in similar circumstances. In short, he was a product of
the period since the civil war closed, that great upheaval of patriotic
feeling and sacrifice, which ended in so much expansion and so many
opportunities. If he had remained in New Hampshire he would probably have
been a successful politician, successful not only in keeping in place,
but in teaching younger aspirants that serving the country is a very good
way to the attainment of luxury and the consideration that money brings.
But having chosen the law as a stepping-stone to the lobby, to
speculation, and the manipulation of chances, he had a poor opinion of
politics and of politicians. His success thus far, though considerable,
had not been sufficient to create for him powerful enemies, so that he
may be said to be admired by all and feared by none. In the general
opinion he was a downright good fellow and amazingly clever.

VII

In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible. Surely it is not
necessary to choose between love and riches. One may have both, and the
one all the more easily for having attained the other. It must be a
fiction of the moralists who construct the dramas that the god of love
and the god of money each claims an undivided allegiance. It was in some
wholly legendary, perhaps spiritual, world that it was necessary to
renounce love to gain the Rhine gold. The boxes at the Metropolitan did
not believe this. The spectators of the boxes could believe it still
less. For was not beauty there seen shining in jewels that have a market
value, and did not love visibly preside over the union, and make it known
that his sweetest favors go with a prosperous world? And yet, is the
charm of life somewhat depending upon a sense of its fleetingness, of its
phantasmagorial character, a note of coming disaster, maybe, in the midst
of its most seductive pageantry, in the whirl and glitter and hurry of
it? Is there some subtle sense of exquisite satisfaction in snatching the
sweet moments of life out of the very delirium of it, that must soon end
in an awakening to bankruptcy of the affections, and the dreadful loss of
illusions? Else why do we take pleasure--a pleasure so deep that it
touches the heart like melancholy--in the common drama of the opera? How
gay and joyous is the beginning! Mirth, hilarity, entrancing sound,
brilliant color, the note of a trumpet calling to heroism, the beseeching
of the concordant strings, and the soft flute invitin