Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would
be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford
us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a
page from the secret history of David Swan.
We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of
twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston,
where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him
behind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New
Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary
school education with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy.
After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's
day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down
in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the
stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a
little tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst, and such
a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any
wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty
lips and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon
some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up in a striped cotton
handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet
rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday, and his grassy
lair suited the young man better than a bed of down.
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