of
heart and cheek. But I never saw her. Once I loitered for an hour about
the boarding-house with the vine-clad porch, while the boarders (mostly
students, I judged) came and went; but though I saw many young girls,
the Empress was not among them. And all this time the years were rolling
on, and I was permitting my once bright political career to blight and
wither by my own neglect, as a growth not worth caring for.

I became a private citizen in due time, but found no comfort in leisure.
I was in those doldrums which beset the politician when rivals justle
him from his little eminence. One who, for years, is annually or
biennially complimented by the suffrages of even a few thousands of his
fellow citizens, and is invited into the penetralia of a great political
party, is apt to regard himself, after a while, as peculiarly deserving
of the plaudits of the humble and the consideration of the powerful.
Then comes the inevitable hour when pussy finds himself without a
corner. The deep disgust for party and politics which then takes
possession of him demands change of scene and new surroundings. Any
flagging in partisan enthusiasm is sure to be attributed to
sore-headedness, and leads to charges of perfidy and thanklessness. Yet,
for him, the choice lies between abated zeal and hypocrisy, inasmuch as
no man can normally be as zealous for his party as the fanatic into
which the candidate or incumbent converts himself.

Underlying my whole frame of mind was the knowledge that, so far as
making a career was concerned, I had wasted several years of my life,
and had now to begin anew. Add to this a slight sense of having played
an unworthy part in life (although here I was unable to particularize),
and a new sense of aloofness from the people with whom I had been for
so long on terms of hearty and back-slapping familiarity, and no further
reason need be sought for a desire which came mightily upon me to go
away and begin life over again in a new _milieu_. In spite of the mild
opposition of my wife, this desire grew to a resolve; and I came to look
upon myself as a temporary sojourner in my own home.

Such was the state of our affairs, when a letter came from Mr. Elkins
(in lieu of the promised visit) urging me to remove to the then obscure
but since celebrated town of Lattimore.

"I got to be too rich for Charley Harper's blood," said the letter,
among other things. "I wanted as much in the way of salary as I could
earn, w