Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/193

 THE RANDALL FAMILY 185

I will tell you a little anecdote which will show you how much I was influenced by him. On the Mount Washing- ton road there is a toll. When we went up, the toll- house was shut, and the road not quite completed. When we came down, I proposed to turn off at a path which reached our hotel by the hypothenuse of a triangle, but he thought it wet and took the main road. I took the other. After a long and difificult walk, I put on glasses, and, look- ing back, thought I saw the toll-house open. After reflec- tion, I turned about, for I said to myself, " Stanley will think I have avoided the toll." When I reached home, he was in bed. "Well," said he, "how was the path.?" I told him why I had returned, and handed him his own toll, because, as he went by my invitation, the least ex- penses were properly mine. He saw at once the propri- ety of accepting it, but said he had never thought of accusing me to himself. "Well," said I, "I didn't think you would, but I mean, also, you shall have no chance." Then he said he should truly have thought poorly of any one's dodging the toll.

This little affair was well for both of us. But, if I had been alone, I should not have returned so far, but waited till, in going down the Glen, I should pass the toll-house again. Conceive for an instant how we observed and measured each other, how we sustained each other, and how fast by these things our love and trust in each other was growing, and you can measure my loss. I tell it all because otherwise you could only estimate your own.

Daily my eye searches each passer-by to discover him again in the outward world. I sought him in the throngs that passed on Sunday, but he was not there. In the crowds returning from a fire I looked everywhere for him. I saw the world in good clothes and in rags, but Stanley

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