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. r n n t. Owl Creek Cabin, May, 18—. TTTITH greater pleasure than I can well describe, I T date again from the scene of so many pleasant days and months in past times, of a few of which you have heard, but more of which are treasured memories between Willis and myself. I had much feared my inability to escape, for a single day this spring, from the duties of a life that is closely involving me now in the meshes of business, and I had written condolatory letters to J , and to the doctor, and to Joe, on the position in which each of us seemed to be placed. But, seeing daylight dimly through the cloud of engagements before me, I suddenly determined to write to Joe, who is now at his place in , and if he said yes to my letter, I thought I might leave for a few days, and return fitter for labor. I wrote to him. His reply was characteristic. I can not forbear giving the conclusion of it: " So you see, my dear Philip, how impossible it is. "Were it for only this one cause, I am bound here ; but I fear much that I shall not escape. I have made up my mind to forego all our old pleasures, and to give up B2any hope of ever again sunning myself of a May morning on the rock by the cabin. Our hunting days are over. We are all growing to be worldlings, and our hearts are learning at this late day (when we might have thought them proof against coldness) to beat by rule. We shall not hunt together much more. Yet, Philip, 'haec olim meminisse juvabit,' and some quiet day, when we are very old (older than now, friend of my heart), we will take our rusted rifles and one of Nora's descendants, and walk out to the bank where the ruins of our cabin will be lying, and, throwing ourselves on the rock, will lave our feet again in the stream, and, falling asleep in ...