A Final Pause [pp. 469-476]

A FIfNAL PAUSE.
incarcerated for his connection with the
K. G. C., of the Southern Confederacy."
"Did you ever hear how Fischer succeeded as a priest?"
"It was just the profession for him in
that country. His talents and learning,
added to his unscrupulous ambition, enabled him to aspire to any office in the
Church. In fact, he became Confessor
to Maximilian."
"What a man to have the secrets of
an Emperor!"
"Just the man, i should say, to make
something out of them. It is said that
he took possession of Maximilian's private papers at his death. Don't you
suppose he made Louis Napoleon pay
well for them? Who knows the secret
history of those lost papers, or how much
of it may yet come to light?"
A FINAL PAUSE.
I HAVE had it in my mind to go back
again to Boston, and, at Haymarket
Square, take one of the dozen daily railroad trains, count the little towns and
villages over again, and hear their old
familiar names, till I come to that old
village on the hill, where thousands oT
boys' feet have struggled up, and to
which thousands of boyish memories, at
intervals, revert. And I think half of
my intention comes from my desire to
see that singular, fat face, with its goldbowed glasses; the very gray eyes, that
almost always looked away from you;
the cropped hair, the white choker, and
the almost waddling obesity of mine ancient pedagogue. But to -day I read in
the newspaper that has traveled the continent to tell me the good and bad news
of my old home, briefly and without comment, but not without many suggestions,
in the obituary column, this announcement: " At A, Jan. 29th, Samuel
H T, LL.D., aged 63."
A feeling of the propriety of uttering
nothing concerning the dead, except it
be good-which has come to many a
man, not over-wise nor over-pious in his
youth, but with many asperities of his
past tempered and mollified in his maturity-will put silence on many a tongue;
and the short tale will leave only a passing wonder, that it is possible that a man
whom they once loved so little ever could
die. For with most of us, in youth, it is
only the dear ones that leave us: the unloved never go, but stay, seemingly, only
to plague us. And a good many men
will stop, as I have done, and in memory run over again their first passage up
the hill, and beyond the old Mansion
House, and over to the trees of the Theological Seminary; their first interview
with him, their future great dictator,
their constant watcher, their omnipresent dread, their almost perfect teacher.
He remains in no man's memory as an
ordinary school-master. The catalogue
warned you, first, that he bore the title
of" Reverend." You saw the great stone
Academy that capped the hill on the farther side of the street, and you approached his tall residence of brick opposite
with feelings of strangeness. If you
were as young as I, and not much given
to traveling or going among strangers, you
were a trifle timorous in your step, though
you believed you concealed it all; and
when you asked at his door for that unknown gentleman, and were requested
to ascend the stairway to his "study"
upon the uppermost floor, your heart
beat faster than your footsteps, and your
breath was more spent than the ascent
alone-which was really not long-would
justify.
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