The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866, page 9 by Various Authors
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n to stand upright and free under God's heaven. The very air breathed by these noble enthusiasts will give us strength and lofty thoughts. Think it over, Humphreys."
"Yes."
He moved to the door,--held it open uncertainly. "I'll leave the boy here to-night. He got into a foolish habit of sleeping in my arms when he was a baby; it's time he was broke of it."
"Very well."
"He must learn to stand alone, eh?" anxiously. "Good night";--and in a moment I heard his heavy steps on the stairs, stopping, then going on faster, as if afraid of his own resolution.
In the middle of the night I was wakened by somebody fumbling for Tony at my side,--"Afraid the child would prove troublesome,"--and saw him go off with the boy like a mite in his arms, growling caresses like a lioness who has recovered her whelp. I say lioness, for, with all his weight of flesh and coarseness, Knowles left the impression on your mind of a sensitive, nervous woman.
* * * * *
Late one spring afternoon, a month after that, Knowles and I stood on one of the hills overlooking the communist village of Economy. I was weak and dizzy from illness and a long journey; the intense quiet of the landscape before me affected me like a strain of solemn music. Knowles had infected me with his eager hope. Nature was about to take me to her great mother's bosom, for the first time. Life was to give me the repose I asked, satisfy all the needs of my soul: here was the foretaste. The quaint little hamlet literally slept on the river-bank; not a living creature was visible on the three grass-grown streets; many of the high-gabled brick houses, even at that date of the colony, were closed and vacant, their inmates having dropped from the quiet of this life into an even deeper sleep, and having been silently transferred to rest under the flat grass of the apple-orchards, according to the habit of the society. From the other houses, however, pale rifts of smoke wavered across the cold blue sky; great apple and peach orchards