These lofty trees in
summer time served as a family saloon, in the open air. Their buds in
spring, their tints in autumn, and their dry leaves in winter, which
were succeeded by the hoar frost hanging from their branches like white
hair, had marked the seasons for us. Their shadows, rolled back upon
their very feet, or stretched out to the grassy border around, told us
the hours better than a dial. Beneath their foliage our mother had
nursed us, lulled us to rest, and taught us our first steps. My father
sat there, book in hand, when he returned from shooting; his shining
gun suspended from a branch, his panting dogs crouching beneath the
bench. I, too, had spent there the fairest hours of my boyhood, with
Homer or Telemachus lying open on the grass before me. I loved to lie
flat on the warm turf, my elbows resting on the volume, of which a
passing fly or lizard would sometimes hide the lines. The nightingales
among the branches sang for our home, though we could never find their
nest, or even see the branch from which their song burst forth.
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