ungladdened course of the crowd before me, whose days were all alike,
and a long lifetime like each day. But the sentiment startled me. For
a moment I doubted whether my dear-bought wisdom were anything but the
incapacity to pursue fresh follies, and whether, if health and strength
could be restored that night, I should be found in the village after
to-morrow's dawn.

"Among other novelties, I had noticed that the tavern was now designated
as a Temperance House, in letters extending across the whole front, with
a smaller sign promising Hot Coffee at all hours, and Spruce Beer to
lodgers gratis. There were few new buildings, except a Methodist chapel
and a printing-office, with a bookstore in the lower story. The golden
mortar still ornamented the apothecary's door, nor had the Indian Chief,
with his gilded tobacco stalk, been relieved from doing sentinel's duty
before Dominicus Pike's grocery. The gorgeous silks, though of later
patterns, were still flaunting like a banner in front of Mr.
Nightingale's dry-goods store. Some of the signs introduced me to
strangers, whose predecessors had failed, or emigrated to the West, or
removed merely to the other end of the village, transferring their names
from the sign-boards to slabs of marble or slate. But, on the whole,
death and vicissitude had done very little. There were old men,
scattered about the street, who had been old in my earliest
reminiscences; and, as if their venerable forms were permanent parts of
the creation, they appeared to be hale and hearty old men yet. The less
elderly were more altered, having generally contracted a stoop, with
hair wofully thinned and whitened. Some I could hardly recognize; at my
last glance they had been boys and girls, but were young men and women
when I looked again; and there were happy little things too, rolling
about on the grass, whom God had made since my departure.