Excerpt from An Old Man's Romance: A Tale
In Highbank, the sun shines into our win dows and kisses our eyes, the robin's note kisses our ears, and we wake. We look out of the window, and over our neighbor's lawn we see the valley of the river; and beyond we see old Saddleback, ready to be mounted by any restless spirit. We step out upon the grass, and let the dew take off the hideous, staring gloss Which the modern shoe-blacking has given our shoes. Betty soon serves breakfast in the big, low-studded dining-roorn. The sun streams in through the row of eastern win dows, touches the glass on the table, and fills the room with rainbows. By and by we stroll out to work. We need no stimulus. Whether or not one is lazy, the eager blood, Which air and light have quickened, cries for work to do. To be sure, we do not fancy dictating the price ofcotton cloth or patent-leather shoes to our type-writer, nor do we fancy taking places at rattling, greasy machines but we feel like wielding an axe for a half-day, and guiding a plough or working at a forge for another half-day. We want to work in sight of the wide sky and open fields; and we must have work that leaves our fancy sometimes free. We scorn to bind our thought continuously to money-getting. The realm of thought is our great birthright. Shall one make a draught-horse of one's brains for a mess of portage? When the day is done, it is our muscles, not our brains, that are tired. A quiet dinner, free fi-om bustling waiters, from the rumble of carriages along the pavement, and fi'om the thought of timed engagements, begins the evening. We take our books, or chat with each other or a visitor, while the girls at the piano open vistas of dreamland or memory Iand to our inner eyes.
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