Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/166

150 welcoming crowd. May I live to witness that welcome!

I have little more to add. William and Aurelia live with me, and I feel an old fellow when I take my little grandchildren on my knee and tell them stories of the old half-forgotten world. The girls were generally very severe upon Aurelia for rejecting a handsome brave young lover like Dana in favour of a grave student such as Gell, and have not forgiven her for being the cause of sending their beau out of the island. But the elder women and the men, who have more romance in them, appreciate and admire the constancy of those two whom nothing could separate, and the story of their loves promises to be the favourite myth of future generations of Jeffersonians. Now that my story is told I feel that I have dwelt too much on matters that are of personal interest to myself, but as my memory has dictated, so have I written it down, and will not now alter. The community thrives and multiplies. Whenever I am called away I feel that I shall leave a competent successor in my son-in-law, and shall depart in a spirit of thankfulness for the part I have been permitted to take in saving the