Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 22, 2025
Having satisfied himself that this passage was rendered impervious to sound, he drew two chairs up to the table, motioned me into one, and planted himself in the other with the air of a man, in popular phrase, about to make a night of it. "Did you ever hear of Herbert Vannelle?" he asked, abruptly. It can hardly be necessary to say that a substitute is here placed for the name really mentioned.
You know, you must know, the wonderful gifts which you possess; you cannot alone be ignorant of the fascination you might exercise over man and woman." "I know all these temptations, and others that you cannot surmise," exclaimed Vannelle, "and I will conquer them, if not through spiritual grace, then by some bodily penance of lasting effect.
One by one went out the scattered village-lights. Another consciousness of twenty years seemed compressed into those brilliant, bitter hours. My lamp flickered. I rose with effort and supplied oil; it would now burn till morning. The carriage came nearer. I knew that Vannelle was in it. At last the heavy rumble ceased at the door. A figure stood before me.
Vannelle talked like one inspired upon the higher problems of metaphysical research, showing, or appearing to show, in what sense the speculations of the philosophers were true, and in what sense absolutely false.
Cabinets of the ugliest pattern reached to the ceiling; at first I supposed them to be made of painted wood; afterwards I discovered they were of iron, and filled with rare books and manuscripts. "My father built this study," said Vannelle, as we passed into it. "He wished to get rid of those periodical clearings-up from which there is no escape in a New-England household. Mrs.
Just before Class-Day, I received a letter dated from X , in Connecticut, inviting me, in terms which seemed almost a command, to spend the summer at the Vannelle homestead. Herbert had returned, and thus abruptly summoned me. Intending to postpone until the autumn the study of a profession, I promised to come to him for a few weeks, a visit which might be extended, were it mutually agreeable.
There were hints, apparently of the deepest significance, which, when the mind endeavored to grasp them, vanished like a vision. Day after day, almost night after night, for five months, I passed with Vannelle in the room I have described. And during that vivid period I knew an intellectual intoxication which seemed the pure ecstasy of spirit wholly delivered from the burden of the flesh.
Upon the death of his wife he had retired to the Vannelle homestead in the northwestern part of Connecticut, and there lived in studious seclusion. There he insisted upon bringing up his only son, deprived of such recreations and companionships as are suitable to youth.
Without seeing him go, I knew that Vannelle had left the room. Again was I conscious of the carriage-rumble growing fainter, fainter, fainter in the distance. A dream of passionate excitement, a phantasmagoria of old wishes, old hopes, of the life I might have led, flew before me. For a moment the energy of Vannelle seemed to have transfused itself through every fibre.
He had, indeed, superintended his studies with patience and thoroughness, and had not failed to accomplish him in the grace of physical power, at that time little recognized as a part of education. So much was known of Vannelle when he appeared at college among the young men of the Junior Class. And little more was known of him when he left America on the day his class graduated.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking