AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT . Come ! another log upon the hearth . True , our little parlor is comfortable , especially here where the old man sits in his old arm-chair ; but on Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness . Toss on an armful of those dry oak chips , the last relicts of the Mermaid 's knee-timbers -- the bones of your namesake , Susan . Higher yet , and clearer , be the blaze , till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in the village and the light of our household mirth flash far across the bay to Nahant . And now come , Susan ; come , my children . Draw your chairs round me , all of you . There is a dimness over your figures . You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the blaze , which eddies about you like a flood ; so that you all have the look of visions or people that dwell only in the firelight , and will vanish from existence as completely as your own shadows when the flame shall sink among the embers . Hark ! let me listen for the swell of the surf ; it should be audible a mile inland on a night like this . Yes ; there I catch the sound , but only an uncertain murmur , as if a good way down over the beach , though by the almanac it is high tide at eight o'clock , and the billows must now be dashing within thirty yards of our door . Ah ! the old man 's ears are failing him , and so is his eyesight , and perhaps his mind , else you would not all be so shadowy in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire . How strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present ! To judge by my recollections , it is but a few moments since I sat in another room . Yonder model of a vessel was not there , nor the old chest of drawers , nor Susan 's profile and mine in that gilt frame -- nothing , in short , except this same fire , which glimmered on books , papers and a picture , and half discovered my solitary figure in a looking-glass . But it was paler than my rugged old self , and younger , too , by almost half a century . Speak to me , Susan ; speak , my beloved ones ; for the scene is glimmering on my sight again , and as it brightens you fade away .
Oh , I should be loth XXXXX lose my treasure of past happiness and become once more what I was then -- a hermit in the depths of my own mind , sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes and anon a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read ; a man who had wandered out of the real world and got into its shadow , where his troubles , joys and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff that he hardly knew whether he lived or only dreamed of living .
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