uniform neutral tint; the gestures were blent in a vague ripple of movement, and at last a thick mist enveloped all and the vision disappeared.
It grieves me that it should be so, and many a time I long to burst through the mist and evoke the hidden vision. But, alas! my comrades are all scattered; and were I to try to seek them out, one by one, how many devious twists and turns I should have to make, and to what strange places my search would lead me! From a sacristy I should pass to barracks, from barracks to a laboratory, thence to a lawyer's office; from the lawyer's office to a prison, from the prison to a theatre, from the theatre, alas! to a cemetery, and thence, perhaps, to a merchant vessel lying in some American or Eastern port. Who knows what adventures, what misfortunes, what domestic tragedies, what transformations in appearance, in habits, in life, would be found to have befallen that mere handful of humanity, within that short space of time!
And yet those are not the friends that I most long to see again. Indeed, if we analyze that sense of mournful yearning which makes us turn back to childhood, we shall be surprised to find how faint is the longing for our old comrades, nay, we may even discover that no such sentiment exists in us. And why should it, after all? We were often together, we were merry, we sought each other out, we desired each other's compan-
