"Jessie," said I, "let us talk about something else; you have been too
much excited this morning, let us enjoy what God gives us, and not be
ungrateful; let your sister come also, and try the canoe once more.
This is better than a hot room, ain't it?"
"Oh yes," she replied, "this is life. This is freedom."
"Suppose we dine here," I said.
"Oh yes," she replied, "I should like it above all things. Let us dine
on the grass, the table the great Spirit spreads for his children;"
and the transient cloud passed away, and we sped back to the lawn as
if the bark that carried us was a bird that bore us on its wings.
Poor Jessie, how well I understood her emotions. Home is a word, if
there is one in the language, that appeals directly to the heart. Man
and wife, father and mother, brothers and sisters, master and servant,
with all their ties, associations, and duties, all, all are contained
in that one word. Is it any wonder, when her imagination raised them
up before her, that the woman became again a child, and that she
longed for the wings of the dove to fly away to the tents of her tribe
in the far west? I am myself as dry, as seasoned, and as hard as the
wood of which my clocks are made. I am a citizen of the world rather
than of Slickville. But I too felt my heart sink within me when I
reflected that mine, also, was desolate, and that I was alone in my
own house, the sole surviving tenant of all that large domestic
circle, whose merry voices once made its silent halls vocal with
responsive echoes of happiness.
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