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The Basque pilots used to dream of prairies and apple orchards, a little cottage on a peak and many cows. He pictured to himself a vineyard on the coast, a little white dwelling with an arbor under whose shade he could smoke his pipe while all his family, children and grandchildren, were spreading out the harvest of raisins on the frame-hurdles.
Smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw," repeated a surprising number of times. "My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr. Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either of you?"
The parting was evidently a very painful one to Olympius; when the merchant held out both his hands the older man clasped them in his and held them to his breast, saying: "Thanks, my friend; thanks for all you have done. We have lived and if now we perish it is for the future happiness of our grandchildren. What would life be to you and me if it were marred by scourgings and questionings?
The dear old lady had laughingly disclaimed any desire to summon her children or grandchildren, saying that she was neither ill enough to need them, nor well enough to enjoy them; and so in the beautiful June weather the two old friends became strangely dear to each other, and had many a long talk which the cares of the world or their own reserve had made them save until this favoring season.
There were her son and his wife, once such a stately pair, now reduced to two pale spectres; there were troops of grandchildren, once round-cheeked as the carved angels on the altar of the village chapel, now hollow-eyed and skinny, with their blanched faces upturned imploringly to the parents who were scarcely conscious of their presence there.
But when this came to the old man's ears not from Louisa, who said nothing of her troubles to him, but from one of his grandchildren he would fly into a terrible passion, and there were frightful scenes between the two men. They were both extraordinarily violent, and they would come to round oaths and threats almost it seemed as though they would come to blows.
When you grow old you will say to your grandchildren: 'Once I lit a cigar with a thousand-dollar check. The oldest inhabitant will be silenced forever; it may become history. And then, too, if there are spirits, as Scripture says there are, your uncle's will writhe at the performance. I trust that you will forgive me my part in the matter.
The older people, Italians, Czechs, Poles, Greeks, Assyrians, or whatever nationalities now compose those hordes, remain somewhat in the tradition of their home civility; but their children, their grandchildren, pick up our impoliteness with the first words of our language, or our slang, which they make their adoptive mother-tongue long before they realize that it is slang.
"You are mistaken in that; when you were quite a little child I filled your cradle with them. But as they seem to amuse you, I will teach you to weave them for yourself." At dark the children disappeared, and our host came to wish us good-night. I told him of the light we had caught a glimpse of the evening before. "It was Juan," he said. "And who is Juan?" "The eldest of my grandchildren.
Then there were his own children, with claims upon his attention which he was not disposed to deny, and a large family of grandchildren to educate, upon all of whose minds he wished to leave personal impressions of their intercourse with him which should make them feel how much he loved and cherished them all.
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