"
Newton said, "Yes," and then, as the half smile the charge had brought up
died away, he said, slowly, "I was just thinking how good it felt,
and I had gone back and was standing in the old parlor at home the first time
I ever noticed my father doing it; I remember getting up and standing by him,
a little scrap of a fellow, trying to stand just as he did,
and I was feeling the fire, just now, just as I did that night.
That was -- thirty-three years ago," said Newton, slowly,
as if he were doling the years from his memory.
"Newton, is your father living?" asked Lesponts. "No, but my mother is,"
he said; "she still lives at the old home in the country."
From this the talk had gone on, and nearly all had contributed to it,
even the most reticent of them, drawn out by the universal sympathy
which the subject had called forth. The great city,
with all its manifold interests, was forgotten, and the men of the world
went back to their childhood and early life in little villages
or on old plantations, and told incidents of the time when the outer world
was unknown, and all things had those strange and large proportions
which the mind of childhood gives. Old times were ransacked
and Christmas experiences in them were given without stint,
and the season was voted, without dissent, to have been far ahead
of Christmas now.
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