o deal with by any remedy but
time. Mine was not a bad case, but it excited sympathy. There was
an ancient, faded old lady in the house, very kindly, but very deaf,
rustling about in dark autumnal foliage of silk or other murmurous
fabric, somewhat given to snuff, but a very worthy gentlewoman of the
poor-relation variety. She comforted me, I well remember, but not
with apples, and stayed me, but not with flagons. She went in her
benevolence, and, taking a blue and white soda-powder, mingled the same
in water, and encouraged me to drink the result. It might be a specific
for seasickness, but it was not for home-sickness. The fiz was a
mockery, and the saline refrigerant struck a colder chill to my
despondent heart. I did not disgrace myself, however, and a few days
cured me, as a week on the water often cures seasickness.

There was a sober-faced boy of minute dimensions in the house, who began
to make some advances to me, and who, in spite of all the conditions
surrounding him, turned out, on better acquaintance, to be one of the
most amusing, free-spoken, mocking little imps I ever met in my life.
My room-mate came later. He was the son of a clergyman in a neighboring
town,--in fact I may remark that I knew a good many clergymen's sons at
Andover. He and I went in harness together as well as most boys do, I
suspect; and I have no grudge against him, except that once, when I was
slightly indisposed, he administered to me,--with the best intentions,
no doubt,--a dose of Indian pills, which effectually knocked me out of
time, as Mr. Morrissey would say,--not quite into eternity, but so near
it that I perfectly remember one of the good ladies told me (after I had
come to my senses a little, and was just ready for a sip of cordial and
a word of encouragement), with that delightful plainness of speech which
so brings realities home to the imagination, that "I never should look
any whiter when I was laid out as a corpse." After my room-mate and I
had been separated twenty-five years, fate made us fellow-townsmen
and acquaintances once more in Berkshire, and now again we are close
literary neighbors; for I have just read a very pleasant article, signed
by him, in the last number of the "Galaxy." Does it not sometimes
seem as if we were all marching round and round in a circle, like the
supernumeraries who constitute the "army" of a theatre, and that each
of us meets and is met by the same and only the same people, or their
do