my writing you, but I
cannot make use of another man's brains without some
acknowledgment. For years I have been a reader of the
_Referee_, and of late years nothing has interested me more
than the articles above the name of Merlin on the front
page. This week you have put the real issue so clearly and
so freely, that I am going to avail myself of it tonight in
my speech at Blandford, and I hope I have your permission so
to do. If only a few more men would grasp difficult subjects
as boldly and broadly as you do, we should be a better and a
happier people.--Yours very faithfully,

(Sgd.) E. Marshall Hall.

[Illustration: Stevenson1]

[Illustration: Stevenson2]

[Illustration: Stevenson3]

[Illustration: Stevenson4]

CHAPTER XVII

Sixtieth Birthday

Yesterday I attained my sixtieth birthday. It is not yet old age, but
the posting-stations between old age and myself grow fewer with what
looks like a bewildering rapidity. The years are shorter than they used
to be. What a length lay between the anniversaries of childhood and even
those of young manhood! How little tedious was the road! And now how
brief and tiresome has the journey from one point to another grown to
seem! One turns and glances back on the traversed road, "looking over
Time's crupper and over his tail," as the elder Hood put it, and it
looks like a ribboned path through a cemetery. The little child-wife
and the baby lie yonder far away. Nearer, and yet afar off, the grey old
father is asleep. There, between them, is the lad with whom I shared
all my early joy in books. Oh! the raptured miles we walked, seeing
each other home by turns, till long after midnight, each exposing to
the other's view the jewels gathered in the past few days. The memorial
stones are everywhere, and they grow thicker as the road winds on. And
saddest of all are the places where one sees the tokens, not of lost
friends but of dead ideals. Here a faith laid itself down, tired out,
and went to sleep for good and all. A cypress marks the place, to my
fancy, Here a hope made up its mind that it was not worth while to hope
any longer, and foundered in its tracks. There is an ambition, unburied,
to be sure, but as dead as Cheops. "Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,
and phantom hopes."

"It's a sair sicht," as Carlyle said, looking up at the skies on a
starry night; and one asks, in a mood of some despond