y and
celibacy and selfishness,--just as you have _not_ done."

"Yes, yes; I know, I remember now," he said, laughing. "Boys are great
fools with their brag of what they are going to do and be. Life knocks
it out of them fast enough; they learn to do what they must."

"Do you ever write any poetry nowadays?"

"No, no; not I. The muse has given me the go-by completely. Except for
some occasional verses for a school festival or something of the kind,
which I grind out now and then, I've sunk my rhyming dictionary deeper
than ever plummet sounded. The chief disadvantage of running a big
school like this," he continued, with a sigh, "is the want of leisure
and retirement to enable a man to keep up his studies. Sometimes I
actually ache for solitude--for a few weeks or months of absolute
loneliness and silence. Mrs. Armstrong has fixed me up a nice little
private study,--remind me to take you in there before you go,--where I
keep my books, etc. But the children will find their way in, and then
I'm seldom undisturbed anywhere for more than an hour at a time;
there's always some call on me,--something wanted that no one else can
see to."

"You ought to swap places with Berkeley for awhile. He's got more
leisure than he knows what to do with."

"Berkeley! Well, what's he up to now? Philately? Arboriculture? What's
his last fad? You've seen him lately, you said. I met him for a minute
in New York, a few years ago, and he told me he was going to an old
book auction."

"He's got genealogy at present," I explained.

"Genealogy! What hay! What sawdust! Aren't there enough live people to
take an interest in, without grubbing up dead ones from tombstones
and town clerks' records? Berkeley must be a regular old bachelor
antiquary by this time, with all human sympathy dried out of him. No,
I wouldn't change with _him_. Would we, fatty?" he said, appealing to
a small offspring of uncertain sex which had just toddled out the door
and across the gangway to kiss its papa good-night.

I took leave of Armstrong and his interesting family with a sense of
increased liking. His worldliness, good nature, and simple little
enthusiasms and self-satisfactions had somehow kept him young, and he
seemed quite the old Armstrong of college days. I afterward learned
that the excellent fellow had just finished his law studies, and was
preparing to enter upon practice, when his father's health failed,
forcing him to give up his parish, and leaving