want to
float for another while on the very top-most crest of society. I want
to fight a duel or two, elope with a marquise, do a little of
everything for the experience's sake, as a man ought to take opium
once in his life just to know how it feels."

Whether it was indeed the cognac, or only the unusual excitement
attending this outburst of pent-up fire, Berkeley's cheek had got
a flush upon it. Perhaps, too, it was owing to the influences of
the day and the hour, the splash of the fountain, the rustle of
the vine-leaves, and the wavering shadows which played about the
court-yard as the gas-jets flickered in the breeze of night, that made
his boastful words seem less extravagantly out of character than they
otherwise would. The silence which followed his speech was broken by
Clay, who sat with his foot on the rim of the fountain, balancing on
the hind legs of his chair, and looking thoughtfully at the slender
jet as it rose and fell. He still wore the dress suit in which he had
figured on the Commencement platform in the afternoon, and which set
off the aristocratic grace of his slight figure. There was a pale
intellectual light in his face, and his black eyes had the glow of
genius.

"I think," he began, "that Berkeley makes a mistake in confounding a
full life with a restless one. I believe in a full experience too, but
the satisfactions should be inward ones. Take the matter of foreign
travel, for one thing, on which you lay so much stress. It is a great
stimulus to the imagination, no doubt; but then foreign countries are
accessible to the imagination by other means--through books and art,
for example. I think it likely that the reality is, quite as often as
not, disappointing. Place, after all, is indifferent. 'The soul is its
own place': you can't get rid of yourself by going abroad, and it's
himself that a man gets sooner tired of than of anything else. Then as
to acquaintances, I don't know that I should care to know personally
such men as Thackeray and Carlyle, and the big composers and
artists and other people that you mentioned. It might be equally
disenchanting. They put the best of themselves into their books, or
pictures, or music. I certainly would not seek their society through
a formal introduction, at all events. It is hard for a small man to
keep his self-respect in face of a great man when he obtains his
acquaintance as a special favor. If I could meet some of those
fellows, quite naturally and