Dora Golden, my
brother's old nurse, has said that when she first came to the family
she feared my father was going to be severe, because he had a way of
looking at strangers from under bent brows. But the moment he lifted
his head his eyes flashed forth beautiful and kindly. She has told me
that my mother and she used to think at dusk, when he entered the room
before the lamps were lit, that the place was illuminated by his face;
his eyes shone, his whole countenance gleamed, and my mother simply
called him "our sunlight."
My sister's girlish letters are evidence of the enthusiasm of the
family for my father's companionship, and of our stanch hatred for the
Consulate because it took him away from us so much. He read aloud, as
he always had done, in the easiest, clearest, most genial way, as if
he had been born only to let his voice enunciate an endless procession
of words. He read "The Lady of the Lake" aloud about this time, and
Una wrote expressing our delight in his personality over and above
that in his usefulness: "Papa has gone to dine in Liverpool, so we
shall not hear 'Don Quixote' this evening, or have papa either."
Little references to him show how he was always weaving golden threads
into the woof of daily monotony. Julian, seven years old, writes to
his grandfather, "Papa has taught Una and me to make paper boats, and
the bureau in my room is covered with paper steamers and boats." I can
see him folding them now, as if it were yesterday, and how intricate
the newspapers became which he made into hulls, decks, and sails.
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