He often came over and sat
with my father in the summer-house on the hill, and there talked about
politics, sociology (though under some other name, probably), morals,
and human nature, with an occasional lecture on grape-culture. He
permitted my sister and me to climb the fence and eat all the grapes
we could hold; it seems to me he could hardly have realized our
capacity. During our second summer he built a most elaborate fence
along the road-front of his estate; it must have been three hundred
yards long and it was as high as a man could reach; the palings,
instead of being upright, were criss-crossed over one another, leaving
small diamond-shaped interstices. The whole was painted brilliant
white, to match the liliputian cottage in which the Bull family
contrived (I know not how) to ensconce itself. When the fence was
built, Mr. Bull would every day come forth and pace slowly up and down
the road, contemplating it with the pride of a parent; indeed, it was
no puny achievement, and when I revisited Concord, thirty years later,
the great white fence was still there, with a few gaps in it, but
still effective. But the builder, and the grapes--where were they?
Where are Cheops, and the hanging gardens of Babylon?
Among many visitors came Richard Henry Stoddard, already a poet, but
anxious to supplement the income from his verses by a regular stipend
from the big pocket of Uncle Sam. His first coming was in summer, and
he and my father went up on the hill and sat in the summer-house
there, looking out upon the wide prospect of green meadows and distant
woods, but probably seeing nothing of them, their attention being
withdrawn to scenes yet fairer in the land of imagination and memory.
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