NOT long ago an article came under my notice descriptive of the neighborhood around Grant's tomb and the calm that midsummer brings to that vicinity, laughingly referred to as the "Holy Land."As careless fingers wandering over the strings of a violin may unintentionally strike a chord, so the writer of those lines, all unconsciously, with a jest, set vibrating a world of tender memories and associations; for the region spoken of is truly a holy land to me, the playground of my youth, and connected with the sweetest ties that can bind one's thoughts to the past.
Ernest Renan in his SOUVENIRS D'ENFANCE, tells of a Brittany legend, firmly believed in that wild land, of the vanished city of "Is," which ages ago disappeared beneath the waves.The peasants still point out at a certain place on the coast the site of the fabled city, and the fishermen tell how during great storms they have caught glimpses of its belfries and ramparts far down between the waves; and assert that on calm summer nights they can hear the bells chiming up from those depths.I also have a vanished "Is" in my heart, and as I grow older, I love to listen to the murmurs that float up from the past.They seem to come from an infinite distance, almost like echoes from another life.
At that enchanted time we lived during the summers in an old wooden house my father had re-arranged into a fairly comfortable dwelling.
A tradition, which no one had ever taken the trouble to verify, averred that Washington had once lived there, which made that hero very real to us.The picturesque old house stood high on a slope where the land rises boldly; with an admirable view of distant mountain, river and opposing Palisades.