Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. WorksHolmes, Oliver Wendell
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Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
American literature; Literature -- Collections
There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and so connected with
one of those simple and curious superstitions of childhood of which
I have spoken, that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love
for it.--Let me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan
"Sabbath," as everybody knows, began at "sundown" on Saturday
evening. To such observance of it I was born and bred. As the
large, round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a
somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to
cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life
passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun
should sink again beneath the horizon.
It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul
within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to
make itself most distinctly heard,--so that I well remember I used
to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled
with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, WAS PECULIAR
TO SATURDAY EVENINGS. I don't know that anything could give a
clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect of the old habit
of observance of what was considered holy time, than this strange,
childish fancy.
Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn
cadences with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was
heard only at times,--a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell,
not loud, but vast,--a whistling boy would have drowned it for his
next neighbor, but it must have been heard over the space of a
hundred square miles. I used to wonder what this might be. Could
it be the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand
footsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of the neighboring
city? That would be continuous; but this, as I have said, rose and
fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this
to have been the true solution, that it was the sound of the waves,
after a high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles distant.
I should really like to know whether any observing people living
ten miles, more or less, inland from long beaches,--in such a town,
for instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the Territory
of the Massachusetts,--have ever observed any such sound, and
whether it was rightly accounted for as above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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