lleries of carved
wood, its brightly shining windows sparkling between the clustering
vine-leaves, and its frieze of Indian corn hung up beneath the roof to
dry. Leaving the carriage, I followed the bank of the stream--just
such a river as in my boyish days I loved to linger by, and fancy I was
fishing. It was no more than fancy: for although my rod and landing-net
were in most fitting perfection, my hackles and orange bodies, my green
drakes and may-flies, all that could be wished, I was too dreamy and
_destrait_ for "the gentle craft;" and liked Walton better in his
rambling discursions than in his more practical teaching. What a
glorious day for scenery, too! Not one of those scorching, blue sky,
cloudless days, when a general hardness prevails, but a mingled light of
sun and cloud shadow, with misty distances, and dark, deep foregrounds
on the still water, where ever and anon a heavy plash, breaking in
widening circles, told of the speckled trout: save that, no other sound
was heard. All was calm and noiseless, as in some far-off valley of the
Mississippi, a little surging of the water on the rocky shore--a faint
melancholy plash--scarce heard even in the stillness.

I sat thinking, not sadly, but seriously, of the past, and of that
present time that was so soon to add itself to the Past; for the Future,
I felt, by sensations that never deceive, it must be brief! My malady
gained rapidly on me; symptoms, I was told to guard against, had already
shewn themselves, and I knew that the battle was fought and lost.

"It is sad to die at thirty," saith Balzac, somewhere; and to the
Frenchman of Paris, who feels that death is the cessation of a round of
pleasures and dissipations, whose hold is hourly stronger; who thinks
that life and self-indulgence are synonymous; whose ideal is the
ceaseless round of exciting sensations that spring from every form of
human passion nurtured to excess;--to him, the sleep of the grave is the
solitude and not the repose of the tomb.

To me, almost alone in the world, to die suggests few sorrows or
regrets; without family, without friends, save those the world's
complaisance calls such; with no direct object for exertion, nothing for
hope or fear to cling to; no ambition that I could nourish, no dream
of greatness or distinction to elevate me above the thought of daily
suffering; life is a mere monotony--and the monotony of _waiting_.

While watching the progress of my malady, seeing day