But I was
wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or
some other township round the White Mountains; but not where they
could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my
neighbors and be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term
or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer.
And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman,
so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and
leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as
well as a marble one- with just my name and age, and a verse of a
hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest man
and died a Christian."
"There now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature to desire
a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a
glorious memory in the universal heart of man."
"We're in a strange way, tonight," said the wife, with tears in her
eyes. "They say it's a sign of something, when folks' minds go
a-wandering so. Hark to the children!"
They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed
in another room, but with an open door between, so that they could
be heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have
caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying
each other in wild wishes, and childish projects, of what they would
do when they came to be men and women.
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