My brother, a crack violinist and a well known journalist in the States, did not return for four or five months

In August that year I at last received a letter from my brother, telling me he had left California and would arrive in Providence in a few days. I was delighted, for I was then completely on the rocks, having spent all my earnings on buying a violin bow and a stock of music! My comrade the Swede promised to come with me to meet my relative at the station. The next day we stood on the platform together at eleven o'clock. The telegram said 12.30 pm, but we were young and eager. We rubbed our hands with joyful anticipation as we stood there anxiously watching. Our funds were low and my brother had performed a miracle - he was a poet and journalist, and had made money out of his profession. When the train steamed in and the saloon car door opened I recognised at a glance the characteristic contour of the family face, though I had not seen my brother since we were children. I rushed forward overjoyed, and the welcome of brotherhood smiled in his expression. Six feet in height, and correspondingly athletic in appearance, he was well able to carry his own portmanteau, but privations and thoughts of affluence from his exchequer inspired me. Impulsively I seized it!. Years of residence in the States seemed to have changed his original nationality and the accent of his speech. He stood smiling before me, a Yankee of the aristocratic type. His keen grey eyes stared at my shabby clothes: the situation was evident to him at a glance. In a store by the civic centre, with an entrance that looked like the south nave of the Crystal Palace, my comrade and I were measured for new suits. Words could not express my gratitude. With this lightening of my financial cares I felt the dim delirium, the exuberance, the faint revival of my old romantic glamour return; the world seemed beautiful after all. My Swedish friend was delighted too and smiled from ear to ear. I can still see his tall, lanky figure and his merry round blue eyes as he puffs and tootles away on his beloved clarinet. Ah, how happy we were, marching on, carelessly unfulfilling the great promise of youth while we were yet youthful! Yet what is the good of promise fulfilled when youth is gone, when the glamour has faded and you look through the grim spectacles of reality at the rouged cheeks of blushing truth and beauty?  

Oh, to remould this scheme of life and be born old! To travel with Time and grim experiences down the years towards cheerful, glorious youth, back, back to the innocence and beauty of childhood's dreams! To die full of hope and fond beliefs - and let the true believers travel the other way! I know not where we went or why we went. I only know that my brother embraced the occasion and caught the vagabond fever; and that our valet, an old Turk (who kept swearing that he wasn't an Armenian), sang jovial songs that were musically reminiscent of his harem days as he stumbled and struggled behind us, carrying our bundles of fruit, new suits, bouquets of flowers, and my long-wanted expensive copyright 'Etudes', Petrie's 'Violin Studies', and all that sudden and unexpected affluence inspired us to buy.

My brother owned, and still owns, I hope, estates called 'Cranston Heights', an elevated, breezy place. On the hottest day a sleepy wind creeps about them. From that spot you can gaze down into the valleys and see a wall of cliffs about an eighth of a mile long, rising a hundred feet high. There on a large boulder, known as Middleton's Rock, my brother and I would sit reflectively smoking long Yankee corn-cob pipes, as we reclined, shaded by umbrellas of green leafed trees from the hot sunlight. We sat there talking and dreaming of years ago when the Indians camped on Cranston Heights. I think my brother could outrival Fenimore Cooper and Cody in his knowledge of Indian history and the legends of the original tribes that owned America. Stone arrow-heads and Indian pottery to this day are often found there, and my brother showed me several relics which were dug out of his estate.

From Cranston Heights you can see the exquisite scenery that is characteristic of the neighbourhood of Providence; across the valley the hills fade before the eyes into dreamy distances as sunset floods the horizon. If you are poetical you can see the ghostly camp fires and dead Indian riders galloping and fading into the arched sunset of blood fire. The view reminded me of a South Sea modern shore village, for here and there were dotted bungalows, fenced by trees and green shrub and flowers. Things have altered a good deal since those days, for I have recently visited Providence."

Oaklawn is another pretty spot. I stayed there with some of my brother's friends, at Wilbur Avenue, I think. There is a little wooden bridge thereabouts, not far from an old stone mill. Near this spot in the old days a great Indian battle was fought, and there by that little bridge my brother would sit for hours, writing his articles for the provincial and New York papers.