" Speaking
of the widow, he said: "My wife has been dead these seven years, and why
should not I enjoy myself a little?" His manner was full of quirks and
quips and eccentricities, waving his umbrella and gesticulating
strangely, with a great deal of action. I suppose, to help his natural
foolishness, he had been drinking. We parted, he exhorting me not to
forget his message to his sons, and I shouting after him a request to be
remembered to the widow. Conceive something tragical to be talked about,
and much might be made of this interview in a wild road among the hills,
with Graylock, at a great distance, looking sombre and angry, by reason
of the gray, heavy mist upon his head.
The morning was cloudy, and all the near landscape lay unsunned; but
there was sunshine on distant tracts, in the valleys, and in specks upon
the mountain-tops. Between the ridges of hills, there are long, wide,
deep valleys, extending for miles and miles, with houses scattered along
them. A bulky company of mountains, swelling round head over round head,
rises insulated by such broad vales from the surrounding ridges.
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