lps one to forget the idle or venomous chatter going
on everywhere about us, and bids us cherish hope for a world "which has
such people in't."

These volumes I had at hand; I could reach them down from my shelves at
the moment when I hungered for them. But it often happens that the book
which comes into my mind could only be procured with trouble and delay; I
breathe regretfully and put aside the thought. Ah! the books that one
will never read again. They gave delight, perchance something more; they
left a perfume in the memory; but life has passed them by for ever. I
have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me. Books
gentle and quieting; books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to
be pored over, not once but many a time. Yet never again shall I hold
them in my hand; the years fly too quickly, and are too few. Perhaps
when I lie waiting for the end, some of those lost books will come into
my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I
owed a kindness--friends passed upon the way. What regret in that last
farewell!

III.

Every one, I suppose, is subject to a trick of mind which often puzzles
me. I am reading or thinking, and at a moment, without any association
or suggestion that I can discover, there rises before me the vision of a
place I know. Impossible to explain why that particular spot should show
itself to my mind's eye; the cerebral impulse is so subtle that no search
may trace its origin. If I am reading, doubtless a thought, a phrase,
possibly a mere word, on the page before me serves to awaken memory. If
I am otherwise occupied, it must be an object seen, an odour, a touch;
perhaps even a posture of the body suffices to recall something in the
past. Sometimes the vision passes, and there an end; sometimes, however,
it has successors, the memory working quite independently of my will, and
no link appearing between one scene and the next.

Ten minutes ago I was talking with my gardener. Our topic was the nature
of the soil, whether or not it would suit a certain kind of vegetable. Of
a sudden I found myself gazing at--the Bay of Avlona. Quite certainly my
thoughts had not strayed in that direction. The picture that came before
me caused me a shock of surprise, and I am still vainly trying to
discover how I came to behold it.

A happy chance that I ever saw Avlona. I was on my way from Corfu to
Brindisi. The steamer sailed late in the