Cornelius Mathews

Chanticleer Cornelius Mathews

I see old Sylvester Peabody?the head of the Peabody family?seated in the porch of his country dwelling, like an ancient patriarch, in the calm of the morning. His broad-brimmed hat lies on the bench at his side, and his venerable white locks flow down his shoulders, which time in one hundred seasons of battle and sorrow, of harvest and drouth, of toil and death, in all his hardy wrestlings with old Sylvester, has not been able to bend. The old man's form is erect and tall, and lifting up his head to its height, he looks afar, down the country road which leads from his rural door, towards the city. He has kept his gaze in that direction for better than an hour, and a mist has gradually crept upon his vision; objects begin to lose their distinctness; they grow dim or soften away like ghosts or spirits; the whole landscape melts gently into a pictured dew before him.