is upon all our shy confraternity, and we seldom
make confidences even to each other. It is only at rarest intervals that
the spell is lifted, by silent sympathy, by a smile, by a tear, by I
know not what. At such times our souls are like those deep pools of the
shore, only open to the sky at lowest tides of still summer days, only
to be approached across long stretches of wet sand and slippery shelves
of rock. In their depths are delicate fronded seaweeds and shells tinted
with hues of sundawn; but to see them you must bend low over the
surface, which no lightest breath must furrow, or the vision is gone.

Few of the busy toilers of the world will leave the firm sands to see so
little; but sometimes one weary of keen life will stray aside, and
oftener a child will come splashing across the beach to peer down with
artless curiosity and delight. Then the jealous ocean returns, and the
still clear depths are confused once more with refluent waters; soon the
waves are tossing above the quiet spot, and the child is gone home to
sleep and forget. I cannot have you with me at these still hours of
revelation; I must tell my tale as best I can with such success as
fortune may bestow.

I shall say nothing of the miseries which embittered the life of the
diffident boy. But I cannot pass in silence the deeper trouble of
earliest manhood, when my soul first awoke to the dread that though
other clouds might drift westward and dissolve, one would impend over me
for ever. It was at the university that this vague misgiving crept upon
me like a chill mist, until the hopes and aspirations of youth were one
by one extinguished, as to a sailor putting out to sea the comfortable
harbour lights vanish in the wracks of a tempestuous winter morning. I
turned my face away from the gracious young life amidst which I moved,
like a man possessed of a dark secret to his undoing. My heart, yet
eager for the joy of living and yearning for affection, was daily
starved of its need as by a power of deliberate and feline cruelty; and
with every expansive impulse instantly restrained by this daemonic
force, I was left at last unresponsive as a maltreated child, who flings
his arms round no one, but shrinks back into his own world of solitary
fancies.

I think there is no misery so great as that of youth surrounded by all
opportunities for wholesome fellowship, endowed with natural faculties
for enjoyment, yet repressed and thwarted at every turn by invi