Читать книгу Revisiting the Earth - James Langdon Hill - Страница 23

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On revisiting the earth I wanted to be alone on reaching my memory room. In that corner stood my trundle bed and about here, well say about there, is where I kneeled to say my earliest prayers. I have never felt so rich since, as I did when I came into the undisputed and sole possession of a hair-covered trunk which I could lock and bear away the key. Into this trunk I emptied the week's accumulation of all my week-day pockets as often as I put on my Sunday clothes. In this old hide-bound trunk were my sainted mother's letters, and missives with my own name in large John Hancock looking letters on the back, from my grandfather who kept store and sometimes sent me pocket pieces of money. On the outside of the pack, always in view, always to be kept, no more resembling others than an electric light resembles a tallow dip, was the first letter personally addressed to me that I ever received. Here was a child's cheap album containing photographs of Commodore Nutt and Minnie Warren, of a family of Albinos having white hair and pink eyes, and of a fat boy only 16 years old that had struck me with wonder. Here is a red morocco bag in which I kept my ill-gotten gains in marbles. Although forbidden to play "keeps" myself, the neighbor's boy, a surer shot, did not hesitate with my capital to engage in the excitement and to make a "divy" of the proceeds, while I watched the game, and as a better disciple carried the bag. I used to feel a real pride in my collection. I knew the price of each kind and computed the value of them all to a cent. That day was marked by the event when I exchanged so many of the brown, baked, clay sort, for a big taw alley (made of alabaster). Some of the big chinas were striped in varied colors and we made a sharp difference between those where the bright color was laid on and soon began to wash and wear and those where it was baked in like the pictures on cups, where it is as indestructible as the material itself. To this day I cannot see boys playing at marbles without feeling a strong desire to join them.