a few paces, it suddenly burst upon my vision in all the
horrors of its desolation. A fearful awe took possession of me, and as I
stood beneath the trees I had so often climbed in years gone by, I could
not refrain from looking uneasily behind me, and treading more softly
upon the sacred leaves, just commencing to wither and fall.

I approached the door with as much reverence as ever crept Jew or
Mussulman, on bended knee and with downcast eye, to the portals of the
Kabbala or Holy of Holies, and as I reached forth my hand to turn the
latch, I involuntarily paused to listen before I crossed the threshold.

Ah, manhood! what are all thy triumphs compared to a schoolboy's palms!
What are thy infamies compared to his disgraces! As head of his class,
he carries a front which a monarch might emulate in vain; as master of
the playground, he wields a sceptre more indisputable than Czar or Caesar
ever bore! As a favorite, he provokes a bitterer hostility than ever
greeted a Bute or a Buckingham; as a coward or traitor, he is loaded
with a contumely beneath which Arnold or Hull would have sunk forever!

I listened. The pleasant hum of busy voices, the sharp tones of the
master, the mumbled accents of hurried recitations, all were gone. The
gathering shadows of evening corresponded most fittingly with the
deepening gloom of my recollections, and I abandoned myself to their
guidance, without an effort to control or direct them.

I stood _alone_ upon the step. Where was he, whose younger hand always
locked in mine, entered that room and left it so often by my side; that
bright-eyed boy, whose quick wit and genial temper won for him the
affections both of master and scholar; that gentle spirit that kindled
into love, or saddened into tears, as easily as sunshine dallies with a
flower or raindrops fall from a summer cloud; that brother, whose genius
was my pride, whose courage my admiration, whose soul my glory; he who
faltered not before the walls of Camargo, when but seven men, out of as
many hundred in his regiment, volunteered to go forward, under the
command of Taylor, to endure all the hardships of a soldier's life, in a
tropical clime, and to brave all the dangers of a three days' assault
upon a fortified city; he who fought so heroically at Monterey, and
escaped death in so many forms on the battle-field, only to meet it at
last as a victim to contagion, contracted at the bedside of a friend?
Where was he? The swift waters