But beyond the headland the lake has its outlet into a stream that winds and tarries, all the while widening, till it empties into the harbor, where ships, laden with costly merchandise, are spreading sails for havens of uncertain promise. They fade along the fading coast; glide across the dim belt that separates land's end from sky; like phantoms disappear. And watchers turn, with a foreboding chill, from windy piers, to confront dirty waterside stores, and pick their way amid trucks and bales that obstruct broken side-walks, between tall warehouses that glower at each other across lanes, to meet odors of fish and oils, and spices and drugs, and countless other foetid smells; to enter dull, ledger-lined offices, or seek, through jostling ways, ticketed dwellings that are as alike as prison-cells. Along the track that divides the farm, and cuts the hill in two, shrieks a train, grudging its passengers the glimpse of beautiful places of the rich; slackening its pace to prolong the dreariness of the ugly outskirts, and, lo! dead rows of houses; long thoroughfares; mean streets, with vile shops and squalid swarms; the clash of vehicles; confusion of cries; rush of multitudes--the city. From the small house the by-road leads to a turnpike that speeds dustily on to a cobble-paved town by the river. The river flows down to the city; where all night long, hungrily lapping slimy piers, with dark hints of oblivion, with winks and gleams that the wretched interpret, with noiseless, snaky undulations, and the fascinating glitter of its thousand eyes, it charms the lost to loathsome death. Would we, if cares did not bind us, go back to the scenes of those pictures? If our mother's face had not gone from the window? If the farm had not been sold? If alien hands had not cut down the maple and the elm, and strange faces and the burr of unknown voices had not scared the wrens from their nest? If we had money or time for the journey? If we did not feel too much ashamed or disgraced--we have been so unsuccessful, or false to early promises--to meet the pitying or contemptuous looks of our acquaintance? For did they not know how it would be? Did not they too, in youth, scent from afar the battle they knew better than to enter without the certainty of winning? If we have, or seem to have won it, is there not something in ourselves that holds us back? We have now no desire for sports of childhood. We are not sorry that our mother faded from her window before we got hurts that her kisses could not make well. The halo that surrounds venerated figures would pale in the broad light of mid-life. We are not so forbearing with the old who are with us that we could trust ourselves to have the departed back.