Autumn Leaves

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Title: Autumn Leaves
Original Pieces in Prose and Verse
Author: Various
Editor: Anne Wales Abbot
Release Date: November 30, 2005 [eBook #17189]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTUMN LEAVES***
E-text prepared by Mark Weiss from page images and corrected digital text generously provided by the Wright American Fiction Project?() of the Library Electronic Text Service of Indiana University
Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Wright
American Fiction Project?()?of the Library Electronic Text Service of Indiana University.
AUTUMN LEAVES.
Original Pieces in Prose and Verse.
(ANNA WALES ABBOT, Ed.)
"Our wits are so diversely colored."--Shakespeare.
Cambridge:?John Bartlett.?1853.?Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by?John Bartlett,?in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.?Cambridge:?Metcalf and Company, Printers to the University.
NOTE.
The pieces gathered into this volume were, with two exceptions, written for the entertainment of a private circle, without any view to publication. The editor would express her thanks to the writers, who, at her solicitation, have allowed them to be printed. They are published with the hope of aiding a work of charity,--the?establishment of an Agency for the benefit of the poor in?Cambridge,--to which the proceeds of the sale will be devoted.
ANNE W. ABBOT.
CONTENTS.
Christmas Revived.?In the Churchyard at Cambridge. A Legend of Lady Lee.--H.W.L. The Little South-Wind.?Lines Written at the Close of Dr. Holmes's Lectures on English Poetry. Aunt Molly. A Reminiscence of Old Cambridge.?The Sounds of Morning in Cambridge.?The Sounds of Evening in Cambridge.?To the Near-Sighted.?Flowers from a Student's Walks.?Miseries. No. 1.?Miseries. No. 2. A Dark Night.?Miseries. No. 3. Twine.?Miseries. No. 4. Fresh Air.?Farewell.?Innocent Surprises.?The Old Sailor.?Laughter.?To Stephen.?The Old Church.?"Something than beauty dearer."?A Tale found in the Repositories of the Abbots of the Middle Ages. The Sea.?Fashion.?A Growl.?To Jenny Lind.?My Herbarium.?The Ostrich.?Cows.?The Home-Beacon.?The Fourth of July.?From the Papers of Reginald Ratcliffe, Esq.
AUTUMN LEAVES.
CHRISTMAS REVIVED.
It was six o'clock in the morning of last Thursday (Christmas morning), when Nathan Stoddard, a young saddler, strode through the vacant streets of one of our New England towns, hastening to begin his work. The town is an old-fashioned one, and although the observance of the ancient church festival is no longer frowned upon, as in years past, yet it has been little regarded, especially in the church of which Nathan is a member. As the saddler mounted the steps of his shop, he felt the blood so rush along his limbs, and tingle in his fingers, that he could not forbear standing without the door for a moment, as if to enjoy the triumph of the warmth within him over the cold morning air. The little stone church which Nathan attends stands in the same square with his shop, and nearly opposite. It was closed, as usual on Christmas day, and a recent snow had heaped the steps and roof, and loaded the windows. Nathan thought that it looked uncommonly beautiful in the softening twilight of the morning.
While Nathan stood musing, with his eyes fixed upon the church, he became suddenly conscious that another figure had entered the square upon the opposite side, and was walking hastily along. He turned his eyes upon it, and was greatly surprised by its appearance. He saw a tall old man, although a good deal stooping, with long, straight, and very white hair falling over his shoulders, which was the more conspicuous from the black velvet cap, as it appeared, that he wore, and the close-fitting suit of pure black in which he was dressed, and which seemed to Nathan almost to glisten and flash as the old man tripped along. He had hardly begun to speculate as to who the stranger could be, when he beheld him turn in between the posts by the path that leads to the church, tread lightly over the snow, and up the steps, and knock hastily and vigorously at the church-door. But half recovered from his wonder, he was just raising his voice to utter a remonstrance, when, to his sevenfold amazement, the door was opened to the knock, and the old man disappeared within.
It was not without a creeping feeling of awe, mingled with his astonishment, that Nathan gazed upon the door through which this silent figure had vanished. But he was not easily to be daunted. He did not care to follow the steps of the stranger into the church; but he remembered a shed so placed against the building, near the farther end, that he had often, when a child, at some peril