He was lying half propped up in
bed, convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to
prove fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture
in aquarelle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the
foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon
sunlight, falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture,
which was turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes
rested thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just
sent it to him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me
since, that that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was
waiting to bear his spirit away.
CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If
somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he
causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw
off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as
in the Middle Ages.
WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the
purist in the next.
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