I saw the new houses-- saw them plainly enough--but they did not affect the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there, with perfect distinctness.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet.

So I passed through the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was, and not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically shaking hands with a hundred familiar objects which no longer exist; and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive view.

The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I could mark and fix every locality, every detail.

Naturally, I was a good deal moved.

I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.' The things about me and before me made me feel like a boy again--convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all that; for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty old houses down yonder, into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a woman who was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grandmother who was a plump young bride at that time.' From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river, and wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful--one of the most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which is a hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred miles of river between St.Louis and St.
Paul afford an unbroken succession of lovely pictures.