ences. The apartments that sheltered
the first happy months of her wedded life, the rooms where she knew the
joys and anxieties of maternity, have become for her consecrated
sanctuaries, where the widowed, broken old lady comes on certain
anniversaries to evoke the unforgotten past, to meditate and to pray.

Who, as the year is drawing to its close, does not open in memory some
such sacred portal, and sit down in the familiar rooms to live over again
the old hopes and fears, thrilling anew with the joys and temptations of
other days? Yet, each year these pilgrimages into the past must become
more and more lonely journeys; the friends whom we can take by the hand
and lead back to our old homes become fewer with each decade. It would
be a useless sacrilege to force some listless acquaintance to accompany
us. He would not hear the voices that call to us, or see the loved faces
that people the silent passages, and would wonder what attraction we
could find in the stuffy, old-fashioned quarters.

Many people have such a dislike for any mental privacy that they pass
their lives in public, or surrounded only by sporting trophies and games.
Some enjoy living in their pantries, composing for themselves succulent
dishes, and interested in the doings of the servants, their companions.
Others have turned their salons into nurseries, or feel a predilection
for the stable and the dog-kennels. Such people soon weary of their
surroundings, and move constantly, destroying, when they leave old
quarters, all the objects they had collected.

The men and women who have thus curtailed their belongings are, however,
quite contented with themselves. No doubts ever harass them as to the
commodity or appropriateness of their lodgements and look with pity and
contempt on friends who remain faithful to old habitations. The drawback
to a migratory existence, however, is the fact that, as a French saying
has put it, _Ceux qui se refusent les pensees serieuses tombent dans les
idees noires_. These people are surprised to find as the years go by
that the futile amusements to which they have devoted themselves do not
fill to their satisfaction all the hours of a lifetime. Having provided
no books nor learned to practise any art, the time hangs heavily on their
hands. They dare not look forward into the future, so blank and
cheerless does it appear. The past is even more distasteful to them. So,
to fill the void in their hearts, they hurry