I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called squire and sent to General Court for a term or two ; for a plain , honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer . And when I should be grown quite an old man , and you an old woman , so as not to be long apart , I might die happy enough in my bed , and leave you all crying around me . A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one , with just my name and age , and a verse of a hymn , and something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian . '' `` There , now ! '' exclaimed the stranger ; `` it is our nature to desire a monument , be it slate or marble , or a pillar of granite , or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man . '' `` We 're in a strange way to-night , '' said the wife , with tears in her eyes . `` They say it 's a sign of something when folks ' minds go a-wandering so . Hark to the children ! '' They listened accordingly . The younger children had been put to bed in another room , but with an open door between ; so that they could be heard talking busily among themselves . One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the fireside circle , and were outvying each other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women . At length a little boy , instead of addressing his brothers and sisters , called out to his mother . `` I 'll tell you what I wish , mother , '' cried he : `` I want you and father and grandma 'm , and all of us , and the stranger too , to start right away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume . '' Nobody could help laughing at the child 's notion of leaving a warm bed and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the Flume -- a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch . The boy had hardly spoken , when a wagon rattled along the road and stopped a moment before the door . It appeared to contain two or three men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song which resounded in broken notes between the cliffs , while the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the night . `` Father , '' said the girl , `` they are calling you by name . '' But the good man doubted whether they had really called him , and was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to patronize his house . He therefore did not hurry to the door , and , the lash being soon applied , the travellers plunged into the Notch , still singing and laughing , though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the mountain . `` There , mother ! ''
cried the boy , again ; `` they 'd have given us a ride to the XXXXX . ''
Christian Court Flume Notch a-wandering fire infection night right to-night