Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiar
mental condition. I well remember an illustration of it. I sat
writing late one night, copying a prize essay,--a merely manual task,
leaving my thoughts free. It was in June, a sultry night, and about
midnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full of
mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers,--the same
wind that De Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer blowing through
the room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side of his dead sister,
--a wind centuries old. As I wrote on mechanically, I became conscious
of a presence in the room, though I did not lift my eyes from the
paper on which I wrote. Gradually I came to know that my
grandmother--dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea--was in the
room. She stood beside her old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and quite
near me. She wore a plain muslin cap with a high puff in the crown,
a short woolen gown, a white and blue checked apron, and shoes with
heels. She did not regard me, but stood facing the wheel, with the
left hand near the spindle, holding lightly between the thumb and
forefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun and twisted on
it.
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