t," rejoined Dick. "I suppose it is
the universal experience that when one gets out of the freedom of
extreme youth and settles down to the jog-trot, harnessed life, the way
looks rather long and monotonous. A fellow can't help feeling tired to
think how tired he'll be before he gets to the end. To-night I feel as
old and dry as a mummy. If you touch me, I'll crumble."

"Mrs. Lenox and I have been longer in the game than you, Dick," answered
his host whimsically. "We are getting dangerously near the equator; and
we do not find ourselves exhausted. On the contrary, I rather think the
scenery improves, in some respects, as we go along."

"You are hardly capable of measuring the common fate. You have had the
touchstone of success, and the world has opened up before you. But what
depress me and impress me are the sodden people whom I meet by the
hundred; and I can't help reading my fate in the light of theirs. There
are such millions of us, obscure and uncounted except on the census."

"If you will persist in talking serious things," said Ellery, "isn't
obscurity, after all, an internal and not an external quality? You've
got to believe that you are a creature that is worth while. There is no
bitterness in belonging to the myriads if the myriads are themselves
dignified by nature."

"But are they?" cried Dick, now rousing himself. "I look at every face I
pass on the street. I'm always on the search for some ideal quality; and
what do I see? Egotism and greed answer me from all their eyes. The
ninety and nine have gone astray."

"Then it belongs to you to be the hundredth who does not go astray; and
who gives a satisfactory answer to the same eternal questioning that
meets you in the eyes of other men. It's not given to any man to play a
neutral part in the world conflict. In all the magnificent interplay of
forces, I doubt if there is any force strong enough to keep one standing
still."

"Yes, my dear Ellery. And it is just that eternal motion that I am
complaining about. It is burdensome to the flesh and wearisome to the
imagination to look forward to a future of eternal rushing and striving.
I have a multitude of experiences every year, and I straightway forget
them; and that deepens the impression that all these little affairs of
ours, about which we make such an infernal racket at the time, are
matters of very small importance in the march of the centuries. The
march of the centuries may be majestic, but the waddl