Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/301

288 sugar's rising, flour getting low—think of that to-morrow, How my business chases me!"

But the wind from the country hills comes into town, its arms full of the scents of many a clover-field, where the haymaker with his scythe has just swept up those crumbs which fall from God's table, and stored them as oxen's bread for next winter; but the wind gleans after him, and in advance brings to town the breath of the new-mown hay. It fans his hot temples, shaking his hair, now getting gray, a little prematurely, and to his experienced memory it Jells all the story of summer, and how the farmer is getting on, "What a strange thing the wind is," said he, "seventy-five per cent, nitrogen, twenty-four per cent, oxygen, and one per cent, aqueous vapour flavoured with carbonic acid I What a strange horse to run so swift, long-backed it is too, carrying so many sounds and odours! What a handsome thing the wind is—to the mind I mean. Look there, how it tosses the boughs of this elm tree, and makes the gas light flicker as it passes by! See there, how gracefully" these long, pendulous limbs sway to and fro in the night ! How it patters in the leaves of that great elm tree up at the old place I"

He lifts his hat, half to enjoy the coolness, half also in reverence for the dear God whose wind it is which brings the country in to him, and he fares homeward. All the children are a-bed, and as Jane Welltodo, thriftiest of kind mothers, has taken the " last stitch in time," on the last garment of little Chubby Cheeks, whose blue eyes were all covered up with handsome sleep when she looked at him two hours ago, the good woman lifts her spectacles, and wonders why father does not come home. "Business! business ! it makes me half a widow ; it will kill the good man. His hair is gray now, at fifty-five ; it is not age, only business. 'Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt.' Killing himself with business! But he's a good soul, sends home all the young folks; lets Mr Haskell go off courting, 'to see his mother,' I think he calls it."

Just then the pass-key rattled in the door, the bolt was shot into its place, and Mr Welltodo ran into his parlour. "To-morrow," cries he, "let us go out to the old place. You and I will ride in the chaise, and take Bobbie,