learn some wonderful system by which you never forgot anything. I
don't know why he was so eager on the subject, unless it be that I

occasionally borrow an umbrella and have a knack of coming out, in the
middle of a game of whist, with a mild "Lor! I've been thinking all

along that clubs were trumps." I declined the suggestion, however, in
spite of the advantages he so attractively set forth. I have no wish

to remember everything. There are many things in most men's lives
that had better be forgotten. There is that time, many years ago,

when we did not act quite as honorably, quite as uprightly, as we
perhaps should have done--that unfortunate deviation from the path of

strict probity we once committed, and in which, more unfortunate
still, we were found out--that act of folly, of meanness, of wrong.

Ah, well! we paid the penalty, suffered the maddening hours of vain
remorse, the hot agony of shame, the scorn, perhaps, of those we

loved. Let us forget. Oh, Father Time, lift with your kindly hands
those bitter memories from off our overburdened hearts, for griefs are

ever coming to us with the coming hours, and our little strength is
only as the day.

Not that the past should be buried. The music of life would be mute
if the chords of memory were snapped asunder. It is but the poisonous

weeds, not the flowers, that we should root out from the garden of
Mnemosyne. Do you remember Dickens' "Haunted Man"--how he prayed for

forgetfulness, and how, when his prayer was answered, he prayed for
memory once more? We do not want all the ghosts laid. It is only the

haggard, cruel-eyed specters that we flee from. Let the gentle,
kindly phantoms haunt us as they will; we are not afraid of them.

Ah me! the world grows very full of ghosts as we grow older. We need
not seek in dismal church-yards nor sleep in moated granges to see the

shadowy faces and hear the rustling of their garments in the night.
Every house, every room, every creaking chair has its own particular

ghost. They haunt the empty chambers of our lives, they throng around
us like dead leaves whirled in the autumn wind. Some are living, some

are dead. We know not. We clasped their hands once, loved them,
quarreled with them, laughed with them, told them our thoughts and

hopes and aims, as they told us theirs, till it seemed our very hearts
had joined in a grip that would defy the puny power of Death. They

are gone now; lost to us forever. Their eyes will never look into
ours again and their voices we shall never hear. Only their ghosts

come to us and talk with us. We see them, dim and shadowy, through
our tears. We stretch our yearning hands to them, but they are air.

Ghosts! They are with us night and day. They walk beside us in the
busy street under the glare of the sun. They sit by us in the

twilight at home. We see their little faces looking from the windows
of the old school-house. We meet them in the woods and lanes where we

shouted and played as boys. Hark! cannot you hear their low laughter
from behind the blackberry-bushes and their distant whoops along the

grassy glades? Down here, through the quiet fields and by the wood,
where the evening shadows are lurking, winds the path where we used to

watch for her at sunset. Look, she is there now, in the dainty white
frock we knew so well, with the big bonnet dangling from her little

hands and the sunny brown hair all tangled. Five thousand miles away!
Dead for all we know! What of that? She is beside us now, and we can

look into her laughing eyes and hear her voice. She will vanish at
the stile by the wood and we shall be alone; and the shadows will

creep out across the fields and the night wind will sweep past
moaning. Ghosts! they are always with us and always will be while the

sad old world keeps echoing to the sob of long good-bys, while the
cruel ships sail away across the great seas, and the cold green earth

lies heavy on the hearts of those we loved.
But, oh, ghosts, the world would be sadder still without you. Come to

us and speak to us, oh you ghosts of our old loves! Ghosts of
playmates, and of sweethearts, and old friends, of all you laughing

boys and girls, oh, come to us and be with us, for the world is very
lonely, and new friends and faces are not like the old, and we cannot

love them, nay, nor laugh with them as we have loved and laughed with
you. And when we walked together, oh, ghosts of our youth, the world

was very gay and bright; but now it has grown old and we are growing
weary, and only you can bring the brightness and the freshness back to

us.
Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted house, its walls are

ever echoing to unseen feet. Through the broken casements we watch
the flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest shadows of them all

are the shadows of our own dead selves.
Oh, those young bright faces, so full of truth and honor, of pure,

good thoughts, of noble longings, how reproachfully they look upon us
with their deep, clear eyes!

I fear they have good cause for their sorrow, poor lads. Lies and
cunning and disbelief have crept into our hearts since those

preshaving days--and we meant to be so great and good.
It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of

fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.
I like to sit and have a talk sometimes with that odd little chap that

was myself long ago. I think he likes it too, for he comes so often
of an evening when I am alone with my pipe, listening to the

whispering of the flames. I see his solemn little face looking at me
through the scented smoke as it floats upward, and I smile at him; and

he smiles back at me, but his is such a grave, old-fashioned smile.
We chat about old times; and now and then he takes me by the hand, and

then we slip through the black bars of the grate and down the dusky
glowing caves to the land that lies behind the firelight. There we

find the days that used to be, and we wander along them together. He
tells me as we walk all he thinks and feels. I laugh at him now and

then, but the next moment I wish I had not, for he looks so grave I am
ashamed of being frivolous. Besides, it is not showing proper respect

to one so much older than myself--to one who was myself so very long
before I became myself.

We don't talk much at first, but look at one another; I down at his
curly hair and little blue bow, he up sideways at me as he trots. And

some-how I fancy the shy, round eyes do not altogetherapprove of me,
and he heaves a little sigh, as though he were disappointed. But

after awhile his bashfulness wears off and he begins to chat. He
tells me his favorite fairy-tales, he can do up to six times, and he

has a guinea-pig, and pa says fairy-tales ain't true; and isn't it a
pity? 'cos he would so like to be a knight and fight a dragon and

marry a beautiful princess. But he takes a more practical view of
life when he reaches seven, and would prefer to grow up be a bargee,

and earn a lot of money. Maybe this is the consequence of falling in
love, which he does about this time with the young lady at the milk

shop aet. six. (God bless her little ever-dancing feet, whatever size
they may be now!) He must be very fond of her, for he gives her one

day his chiefest treasure, to wit, a huge pocket-knife with four rusty
blades and a corkscrew, which latter has a knack of working itself out

in some mysterious manner and sticking into its owner's leg. She is
an affectionate little thing, and she throws her arms round his neck

and kisses him for it, then and there, outside the shop. But the
stupid world (in the person of the boy at the cigar emporium next

door) jeers at such tokens of love. Whereupon my young friend very
properly prepares to punch the head of the boy at the cigar emporium

next door; but fails in the attempt, the boy at the cigar emporium
next door punching his instead.

And then comes school life, with its bitter little sorrows and its