WHICH NARCISSUS OPENS HIS 'GLADSTONE'

Though it was so long since we had met--is not three years indeed 'so
long' in youth?--we had hardly to wait for our second glass to be again
_en rapport_. Few men grow so rapidly as Narcissus did in those young
days, but fewer still can look back on old enthusiasms and superannuated
ideals with a tenderness so delicately considerate. Most men hasten to
witness their present altitude by kicking away the old ladders on the
first opportunity; like vulgar lovers, they seek to flatter to-day at
the expense of yesterday. But Narcissus was of another fibre; he could
as soon have insulted the memory of his first love.

So, before long, we had passed together into a sweet necropolis of
dreams, whither, if the Reader care, I will soon take him by the hand.
But just now I would have him concern himself with the afternoon of
which I write, in that sad tense, the past present. Indeed, we did not
ourselves tarry long among the shades, for we were young, and youth has
little use for the preterite; its verbs are wont to have but two tenses.
We soon came up to the surface in one, with eyes turned instinctively on
the other.

Narcissus' bag seemed, somehow, a symbol; and I had caught sight of a
binding or two as it lay open in Tithefields that made me curious to see
it open again. He was only beginning to collect when we had parted at
school, if 'collect' is not too sacred a word: beginning to _buy_ more
truly expresses that first glutting of the bookish hunger, which, like
the natural appetite, never passes in some beyond the primary
utilitarian stage of 'eating to live,' otherwise 'buying to read.' Three
years, however, works miracles of refinement in any hunger that is at
all capable of culture; and it was evident, when Narcissus did open his
'Gladstone,' that it had taken him by no means so long to attain that
sublimation of taste which may be expressed as 'reading to buy.' Each
volume had that air--of breeding, one might almost say--by which one can
always know a genuine _bouquin_ at a glance; an alluvial richness of
bloom, coming upon one like an aromatic fragrance in so many old things,
in old lawns, in old flowers, old wines, and many another delicious
simile. One could not but feel that each had turned its golden brown,
just as an apple reddens--as, indeed, it had.

I do not propose to solemnly enumerate and laboriously describe these
good things, because I hardly think they would serve