Kavanagh A Tale Author:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. WHEN tea was over, Mr. Churchill walked to and fro in his study, as his custom was. And as he walked, he gazed with secret rapture at the books, which li... more »ned the walls, and thought how many bleeding hearts and aching heads had found consolation for themselves and imparted it to others, by writing those pages. The books seemed to him almost as living beings, so instinct were they with human thoughts and sympathies. It was as if the authors themselves were gazing at him from the walls, with countenances neither sorrowful nor glad, but full of calm indifference to fate, like those of the poets who appeared to Dante in his vision, walking together on the dolorous shore. And then he dreamed of fame, and thought that perhaps hereafter he might be in some degree, and to some one, what these men were to him; and in the enthusiasm of the moment he exclaimed aloud,-- " Would you have me be like these, dear Mary?" " Like these what ? " asked his wife, not comprehending him. "Like these great and good men,—like these scholars and poets,—the authors of all these books!" She pressed his hand and said, in a soft, but excited tone,— " O, yes! Like them, only perhaps better!" . " Then I will write a Romance!" " Write it! " said his wife, like the angel. For she believed that then he would become famous for ever ;- and that all the vexed and busy world would stand still to hear him blow his little trumpet, whose sound was to rend the adamantine walls of time, and reach the ears of a far-off and startled posterity. chapter{Section 4IV. " T WAS thinking to-day," said Mr. Churchill - a few minutes afterwards, as he took some papers from a drawer scented with a quince, and arranged them on the study-table, while his wife as usual seated herself opposite to him with her...« less