As he went on over the hills, in the rude pioneer country of Northern
Ohio, thirty-six or seven years ago, he thought sad-colored thoughts
of the past, or, rather, he recalled sombre memories of the, to him,
far-off time, when, with his mother and brothers, he formed one of
a sobbing group around a bed whereon a gasping, dying man was vainly
trying to say some last words; of afterwards awakening in the deep
nights, and listening to the unutterably sweet and mournful singing of
his mother, unable to sleep in her loneliness; of the putting away
of his baby brother, and the jubilee when he was brought back; of the
final breaking up of the family, and of his own first goings away; of
the unceasing homesickness and pining with which he always languished
for home in his young boy years; of the joy with which he always
hurried home, the means by which he would prolong his stay, and the
anguish with which he went away again. His mother was to him the chief
good. For him, like Providence, she always was, and he could imagine
no possible good, or even existence, without her--it would be the end
of the world when she ceased to be. And he remembered all the places
where he had lived, and the many times he had run away. And then came
the memory of Julia Markham, as she was years ago, when he lived in
her neighborhood, and her sweet and beautiful mother used to intrust
her to his care, in the walks to and from school, down on the State
road--Julia, with her great wonderful eyes, and world of wavy hair,
and red lips; and then, as she grew into beautiful and ever more
beautiful girlhood, he used to be more and more at Judge Markham's
house, and used to read to Julia's mother and herself. It was there
that he discovered Shakespeare, and learned to like him, and Milton,
whom he didn't like and wouldn't read, and the Sketch Book, and
Knickerbocker's History, and Cooper's novels, and Scott, and,
more than all, Byron, whom Mrs. Markham did not want him to read,