But I anticipated no pleasure from exploring musty old letters and papers of forty neglected years . I went up to Uncle Alan 's room at dusk that night . We had been having a day of warm spring rain , but it had cleared away and the bare maple boughs outside the window were strung with glistening drops . The room looked to the north and was always dim by reason of the close-growing Sweetwater pines . A gap had been cut through them to the northwest , and in it I had a glimpse of the sea Uncle Alan had loved , and above it a wondrous sunset sky fleeced over with little clouds , pale and pink and golden and green , that suddenly reminded me of Miss Sylvia and her fluffy knitting . It was with the thought of her in my mind that I lighted a lamp and began the task of grubbing into Uncle Alan 's trunkful of papers . Most of these were bundles of yellowed letters , of no present interest , from his family and college friends . There were several college theses and essays , and a lot of loose miscellania pertaining to boyish school days . I went through the collection rapidly , until at the bottom of the trunk , I came to a small book bound in dark-green leather . It proved to be a sort of journal , and I began to glance over it with a languid interest . It had been begun in the spring after he had graduated from college . Although suspected only by himself , the disease which was to end his life had already fastened upon him . The entries were those of a doomed man , who , feeling the curse fall on him like a frost , blighting all the fair hopes and promises of life , seeks some help and consolation in the outward self-communing of a journal . There was nothing morbid , nothing unmanly in the record . As I read , I found myself liking Uncle Alan , wishing that he might have lived and been my friend . His mother had not been well that summer and the doctor ordered her to the seashore . Alan accompanied her . Here occurred a hiatus in the journal . No leaves had been torn out , but a quire or so of them had apparently become loosened from the threads that held them in place . I found them later on in the trunk , but at the time I passed to the next page .
It XXXXX abruptly : This girl is the sweetest thing that God ever made .
accompanied began begun feeling neglected ordered passed pertaining went wishing