Neither have I forgotten the nights when lying in bed I have heard the
rain pouring and pattering above thee and me; or when I saw by the dim
light of a single oil lamp, as I lifted myself on my elbow in bed, one
of the occupants moving his cot bedstead from some gentle leak that was
getting too familiar with his bedclothes; or when in the dreary winter
the Storm King howled around and bore some fleecy flakes on his windy
gusts through a stray hole in the roof, and morning showed us a
miniature white mountain on the floor.
No, to this day a vision of the "Parson" (Capen) comes to me, reading
by the light of an oil lamp placed on a shelf at the head of his
bedstead, long after others were asleep; lying in bed at the
furthermost portion of thy space; now chuckling to himself, then
drowsily reading on and on, with his spectacles dropped down on to the
point of his long nose--as the passage was either witty or dry; or
visions of the early risers, waking betimes and disturbing the dreams
of the later ones by the preparations of the toilet; or the sound of
the morning horn as it rose from beneath us on the clear air!
I was seventeen years of age, and having passed the time when I could
have been by right a pupil in the day school, was assigned to manual
labor.
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