succeeded by curls, short and crisped; the hues, alternately pale and
hectic, that the dreams of romance had once spread over my cheek,
had settled into the unchanging bronze of manhood; the smooth lip and
unshaven chin were clothed with a thick hair; the once unfurrowed brow
was habitually knit in thought; and the ardent, restless expression that
boyhood wore had yielded to the quiet unmoved countenance of one in
whom long custom has subdued all outward sign of emotion, and many
and various events left no prevalent token of the mind save that of an
habitual but latent resolution. My frame, too, once scarcely less slight
than a woman's, was become knit and muscular; and nothing was left by
which, in the foreign air, the quiet brow, and the athletic form, my
very mother could have recognized the slender figure and changeable face
of the boy she had last beheld. The very sarcasm of the eye was gone;
and I had learned the world's easy lesson,--the dissimulation of
composure.

I have noted one thing in others, and it was particularly noticeable
in me; namely, that few who mix very largely with men, and with the
courtier's or the citizen's design, ever retain the key and tone of
their original voice. The voice of a young man is as yet modulated by
nature, and expresses the passion of the moment; that of the matured
pupil of art expresses rather the customary occupation of his life.
Whether he aims at persuading, convincing, or commanding others, his
voice irrevocably settles into the key he ordinarily employs; and, as
persuasion is the means men chiefly employ in their commerce with each
other, especially in the regions of a court, so a tone of artificial
blandness and subdued insinuation is chiefly that in which the accents
of worldly men are clothed; the artificial intonation, long continued,
grows into nature, and the very pith and basis of the original sound
fritter themselves away. The change was great in me, for at that time
which I brought in comparison with the present my age was one in which
the voice is yet confused and undecided, struggling between the accents
of youth and boyhood; so that even this most powerful and unchanging
of all claims upon the memory was in a great measure absent in me; and
nothing but an occasional and rare tone could have produced even that
faint and unconscious recognition which the Hermit had confessed.

I must be pardoned these egotisms, which the nature of my story renders
necessary.