The rubbing-boards with their thickly-fluted surfaces no
longer frothed the soap from every side, tormenting the web of linen
into a brightness to gladden the heart of the housewife whose hands
had spun the yarn. The terrible boiler that used to send up from
its depths bubbling and boiling spouts and peaks and ridges, lay
empty and cold. The little house behind, where its awful furnace
used to glow, and which the pungent chlorine used to fill with its
fumes, stood open to the wind and the rain: he could see the slow
river through its unglazed window beyond. The water still went
slipping and sliding through the deserted places, a power whose use
had departed. The canal, the delight of his childhood, was nearly
choked with weeds; it went flowing over long grasses that drooped
into it from its edges, giving a faint gurgle once and again in its
flow, as if it feared to speak in the presence of the stars, and
escaped silently into the river far below. The grass was no longer
mown like a lawn, but was long and deep and thick. He climbed to
the place where he had once lain and listened to the sounds of the
belt of fir-trees behind him, hearing the voice of Nature that
whispered God in his ears, and there he threw himself down once
more. All the old things, the old ways, the old glories of
childhood--were they gone? No. Over them all, in them all, was God
still. There is no past with him. An eternal present, He filled
his soul and all that his soul had ever filled.
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