Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal. Mary Lowell Putnam

      BOSTON:

       TICKNOR AND FIELDS.

       1866.

      Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by M. Lowell Putnam, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

      "Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,

       Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

       I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

       And with forced fingers rude

       Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year."

      FIFTEEN DAYS—CONTENTS.

       Table of Contents

      Good-Friday Evening, April 5, 1844.

      No entry in my journal since the twenty-eighth of March. Yet these seven silent days have a richer history than any that have arrived, with their exactions or their gifts, since those liberal ones of two springs ago came to endow me with your friendship.

      Easy to tread and pleasant to look back upon is the level plain of our life, uniform, yet diversified, familiar, yet always new; but, from time to time, we find ourselves on little sunny heights from which the way we have traversed shows yet fairer than we knew it, and that which we are to take invites with more cheerful promise.

      I did not know last Friday morning that anything was wanting to me. And had I not enough? My farm-duties, which restrict my study-time just enough to leave it always the zest of privilege; my books, possessed or on the way; my mother's dear affection; your faithful letters, true to the hour; Selden's, that come at last;—these, and then the casual claims, the little countless pleasures infinitely varied, special portion of each human day! always something to do, something to enjoy, something to expect. And yet I would not now go back and be where I was last Friday morning. Beautiful miracle! Our cup is always full, yet its capacity is never reached!

      Since the day I stood at my gate, listening for the fading sounds of your horse's feet, many guests have crossed my threshold and recrossed it—all received with good-will, dismissed with good wishes. Last Friday brought one whom I took to my heart and hold there. The first clasp of his firm hand, the first look of his sweet, frank eyes, bound me to him forever. Keith, I have more to love than I had a week ago, and the world is more beautiful for me, life better worth living.

      We had had gray weather for a week before he came; the blue sky appeared with him, and smiled on us every day while he was here. I cannot now separate the thought of him from that of sunshine, nor can I tell how much of the glow and freshness of those days was of the atmosphere, how much from his happy nature.

      I had just come in from work, and was sitting near the window, watching the slowly clearing sky, when I heard a step coming down the road. You know I am used to listen to approaching footsteps, and to judge beforehand what manner of man is about to present himself at my door. This was a step that struck very cheerfully on the ear. Firm, regular, it had no haste in it, yet a certain eagerness. My mother heard it, too. "The feet of him that bringeth good tidings," she said, smiling. The sun broke out full and clear as she spoke. "Can it be Dr. Borrow?—it must be," I asked and answered myself; and my heart warmed to him as it had not when I was reading his praises in Selden's letter. I heard the gate open and close again. I went to the door, and saw, coming along the path I guided you on that first dark night, a figure that agreed perfectly with the step, but not at all with what I had imagined