"
Boarding the West Shore train, laden with fruit and beechnuts and
pleasant memories, we return to the city's roar and whirl, dreaming
still of the calls of chickadees in the bare woods and of quiet
hours before the fire at Slabsides.
BACK TO PEPACTON
There has always been a haunting suggestiveness to me about the
expression /Rue du Temps Perdu/--the Street of Lost Time. Down this
shadowy vista we all come to peer with tear-dimmed eyes sooner or
later. Usually this pensive retrospection is the premonitory sign
that one is nearing the last milestone before the downhill side
of life begins. But to some this yearning backward glance comes
early; they feel its compelling power while still in the vigor
of middle life. Why this is so it is not easy to say, but
imaginative, brooding natures who live much in their emotions
are prone to this chronic homesickness for the Past, this
ever-recurring, mournful retrospect, this tender, wistful gaze
into the years that are no more.
It is this tendency in us all as we grow older that makes us drift
back to the scenes of our youth; it satisfies a deep-seated want to
look again upon the once familiar places. We seek them out with an
eagerness wholly wanting in ordinary pursuits. The face of the
fields, the hills, the streams, the house where one was born--how
they are invested with something that exists nowhere else, wander
where we will! In their midst memories come crowding thick and
fast; things of moment, critical episodes, are mingled with the
most trivial happenings; smiles and tears and sighs are curiously
blended as we stroll down the Street of Lost Time.
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