newborn babe, the nurse
had carried him round this chimney, for luck, and now in front of the
same hearth, the white old man stretched himself in an easy-chair, with
his writing-pad on his knees and his books on the table at his elbow, and
was willing to be entreated not to rise. I remember the sun used to come
in at the eastern windows full pour, and bathe the air in its warmth.
He always hailed me gayly, and if I found him with letters newly come
from England, as I sometimes did, he glowed and sparkled with fresh life.
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