The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1882-03-03
The Old Attic.

Old country houses have some strange
hooks, dark, dingy garrets, given over to
the rats, festooned with cobwebs, hung
with garments that have had their day,
peopled with spectres of dead generations.
How many times has sensitive child
climbed the old stairway and sitting
down amid the ruins of by.gone days,
dreamed and dreamed wide awake, until
the dusty spaces seemed to be filled with
his ancestors What a royal.play-room it
makes when the grandchildren come back
to the old homestead What romances
would be told, if these antique appoint
ments had voice Yonder in the corner
is an old horsehair trunk, ornamented
with brass nails once bright, but now
green with age
1t is open, and y young granddaughter
hardly sixteen is bending over it in rapt
interest. 1t contains the love letters of
her maternal grandmother. The paper is
coarse and yellow, bright withits red seal
ing wax, the hand large, as if set for a
childs copy. The phraseology is quaint
and unique, but the love breathing through
its words is the same quaint old story that
Abelard sung to IIeloise. What pictures
of courtship in other days, the hard life
the meagre opportunities, the precise, for
NAL expressions. What contrast to the
free and easy relations of the past century.
Some of these letters are worthy of trans
scribing, and some of them tinge the
cheek of the fair reader,as her own heart
throbs with the grand passion. Life was
stern and exacting then, but the best of
This age had its birth in those years.
In that dark corner is the spinning
wheel. The hands have long since faded
into dust that spun the flax. The foot
that drove the wheel has halted; the
web of the dear old grandmother's life
has finished long ago; the wool was of
ten pain. What a change in fabric and
apparel since those days? How meager
and economical was lady's wardrobe
then, homespun and sometimes calico,
but no such equipment as even the wife
of the day laborer expects now did our
grandmothers have. ...
There by the window is the old clock
of polished cherry, with corner ornaments
of mahogany. The face told the day of
the week, month and year, as the pend-
ulum moved back and forth.
a bright red boat rode on very blue
sea- How solemn and profound was the
tick, took, tack Longfellow has given
it voice in his 'Forever-Never." 1t was
made in London in 56,and now, silent, it is
the monument of dead generation. Those
brass andirons and double deckers What
ires have blazed behind them in the
huge chimneys! What faces have smiled
before them in years now vanished And
here is an unique secretary. 1t has a
dozen compartments. The center one
opens outward and forms shelf covered
with faded velvet There, perchauce,
those love letters were written. The old
furniture is dark with age 1t is very
old prize, for the relic hunter. In an
other corner is table shut up against
the wall, or rather a stand, large enough
for two spiustcrs to take their afternoon
tea upon. In one of the drawers of that
secretary is a silk dress, marvelously
short wasted and scant in the skirt.
The afternoon sun sends its beams
aslant through dim windows, and the
golden light searches out the dust and
makes it n shining stairway The dusty
corners grow more shadowy, and stealthy
footsteps seem TO tlutter about the room.
Outside the hills are burning with sun
set fires, the leaves are flame, the russell
earth faces brilliant sky, the swallow
calls to his mate, the tree toad wakes up
his resonant song, the night begins to
fall. A dead and buried past! and here
is its sepulchre, here are the ceremerts.
But where are the actors? What ever
lasting habitations have received them
now? To what stature have they
grown, since they hastened into the
great silence?
The young girl can not answer it.
She only sees as ina glass darkly, the
prophecy of her life and those about her.
What shadows we are and what shad
OWs we purgiIp