Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a man, with a
man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly, hungrily, and the scene
burned itself on the sensitive plate of his young heart, so that, as he grew
older, he could take the picture out in the dark, from time to time, and look
at it again. When he first met Rose, he did not know precisely what she was to
mean to him; but before long, when he closed his eyes and the old familiar
picture swam into his field of vision, behold, by some spiritual chemistry,
the pretty woman's face had given place to that of Rose!
All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this sorrowful
summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road on
this mellow August morning. The dust was deep; the goldenrod waved its
imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river chattered and
sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighborhood, and then, lapsing
into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found a vent for its spirits
in the dashing and splashing of the falls.
Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then wood-
cutting; then eternal successions of ploughing, sowing, reaping, haying,
logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days.
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