In the calm of the summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of activity , because I am so old , up to the rocky brow of the hill . There I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from afar , and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern steamboat ; there , too , is the sun , going down , but not in gloom , and there the illimitable ocean mingling with the sky , to remind me of eternity . But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing fireside . And never , even on the first Thanksgiving-night , when Susan and I sat alone with our hopes , nor the second , when a stranger had been sent to gladden us and be the visible image of our affection , did I feel such joy as now . All that belongs to me are here : Death has taken none , nor Disease kept them away , nor Strife divided them from their parents or each other ; with neither poverty nor riches to disturb them , nor the misery of desires beyond their lot , they have kept New England 's festival round the patriarch 's board . For I am a patriarch . Here I sit among my descendants , in my old arm-chair and immemorial corner , while the firelight throws an appropriate glory round my venerable frame . -- Susan ! My children ! Something whispers me that this happiest hour must be the final one , and that nothing remains but to bless you all and depart with a treasure of recollected joys to heaven . Will you meet me there ? Alas ! your figures grow indistinct , fading into pictures on the air , and now to fainter outlines , while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar room , and shows the book that I flung down and the sheet that I left half written some fifty years ago . I lift my eyes to the looking-glass , and perceive myself alone , unless those be the mermaid 's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a tender and melancholy smile . Ah ! One feels a chilliness -- not bodily , but about the heart -- and , moreover , a foolish dread of looking behind him , after these pastimes . I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and terror after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or distant people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which had changed it to a palace . And now for a moral to my reverie . Shall it be that , since fancy can create so bright a dream of happiness , it were better to dream on from youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real ? Oh , the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the stern reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the wintry blast .
Be this the moral , then : In chaste and warm affections , humble wishes and honest toil XXXXX some useful end there is health for the mind and quiet for the heart , the prospect of a happy life and the fairest hope of heaven .
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