But I can not die till I have achieved my destiny . Then let Death come : I shall have built my monument . '' There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid abstracted reverie which enabled the family to understand this young man 's sentiments , though so foreign from their own . With quick sensibility of the ludicrous , he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed . `` You laugh at me , '' said he , taking the eldest daughter 's hand and laughing himself . `` You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at me from the country roundabout . And truly that would be a noble pedestal for a man 's statue . '' `` It is better to sit here by this fire , '' answered the girl , blushing , `` and be comfortable and contented , though nobody thinks about us . '' `` I suppose , '' said her father , after a fit of musing , `` there is something natural in what the young man says ; and if my mind had been turned that way , I might have felt just the same . -- It is strange , wife , how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass . '' `` Perhaps they may , '' observed the wife . `` Is the man thinking what he will do when he is a widower ? '' `` No , no ! '' cried he , repelling the idea with reproachful kindness . `` When I think of your death , Esther , I think of mine too . But I was wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton , or some other township round the White Mountains , but not where they could tumble on our heads . 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 XXXXX desire a monument , be it slate or marble , or a pillar of granite , or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man . ''
amid around by for from in into on till to