It was near the Mather Safe, as I have already said, that my favorite alcove opened.  In the short winter afternoon, when the twilight thickened without the building, and the type began to blur within, I would lay aside my book and muse over wild rumors of secrets borne by this messenger between the generations.  Journals and letters, it was said, were there concealed, which should change the current gossip of history, and explode many bubble-reputations that had glittered on the world.  There were hints of deadly sins, committed by men high in Church and State, which their perpetrators lacked the courage to confess before their fellows, but which, in the bitterness of remorse, they had recorded in the Mather Safe, to blacken their fame to future times,—­thus taking a ghastly satisfaction from the knowledge that they should not always appear as whited sepulchres before men.  There was vague talk, also, of funds which had been deposited to found some professorship in the College, to furnish some instruction which the age was not advanced enough to accept.  Then, too, there were intimations of endowments to establish scholarships for women, who,—­so it was argued,—­after the increasing enlightenment of a few score of years, would be admitted to every privilege of culture offered to men.  In short, there was matter enough to send a curdling tingle through the blood, as this tough old ark, buffeting slowly through the years, entered its familiar night.  If there was deficiency in the testimony which consigned any special wonder to its keeping, there was, doubtless, sufficient truth in common reports to justify the imagination in interpreting misty hieroglyphics of its own device.

During the latter part of a certain August—­my family being established at the seaside—­I determined to devote a long day to the College Library.  The fact was, that a trifling domestic incident—­no other than the smoking of a kitchen-chimney—­had turned my attention to the conditions of atmospheric changes.  Certain phenomena I had observed seemed inconsistent with the law assumed in popular text-books.  Indeed, as it appeared to me, modifications of a received theory—­which might be determined by a diligent comparison of existing authorities—­would suggest a household economy of great practical importance.  Certain facts, which must have been noted by all the great voyagers of the world, might give me data from which to establish the suspected conclusion.  I accordingly repaired to the library at a very early hour, and labored through the day in collecting and committing to writing what had been observed by many eminent navigators upon the point in question.  Four o’clock in the afternoon found me too tired to apply any process of analysis to the observations obtained.  I therefore retired to my accustomed seat, took down almost the first book which came to hand, and resigned myself to the impressions of a favorite author.  I had passed about an hour in a delicious state of dreamy tranquillity, sometimes reading, sometimes pausing to color the faded page with the brilliant hues of more modern thought, when my attention was attracted by a familiar voice proceeding from the neighborhood of the Mather Safe.