out to set out on a mission of importance. If I should succeed in
doing what I am charged with, it will go far to secure my future, and
then, dearest mother, I will go over to fetch you, for I will no longer
live without you."

I pictured the place I was living in, and its climate, as attractively
as I was able, and said, what I verily believed, that I hoped never to
leave it. Of my father I did not venture to speak; but I invited her, if
the course of our correspondence should prove assured, to tell me freely
all about her present condition, and where and how she was.

"You will see, dear mother," said I, in conclusion, "that I write in all
the constraint of one who is not sure who may read him. Of the accident
by which the address I now give this letter reached me, I will tell when
I write again. Meanwhile, though I shall not be here to receive it at
once, write to me, to the care of Hodnig and Oppovich, and add, 'to be
forwarded.'"

I enclosed a little photograph of the town, as seen from the bay, and
though ill done and out of drawing, it still conveyed some notion of the
pretty spot with its mountain framework.

I had it in my head to write another letter, and, indeed, made about
a dozen attempts to begin it. It was to Pauline. Nothing but very
boyishness could have ever conceived such a project, but I thought--it
was very simple of me!--I thought I owed it to her, and to my
own loyalty, to declare that my heart had wandered from its first
allegiance, and fixed its devotion on another. I believed--I was young
enough to believe it--that I had won her affections, and I felt it
would be dishonorable in me to deceive her as to my own. I suppose I was
essaying a task that would have puzzled a more consummate tactician than
myself, for certainly nothing could be more palpable than my failures;
and though I tried, with all the ingenuity I possessed, to show that in
my altered fortunes I could no longer presume to retain any hold on her
affections, somehow it would creep out that my heart had opened to a
sentiment far deeper and more enthralling than that love which began in
a polka and ended at the railway.

I must own I am now grateful to my stupidity and ineptness, which saved
me from committing this great blunder, though at the time I mourned over
my incapacity, and bewailed the dulness that destroyed every attempt
I made to express myself gracefully. I abandoned the task at length in
despair, and set to work to p