“Well, Dick,” said I, “we’ve had a good day’s work together.”

“You bet,” said Dick.

And I watched him as he went down the lane with a pleasant friendly feeling of companionship.  We had done great things together.

I wonder if you ever felt the joy of utter physical weariness:  not exhaustion, but weariness.  I wonder if you have ever sat down, as I did last night, and felt as though you would like to remain just there always—­without stirring a single muscle, without speaking, without thinking even!

Such a moment is not painful, but quite the reverse—­it is supremely pleasant.  So I sat for a time last evening on my porch.  The cool, still night had fallen sweetly after the burning heat of the day.  I heard all the familiar sounds of the night.  A whippoorwill began to whistle in the distant thicket.  Harriet came out quietly—­I could see the white of her gown—­and sat near me.  I heard the occasional sleepy tinkle of a cowbell, and the crickets were calling.  A star or two came out in the perfect dark blue of the sky.  The deep, sweet, restful night was on.  I don’t know that I said it aloud—­such things need not be said aloud—­but as I turned almost numbly into the house, stumbling on my way to bed, my whole being seemed to cry out:  “Thank God, thank God!”

XI

AN OLD MAN

Today I saw Uncle Richard Summers walking in the town road:  and cannot get him out of my mind.  I think I never knew any one who wears so plainly the garment of Detached Old Age as he.  One would not now think of calling him a farmer, any more than one would think of calling him a doctor, or a lawyer, or a justice of the peace.  No one would think now of calling him “Squire Summers,” though he bore that name with no small credit many years ago.  He is no longer known as hardworking, or able, or grasping, or rich, or wicked:  he is just Old.  Everything seems to have been stripped away from Uncle Richard except age.

How well I remember the first time Uncle Richard Summers impressed himself upon my mind.  It was after the funeral of his old wife, now several years ago.  I saw him standing at the open grave with his broad-brimmed felt hat held at his breast.  His head was bowed and his thin, soft, white hair stirred in the warm breeze.  I wondered at his quietude.  After fifty years or more together his nearest companion and friend had gone, and he did not weep aloud.  Afterward I was again impressed with the same fortitude or quietude.  I saw him walking down the long drive to the main road with all the friends of our neighbourhood about him—­and the trees rising full and calm on one side, and the still greenery of the cemetery stretching away on the other.  Half way down the drive he turned aside to the fence and all unconscious of the halted procession, he picked a handful of the large leaves of the wild grape.  It was a hot day; he took off his hat, and put the cool leaves in the crown of it and rejoined the procession.  It did not seem to me to be the mere forgetfulness of old age, nor yet callousness to his own great sorrow.  It was rather an instinctive return to the immeasurable continuity of the trivial things of life—­the trivial necessary things which so often carry us over the greatest tragedies.