leaves you bruised, and other visions would rise about me, crowding memories of childhood and youth, faces and pictures etched in the book of memory. I recalled my father at different epochs, and seemed to see him among groups of people who looked blurred as through a heavy mist; I heard certain phrases that he used to be fond of repeating, with his own peculiar accent and the very sound of his voice. I went through the phases of feeling I had had for him. When I was little I was afraid of him, for he was often brusque to the point of violence, and there came before me the pale, delicate face of my mother, whose fragility suffered from these storms that swept over her, as a too fierce wind over a frail plant. But he changed from year to year; he softened as good wine mellows with age. What a faithful companion he was for me later, when I had become that insupportable being, a "young man!" Each summer I came to spend some weeks with him, and oh, how good the smile of his welcome! We used to stroll together through the neighboring woods, along the stream that runs the mill-wheel, among the bunches of meadow-sweet, whose pale clusters sway on slender stems. Often, also, of an evening we would go to the town and to the "Club," for a game of billiards. My father was very proud of me, Heaven knows why! and took pleasure in showing me to the old frequenters of the place, slow, grave men
