Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis eBook

There was another pleasant aspect in Newport, of persons.  I walked one evening towards the town (for I was boarding in the outskirts), and passed an encampment of soldiers, who in their gay uniforms glittered among the lighted tents like soldier fays.  The band in the shadow of the camp was playing very sweetly airs proper for that fading light, half-mournful, half-tender and hopeful.  I passed by the houses brilliantly lighted and filled with finely dressed people, who also thronged the streets.  Before one of the principal hotels was a band from the fort serenading, and surrounded with a crowd of easy listeners.  The ice-cream resort was filled, the cottages shone among the trees, and an air of entire abandonment to joy filled the place.  Old men and young men, women and girls, seemed to have laid aside all business, all care, and to be only gay.  It was a vision of the Lotos islands, an earthly portrait of that meek repose which haunts us ideally sometimes.

I was surprised upon my return to find Burrill still here.  He is able only to crutch about the house, but will probably return to Brook Farm with me during the latter part of next week, which is the commencement week here....

I should have been glad to have seen the gay picnic, and to have heard the O.; let me hope she will not be gone when I return.  I am exceedingly obliged for your kind suggestion of “Adelaide,” and if you choose to present it as a joint gift, you confer a great pleasure upon me.

Commend me particularly to Almira; to the young men whom you will, including mainly Charles D. and James S.; to Mr. and Mrs. R.; and if you will write me again you will be sure that your proxy will be welcome to

Your friend,

G.W.  CURTIS.

Will you say to Miss Russell that I shall see my aunt this afternoon, and will perform her commission.  Moreover, that I am gratified at so distinguished a mark of her approbation as the permission to escort a plant to her garden.

G.W.C.

III

NEW YORK, Saturday eve’g, November 11, 1843.

Your letter has just reached me, my dear friend, loaded with much that was not in it, and which needed only a person or a letter from a region so delightful to bear it to me.  Already my life at the Farm is removed and transfigured.  It stands for so much in my experience, and is so fairly rounded, that I know the experience could never return, tho’ the residence might be renewed.  When we mend the broken chain, we see ever after the point of union.