assent with which people commonly smile answers to each other's
remarks at evening parties, but as if he understood the words from
having thought the thought. We three fell into conversation about the
song--about 'Clari'--about the opera--the theatre--about London; and
then Dr. Brown, who had been educated in the great city, joined us,
and finally he and Miss Jones took the London subject to themselves,
and the merchant continued to talk to me. He was very pleasant
company, chiefly from being so alive with intelligence that it was
much less trouble to talk with him than with any one I had ever met,
except my father. He required so much less than the average amount of
explanation. It hardly seemed possible to use too few words for him to
seize your meaning by both ends, so to speak; the root your idea
sprang from, and conclusion to which it tended.

"We talked of music--of singing--of the new song, and of the subject
of it--home. And so of home-love, and patriotism, and the characters
of nations in which the feeling seemed to predominate.

"'Like everything else, it depends partly on circumstances, I
suppose,' he said. 'I sometimes envy people who have only one
home--the eldest son of a landed proprietor, for instance. I fancy I
have as much home-love in me as most people, but it has been divided;
I have had more homes than one.'

"'_I_ have had more homes than one,' I said; 'but with me I do not
think it has been divided. At least, one of the homes has been so much
dearer than the others.'

"'Do you not think so because it is the latest, and your feelings
about it are freshest?' he asked.

"I laughed. 'A bad guess. It is not my present home. This one was near
a river.'

"'Exactly.'

"This time the 'exactly' did not seem so appropriate as before, and I
explained further.

"'For one thing we were there when I was at an age when attachment to
a place gets most deeply rooted, I think. As a mere child one enjoys
and suffers like a kitten from hour to hour. But when one is just old
enough to form associations and weave dreams, and yet is still a
child--it is then, I fancy, that a home gets almost bound up with
one's life.'

"He simply said 'Yes,' and I went on. Why, I can hardly tell, except
that to talk on any subject beyond mere current chit-chit, and be
understood, was a luxury we did not often taste at the tea-parties of
the town.

"'And yet I don't know if my theory will hold good, even in our case,'
I w