文档介绍：MALBONE: AN OLDPORT ROMANCE.
MALBONE: AN
OLDPORT ROMANCE.
by THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
"What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing
within her?
Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which
she shows most beautiful."--THOREAU, MS. Diary.
1
MALBONE: AN OLDPORT ROMANCE.
CHAPTER I.
AN ARRIVAL.
IT was one of the changing days of our Oldport midsummer. In the
morning it had rained in rather a dismal way, and Aunt Jane had said she
should put it in her diary. It was a very serious thing for the elements
when they got into Aunt Jane's diary. By noon the sun came out as clear
and sultry as if there had never been a cloud, the northeast wind died away,
the bay was motionless, the first locust of the summer shrilled from the
elms, and the robins seemed to be serving up butterflies hot for their
insatiable second brood, while nothing seemed desirable for a human
luncheon except ice-cream and fans. In the afternoon the southwest wind
came up the bay, with its line of dark-blue ripple and its delicious coolness;
while the hue of the water grew more and more intense, till we seemed to
be living in the heart of a sapphire.
The household sat beneath the large western doorway of the old
Maxwell House,--he rear door, which looks on the water. The house had
just been upied by my Aunt Jane, whose great-grandfather had built
it, though it had for several generations been out of the family. I know no
finer specimen of those large colonial dwellings in which the genius of Sir
Christopher Wren bequeathed traditions of stateliness to our democratic
days. Its central hall has a carved archway; most of the rooms have
painted tiles and are wainscoted to the ceiling; the sashes are red-cedar, the
great staircase mahogany; there are pilasters with delicate Corinthian
capitals; there are cherubs' heads and wings that go astray and lose
themselves in closets and behind glass doors; there are curling acanthus-
leaves