l in your debt.'

"With that I turned on my heel, and left the barrack-yard, not a word
being spoken by any of the others, nor any evidence of their being so
much amused as they seemed to expect from my exposure.

"Did it never strike you as a strange thing, that while none but the
very poorest and humblest people can bear to confess to present poverty,
very few men decline to speak of the narrow circumstances they have
struggled through--nay, rather take a kind of pleasure in relating what
difficulties once beset their path--what obstacles were opposed to
their success? The reason perhaps is, there is a reflective merit in
thus surmounting opposition.

"The acknowledgment implies a sense of triumph. It seams to say--Here am
I, such as you see me now, and yet time was, when I was houseless and
friendless--when the clouds darkened around my path, and I saw not even
the faintest glimmer of hope to light up the future; yet with a stout
heart and strong courage, with the will came the way; and I conquered.
I do confess, I could dwell, and with great pleasure too, on those
portions of my life when I was poorest and most forsaken, in preference
to the days of my prosperity, and the hours of my greatest wealth: like
me traveller who, after a long journey through some dark winter's day,
finds himself at the approach of night, seated by the corner of a cheery
fire in his inn; every rushing gust of wind that shakes the building,
every plash of the beating rain against the glass, but adds to this
sense of comfort, and makes him hug himself with satisfaction to
think how he is no longer exposed to such a storm--that his journey is
accomplished--his goal is reached--and as he draws his chair closer to
the blaze, it is the remembrance of the past, gives all the enjoyment to
the present. In the same way, the pleasantest memories of old age are of
those periods in youth when we have been successful over difficulty,
and have won our way through every opposing obstacle. 'Joy's memory is
indeed no longer joy.' Few can look back on happy hours without thinking
of those with whom they spent them, and then comes the sad question,
Where are they now? What man reaches even the middle term of life with a
tithe of the friends he started with in youth; and as they drop off, one
by one around him, comes the sad reflection, that the period is passed
when such ties can be formed anew--The book of the heart once closed,
opens no more. But why these