Quincy, Sunday, Oct. 24, 1864.
My Dear Mother:
After strange, and what would be considered in any other
age, romantic vicissitudes, I find myself once more in the land of my birth,
with the same surroundings, changed so little as to be a marvel, that made my
sum of childhood life. I have had for years an earnest longing to look again
upon the everlasting hills, the eternal rocks, and changing seas of this New England
coast, and being so near could not resist the temptation to gratify my desires.
I am glad I came, and feel much benefited in health and spirits. I have met
most of our kith and kinsfolk who, like their trees, are rooted in the soil.
To-day, thus far, I rest; if you were with me to join in the
calm enjoyment, the serenity of happiness, the sweet content of this glorious,
autumnly sunny Sunday, that is mine, here so close to my birthplace, hallowed
to you by so many recollections, I should be supremely blest, “to sit at good
men's feasts, to hear the holy bell that knolls to church,” far from war and
war's alarms, the bracing breeze rustling the leaves all tinged with the hectic
hues of autumn, just ready to fall, but lingering, clinging to the swinging
bough, giving sweet music as to the wind they sing their parting lay; to listen
to the pattering of children's feet upon the bridge where my first footsteps
ventured, the babbling of the same old brook, here confined between trim
borders, there in its freedom merrily dancing in the sunlight; to wander
through the same old rooms, sit in the same old chairs, eat from the same old
spoons, hear the familiar household words from the same lips that well-nigh
half a century ago gave greeting. Ah, well-a-day, you and I are growing old,
dear mother, and as we drift by rapidly upon the stream of time we clutch
convulsively at these old landmarks and for a while would fain stay our
progress onward to the boundless gulf that is beyond. We cheat ourselves in
thought, that in good sooth we do linger, while even all else is passing
away, that while inanimate objects, that from associations seem
self-identified, remain apparently unchanged, we, by mere contact, rejuvenate
our stay, or receive the virtues of the waters of Lethe. Yet, when the real
comes back, it is good to know that in imagination we have triumphed over time,
that in mere enjoyment of imagination, we have caught some glimpse of the
glorious immortality yet to come.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 363-4
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