Note 24 — Chapter Fifteen

How well I remember a day in June, when David was about seven. A bitter, heart-aching day, as days go. I was over helping Mother move from the House on Sycamore Street. I can see us now. Emma, Mother, and I, in and out among the boxes and chests of that priceless attic, so filled with memories for us all, and Emma hot and blowy and perturbed. Poor dear, it was to be the beginning of many a hot and perturbed year for her. Mother full of tears. Davey, a squirrel in and out among us. Here. There. In hamper. Out of trunk. Little nuisance. Suddenly, pouncing upon an old gavel that had been presented to Henry by the High School Debating Society. David leaped to the window, hammering with all his might. “Listen, world!” he shouted—“listen here, world—out there—to me!” and ’pon my soul, it suddenly seemed that through the drone of that June afternoon, lowing with cattle, crowing with cocks, buzzing with insects, there did descend a silence. Fantastic, of course, and yet in the light of subsequent events—that child hammering his gavel up in the little window that overlooked his universe, was not just any child hammering his gavel for the world to heed him.