1895-]
we carried up and down all our coal and ashes and almost all of
our water and didn’t mind it a bit. How quiet it is ! It is not
so always. Right there by that door was where —but, no matter.
Some things are best forgotten. Why should ‘ ‘ the lessons of life
we forget, while a trifle, a trick or a color in the wonderful web is
set: set by some mordant of fancy, and despite the wear and tear
of time or trial or trouble insist on its right to be there ?’ ’
Is this the fifth? It must be, my legs are aching hard. This
was the favorite floor. No plebeian prep was allowed here. Re
member when bother memory. A faint light streams athwart;
the window on the landing. The ghost of the literary society
rises. " Not many generations ago, where we now sit encircled
by all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the wild * * * ’ ’
Ah, well, everything has its day, but times change and we
change with them. You did a good work and have nothing of
which to be ashamed. Gone, but not forgotten. Requiescat in
pace. Shall we go further ? Certainly, we are so near to the top.
The attic, how dark it is ! But I ought to know the way. Have a
care, for once 1 didn’t know that post was there ! It wasn't
there; it was moved when the repairs and changes were made.
Somehow this doesn’t seem very natural. Where’s the stairway ?
Ah, here it is; my eyes are getting used to the light now. The
cupola floor is reached. There used to hang the old college bell,
centre and focus of student pranks for a generation. I reach out
to tap it lightly with my cane; a pleasant resonance seems to per
meate and fill the air, and as the vibrations die slowly away they
seem to reach back, back and fade away into the far-off misty
past. Memory is wide awake. I pass out- upon the balcony.
The moon shines free. That glorious panorama once again ! By
day, by night, in sunshine or in storm, old and yet ever new.
“Nature has no voice that wounds herself long; her coldest
winds nip no credulous affection. She alone has the same face
in our age as in our youth. The friend with whom we once took
sweet counsel we have left in the crowd a stranger —perhaps a
foe ! The woman in whose eyes some twenty years ago a paradise
seemed to —’ ’ How odd the light effects are ! There is the
long low line of the Bald Eagle, and straight in the north is a rift
in the cloud, through which falls a stronger light that shows
the outline of the distant Alleghenies. How proudly Nittany
rises ! How graceful are her lines sloping gradually to the val
ley’s level. Is that the Aurora ? No, it’s the reflected glow of the
A Study in Altruism,