sman, after a day of sad farewells, "it is not so bad after all."
The terror, the disquietude, is not in the thing suffered, but in our
own faithless hearts. But if we look back at the past and see how
portion after portion has become dear and beautiful, can we not look
forward with a more steadfast tranquillity and believe that the love
and beauty are all there waiting for us, though the old light seems to
have been withdrawn?

XVII

What a strange, illusory power memory has in dealing with the past, of
creating a scene and an emotion that not only never existed, but that
could not possibly ever have existed. When I look back to my own
commonplace, ordinary, straightforward boyhood, wrapped up in tiny
ambitions, vexed with trivial cares, full of trifling events, with a
constant sense of small dissatisfaction, I am amazed at the colours
with which memory tints the scene. She selects a few golden hours,
scenes of peculiar and instantaneous radiance, when the old towers and
trees were touched with a fine sunshine, when the sky was unclouded,
the heart light, and when one lived for a moment in a sense of some
romance of ambition or friendship; and she bids one believe that all
one's boyhood was thus bright and goodly, although one knows in one's
heart that the texture of it was often mean, pitiful, and selfish;
though reason at the same time overwhelms one with reproach and shame
for not having made a brighter and braver thing of it, when all the
conditions were so favourable.

It is so too with pathos--that pathos which centres so firmly upon the
smallest details, and neglects the larger sadnesses. I had so curious
an instance of this the other day that I cannot refrain from telling
it, because I suppose it can hardly ever have happened to anyone
before.

I have an old friend who lives by himself in London, where I sometimes
visit him. He is a studious, unmethodical, untidy man. His rooms are
dusty and neglected, and he is quite unaware of his surroundings. By
his favourite arm-chair stands a table covered with papers, books,
cigar-boxes, paper-knives, pencils, in horrible confusion; a condition
of things which causes him great discomfort and frequent loss of time.
I have often exhorted him to sort the mess; he has always smilingly
undertaken to do so, but has never succeeded.

A few weeks ago I called to see him; the servant who let me in, whose
face was new to me, looked very grave; and when I asked if my