The
rooms stand bare and brown and desolate. The sun, a hand-breadth above
the horizon, pours in through the unblinking windows. The last load is
gone. The last man has departed. I am left alone to lock up the house
and walk over the hill to the new home. Then, for the first time, I
remember that I am leaving. As I pass through the door of my own room,
not regretfully, I turn. I look up and down and through and through the
place where I shall never rest again, and I rejoice that it is so. As I
stand there, with the red, solid sunshine lying on the floor, lying on
the walls, unfamiliar in its new profusion, the silence becomes
audible. In the still October evening there is an effort in the air.
The dumb house is striving to find a voice. I feel the struggle of its
insensate frame. The old timbers quiver with the unusual strain. The
strong, blind, vegetable energy agonizes to find expression, and,
wrestling like a pinioned giant, the soul of matter throws off the
weight of Its superincumbent inertia. Slowly, gently, most sorrowfully
through the golden air cleaves a voice that is somewhat a wail, yet not
untuned by love. Inarticulate at first, I catch only the low
mournfulness; but it clears, it concentrates, it murmurs into cadence,
it syllables into intelligence, and thus the old house speaks:--
"Child, my child, forward to depart, stay for one moment your eager
feet.
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