But she of whom I am now
thinking has long been beyond the reach of any earthly questioning, and I
sigh to think how easily I could have learned some fact which I should
have been happy to have transmitted with pious care to those who are to
come after me. How many times I have heard her quote the line about
blessings brightening as they take their flight, and how true it proves
in many little ways that one never thinks of until it is too late.
The Register of Deeds is not himself advanced in years. But he borrows
an air of antiquity from the ancient records which are stored in his
sepulchral archives. I love to go to his ossuary of dead transactions,
as I would visit the catacombs of Rome or Paris. It is like wandering up
the Nile to stray among the shelves of his monumental folios. Here
stands a series of volumes, extending over a considerable number of
years, all of which volumes are in his handwriting. But as you go
backward there is a break, and you come upon the writing of another
person, who was getting old apparently, for it is beginning to be a
little shaky, and then you know that you have gone back as far as the
last days of his predecessor. Thirty or forty years more carry you to
the time when this incumbent began the duties of his office; his hand was
steady then; and the next volume beyond it in date betrays the work of a
still different writer.
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