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most distant objects, have come out of poetry, and present themselves
in the prosaic form of steam locomotive and the electric telegraph.

Nowadays, everybody has travelled to some distant land, has seen, with
everybody's eyes, the charmed isles and lotos shores that used to be
only in books. In this lively, changing age everybody is living his
own romance. And this is why the romance of story grows pale and is
thrown aside. A domestic sketch of everyday life, of outward calm and
simplicity, soothes the unrest of active life, and charms more than
three volumes of wild incident that cannot equal the excitement that
every reader is enacting in his own drama.

There were as many romances in life around me, that night, as there
were persons in the theatre. I had not merely learned that the
cold Aurelia was passionately in love, that the gay Lilly was
broken-hearted, that the frank Annette was silly, and Angelina and
Frank engaged before it was out. Beside all this, I had learned the
trials and joys of many others whom I know only in this way; and I
left the theatre the last, as I had come in the first.

The next morning I returned to business affairs again. It was a
particularly pressing morning. The steamer was in. I had not even time
to think of my last night's experiences. Only at the corner of a
street I met an acquaintance, whose smiling face amazed me. I knew
that all last evening his mind had been preoccupied with the truly
critical state of his affairs, and I was at a loss how to greet him.
He hurried away from my embarrassment. I had more than one of these
encounters; but it was not till the labors of the day were over that I
understood how my knowledge of mankind had been lately increased. I
went, in the evening, to a small party where I knew I should meet the
Seymours. I fell in there with Aurelia first. She was as cold and as
stately as ever. I entered into conversation with her, feeling that I
could touch the key-note of her life. But no; she was as chilling
to me as ever; nothing warmed her--nothing elicited from her the
slightest spark. Sometimes she looked at me a little wonderingly, as
if I were talking in some style unusual to me; as if my remarks were,
in a manner, impertinent; but, in the end, I left her to her icy
coldness.

As for Lilly, she appeared to the world, in general, as gay as ever.
I fancied I detected a slight listlessness as she accompanied her
partner into the dancing-room for the s