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 to 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 . Thank Heaven I am an old man now and have done with all such vanities ! Still this dimness of mine eyes ! -- Come nearer , Susan , and stand before the fullest blaze of the hearth . Now I behold you illuminated from head to foot , in your clean cap and decent gown , with the dear lock of gray hair across your forehead and a quiet smile about your mouth , while the eyes alone are concealed by the red gleam of the fire upon your spectacles . There ! you made me tremble again . When the flame quivered , my sweet Susan , you quivered with it and grew indistinct , as if melting into the warm light , that my last glimpse of you might be as visionary as the first was , full many a year since . Do you remember it ? You stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs across King 's Beach into the sea . It was twilight , the waves rolling in , the wind sweeping by , the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver moon brightening above the hill ; and on the bridge were you , fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your pleasure . You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind , a creature of the ocean-foam and the crimson light , whose merry life was spent in dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to support your footsteps . As I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the race of mermaids , and thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with you among the quiet coves in the shadow of the cliffs , and to roam along secluded beaches of the purest sand , and , when our Northern shores grew bleak , to haunt the islands , green and lonely , far amid summer seas . And yet it gladdened me , after all this nonsense , to find you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly perplexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats . Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days , dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see her as she really was . Now , Susan , for a sober picture of our village . It was a small collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm , or to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber which had been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner . There was just space for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture .
The village was picturesque in the variety XXXXX its edifices , though all were rude .
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