Yet though I am the sole tenant
of this chimney-corner, though I am childless and old, I have no
sense of loneliness at this hour; but am the centre of a silent
group whose company I love.
Thus, even age and weakness have their consolations. If I were a
younger man, if I were more active, more strongly bound and tied to
life, these visionary friends would shun me, or I should desire to
fly from them. Being what I am, I can court their society, and
delight in it; and pass whole hours in picturing to myself the
shadows that perchance flock every night into this chamber, and in
imagining with pleasure what kind of interest they have in the
frail, feeble mortal who is its sole inhabitant.
All the friends I have ever lost I find again among these visitors.
I love to fancy their spirits hovering about me, feeling still some
earthly kindness for their old companion, and watching his decay.
'He is weaker, he declines apace, he draws nearer and nearer to us,
and will soon be conscious of our existence.' What is there to
alarm me in this? It is encouragement and hope.
These thoughts have never crowded on me half so fast as they have
done to-night. Faces I had long forgotten have become familiar to
me once again; traits I had endeavoured to recall for years have
come before me in an instant; nothing is changed but me; and even I
can be my former self at will.
Raising my eyes but now to the face of my old clock, I remember,
quite involuntarily, the veneration, not unmixed with a sort of
childish awe, with which I used to sit and watch it as it ticked,
unheeded in a dark staircase corner.
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