Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: February 2005 [EBook #7594] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on January 1, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK the Caxtons, by Lytton, part
9 ***
This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
and David Widger widger@cecomet.net
And my father pushed aside his books.
O young reader, whoever thou art,—or reader
at least who hast been young,—canst thou
not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles
and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come
back from that hard, stern world which opens on thee
when thou puttest thy foot out of the threshold of
home,—come back to the four quiet walls
wherein thine elders sit in peace,—and
seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and undisturbed
all is there? That generation which has gone
before thee in the path of the passions,—the
generation of thy parents (not so many years, perchance,
remote from thine own),—how immovably far
off, in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent
youth! It has in it a stillness as of a classic
age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That
tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives
that preceded thee have merged; the occupations that
they have found sufficing for their happiness, by
the fireside, in the arm-chair and corner appropriated
to each,—how strangely they contrast thine
own feverish excitement! And they make room
for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle
to their hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened!
Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps,
the whole world seems to have shot from its axis,
all the elements to be at war! And you sit down,
crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share
no more, and smile mechanically, and look into the
fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time
comes for bed, and you take up your candle and creep
miserably to your lonely room.
Now, it in a stage-coach in the depth of winter, when
three passengers are warm and snug, a fourth, all
besnowed and frozen, descends from the outside and
takes place amongst them, straightway all the three
passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their
cloak collars, re-arrange their “comforters,”
feel indignantly a sensible loss of caloric:
the intruder has at least made a sensation. But
if you had all the snows of the Grampians in your
heart, you might enter unnoticed; take care not to
tread on the toes of your opposite neighbor, and not
a soul is disturbed, not a “comforter”
