`` 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 to desire a monument , be it slate or marble , or a pillar of granite , or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man . '' `` We 're in a strange way to-night , '' said the wife , with tears in her eyes . `` They say it 's a sign of something when folks ' minds go a-wandering so . Hark to the children ! '' They listened accordingly . The younger children had been put to bed in another room , but with an open door between ; so that they could be heard talking busily among themselves . One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the fireside circle , and were outvying each other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women . At length a little boy , instead of addressing his brothers and sisters , called out to his mother . `` I 'll tell you what I wish , mother , '' cried he : `` I want you and father and grandma 'm , and all of us , and the stranger too , to start right away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume . '' Nobody could help laughing at the child 's notion of leaving a warm bed and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the Flume -- a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch . The boy had hardly spoken , when a wagon rattled along the road and stopped a moment before the door .
It appeared to contain two or three men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus XXXXX a song which resounded in broken notes between the cliffs , while the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the night .
around as at before from of over to with within