But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present , they would trace the brightness of his footsteps , brightening as meaner glories faded , and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him . `` As yet , '' cried the stranger , his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with enthusiasm -- `` as yet I have done nothing . Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow , none would know so much of me as you -- that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco , and opened his heart to you in the evening , and passed through the Notch by sunrise , and was seen no more . Not a soul would ask , ` Who was he ? Whither did the wanderer go ? ' 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 XXXXX Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton , or some other township round the White Mountains , but not where they could tumble on our heads .
With at by for in into on that though to