Not a soul would ask, 'Who
was he? Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have
achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my
monument!"
There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid
abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this
young man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he
had been betrayed.
"You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand,
and laughing himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I
were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only
that people might spy at me from the country round about. And,
truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue!"
"It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl,
blushing, "and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks
about us."
"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there is
something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had
been turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is
strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are
pretty certain never to come to pass."
"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he
will do when he is a widower?"
"No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness.
"When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too.
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