Then he wandered off on to another tack, and stood a great while out
in the middle of a meadow in the hot sunshine, trying to make out
that he had known me before, or, if not me, some friend of mine,
merely, I believe, out of a desire that we should feel more friendly
and at our ease with one another. At last he made a little speech to
me, of which I wish I could recollect the very words, for they were
so simple and unaffected that they put all the best writing and
speaking to the blush; as it is, I can recall only the sense, and
that perhaps imperfectly. He began by saying that he had little
things in his past life that it gave him especial pleasure to recall;
and that the faculty of receiving such sharp impressions had now died
out in himself, but must at my age be still quite lively and active.
Then he told me that he had a little raft afloat on the river above
the dam which he was going to lend me, in order that I might be able
to look back, in after years, upon having done so, and get great
pleasure from the recollection. Now, I have a friend of my own who
will forgo present enjoyments and suffer much present inconvenience
for the sake of manufacturing 'a reminiscence' for himself; but there
was something singularly refined in this pleasure that the hatmaker
found in making reminiscences for others; surely no more simple or
unselfish luxury can be imagined.
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