Age, within the last
few months--for he was now past ninety--had made sad work with both his
frame and intellect. Indeed, for some time past, he might be said
to hover between reason and dotage. Decrepitude had set in with such
ravages on his constitution that it could almost be marked by daily
stages. Sometimes he talked with singular good sense and feeling; but
on other occasions he either babbled quite heedlessly, or his intellect
would wander back to scenes and incidents of earlier life, many of which
he detailed with a pathos that was created and made touching by the
unconsciousness of his own state while relating them. They also observed
that of late he began to manifest a child-like cunning in many things
connected with himself and family, which, though amusing from its very
simplicity, afforded at the same time a certain indication that the
good old grandfather whom they all loved so well, and whose benignant
character had been only mellowed by age into a more plastic affection
for them all, was soon to be removed from before their eyes, never again
to diffuse among them that charm of domestic truth and love, and the
holy influences of all those fine old virtues which ancestral integrity
sheds over the heart, and transmits pure and untarnished from generation
to generation.
On the day he made the discovery of their intention, he had been sitting
on a bench in the garden, a favorite seat of his for many a long year
previously; "And so," said he to the neighbor with whom he had been
speaking, "you tell me that all our family is goin' to America?"
"Why, dear me," replied his acquaintance, "is it possible you didn't
know it?"
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "I undherstand now why they used to be whisperin'
together so often, and lookin' at me; but indeed they might spake loud
enough now, for I'm so deaf that I can hardly hear anything.
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