In a letter written to me a few weeks after this time, upon an occasion
when he divined that some word from him would be more than commonly dear,
he recurred to the feeling he then expressed: "Fifty-six years ago--more
than half a century--I lost my own father, his age being seventy-three
years. As I have reached that period of life, passed it, and now left it
far behind, my recollections seem to brighten and bring back my boyhood
and early manhood in a clearer and fairer light than it came to me in my
middle decades. I have often wished of late years that I could tell him
how I cherished his memory; perhaps I may have the happiness of saying
all I long to tell him on the other side of that thin partition which I
love to think is all that divides us."
Men are never long together without speaking of women, and I said how
inevitably men's lives ended where they began, in the keeping of women,
and their strength failed at last and surrendered itself to their care. I
had not finished before I was made to feel that I was poaching, and
"Yes," said the owner of the preserve, "I have spoken of that," and he
went on to tell me just where. He was not going to have me suppose I had
invented those notions, and I could not do less than own that I must have
found them in his book, and forgotten it.
He spoke of his pleasant summer life in the air, at once soft and fresh,
of that lovely coast, and of his drives up and down the country roads.
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