New Castle, historic and picturesque . in numberless marriages. Of course, also, in seven genera-tions of dwellers, the feet of them that carry out the dead haveoften been heard at the door. It lends a kind of sanctity to theold house to think how many souls have lived and died here;liow many strangers, too, now dust, have looked out of its win-dows. Once Longfellow peered pensively out of them upon thesea, musing his Lady Wentworth ballad; once Mrs. Stowestooped through the attic to wonder at the huge beams andchimney-pile; and many other poets and romancers have passedin and out the house, a
New Castle, historic and picturesque . in numberless marriages. Of course, also, in seven genera-tions of dwellers, the feet of them that carry out the dead haveoften been heard at the door. It lends a kind of sanctity to theold house to think how many souls have lived and died here;liow many strangers, too, now dust, have looked out of its win-dows. Once Longfellow peered pensively out of them upon thesea, musing his Lady Wentworth ballad; once Mrs. Stowestooped through the attic to wonder at the huge beams andchimney-pile; and many other poets and romancers have passedin and out the house, adding modern memories to its ancientarchive. And now, on the adjoining shore, a poet has come toabide, and enrich this seat of olden, local renown, with his wiileand living fame. Jaffrey Point has the Piscataqua on the left and Little Harboron the right, and in front the open sea, unbroken save where theIsles of Shoals, six miles off, show their low outline. Often,however, the mirage elevates them, and then they resemble the o o -3H O. ^mmrv^ HISTOEIC AND PICTUBESQUE 31 chalk cliffs of the English Channel; sometimes changing to thebattlements and towers of a feudal city, then fading away, as ifraised and tlispelled by enchantment. Every day brings somevariation in their appearance. Though anchored, they seem tohave the mobility of the sky and the water. One day they areon the farthest horizon line; another, they are but a step, andyou can almost hear their sweet syren singing her song as shetends her flowers, or paints them on the leaves of her book. It is the south wind which here brings with it the mirage, andtransforms the islands and shores into fairyland; the mirage isnatures imagination. It was an Indian tradition that heaA^en was in the southwest,and that the world was made with the wind in that quarter, whichone can well believe on summer days of soft haze and mirage;for then it seems as if nature w^ere playing and experimentingwith mjriad forms, any one of which she co
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidnewcastlehis, bookyear1884
