And when the wonderful
view (mentioned in Baedeker--'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to
him after the effort of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence
of some great, dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the
petty precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life. This was as
near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.
But it was many years since he had been to the mountains. He had taken
June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and had realized
bitterly that his walking days were over.
To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of things he
had long been a stranger.
He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled him. It
troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had always been
so careful, should be father and grandfather to such as seemed born
to disaster. He had nothing to say against Jo--who could say anything
against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his position was deplorable, and
this business of June's nearly as bad. It seemed like a fatality, and
a fatality was one of those things no man of his character could either
understand or put up with.
In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would come
of it.
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