But still, all unconsciously, I did learn something from my lessons at the mill. From the little Latin grammar my father passed to the Roman people, to their struggles and conquests, their triumphs and decline, to the civilization that has ever hovered around the Mediterranean Sea. He, alas! had scarce ever gone outside the walls of Farmington, and had seldom done as much as to peep over the high hills that held the little narrow valley in its place. But through his precious books and his still more precious dreams he had sailed the length and breadth of the Mediterranean Sea,—and though since then I have stood upon the deck of a ship that skims along between the blue waters below and the soft blue sky above, and have looked off at the sloping, fertile uplands to the high mountain-tops of Italy, and even over to Africa on the other side, still my Roman empire will ever be the mighty kingdom of which my father talked, and my Mediterranean that far-off blue sea of which he told when he tried so hard to make me study Latin in the little office of the mill; and ever and ever the soft murmur of the blue white-crested waves crawling up the long Italian beach will be mingled with the lazy whir of the turning stones and my father’s gentle eager voice. The dust and mould of many ages lie over Cæsar and Virgil and Horace and Ovid. The great empire of the Roman world long since passed to ruin and decay. The waves of the blue Mediterranean have sung their requiem over this mighty Mistress of the Sea, and many others, great and small, since then. The Latin tongue lives only as a memory of the language of these once proud conquerors of a world. And no less dead and past are the turning wheel, the groaning mill, the crumbling dam, and the kindly voice that told me of the wonders of the Roman world. And as my mind goes back to the Latin grammar and the little dusty office in the mill, I cannot suppress the longing hope that somewhere out beyond the stars my patient father has found a haven where they still can speak the Latin tongue, and where he comes nearer to Cæsar and Virgil and Ovid and to the blue Mediterranean Sea than while the high hills and stern conditions of his life kept him busy grinding corn. At all events, I am sure that when my ears are dulled to all earthly sounds, I shall fancy that I hear the falling water and the turning wheel and the groaning mill, and with them the long-silenced voice repeating, in grave, almost religious tones,— _Mensa_, _mensæ_, _mensæ_, _mensam_, _mensa_, _mensa_. CHAPTER XXIII HOW I FAILED Somehow I can identify my present self only with the boy who went to the Academy on the hill. Back of this, all seems a vision and a dream; and the little child from whom I grew is only one of the old boyish group for whose sake the sun revolved and the changing seasons came and went.