There are innumerable other events , if such they may be called , which come close upon us , yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds . Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes , life would be too full of hope and fear , exultation or disappointment , to afford us a single hour of true serenity . This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan . We have nothing to do with David until we find him , at the age of twenty , on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston , where his uncle , a small dealer in the grocery line , was to take him behind the counter . Be it enough to say that he was a native of New Hampshire , born of respectable parents , and had received an ordinary school education with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy . After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer 's day , his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the stage-coach . As if planted on purpose for him , there soon appeared a little tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst , and such a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan . Virgin or not , he kissed it with his thirsty lips and then flung himself along the brink , pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief . The sunbeams could not reach him ; the dust did not yet rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday , and his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down . The spring murmured drowsily beside him ; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead , and a deep sleep , perchance hiding dreams within its depths , fell upon David Swan . But we are to relate events which he did not dream of . While he lay sound asleep in the shade other people were wide awake , and passed to and fro , afoot , on horseback and in all sorts of vehicles , along the sunny road by his bedchamber . Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left and knew not that he was there ; some merely glanced that way without admitting the slumberer among their busy thoughts ; some laughed to see how soundly he slept , and several whose hearts were brimming full of scorn ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan . A middle-aged widow , when nobody else was near , thrust her head a little way into the recess , and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep . A temperance lecturer saw him , and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening 's discourse as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside . But censure , praise , merriment , scorn and indifference were all one -- or , rather , all nothing -- to David Swan . He had slept only a few moments when a brown carriage drawn by a handsome pair of horses bowled easily along and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of David 's resting-place . A linch-pin had fallen out and permitted one of the wheels to slide off . The damage was slight and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife , who were returning to Boston in the carriage . While the coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the maple trees , and there espied the bubbling fountain and David Swan asleep beside it .
Impressed with the awe which the humblest sleeper usually sheds around him , the merchant trod as lightly XXXXX the gout would allow , and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown lest David should start up all of a sudden .
along among as beneath from in than that with within