ements, and lodging in red-hot city hotels. But now the music
and the day's decline filled me with a sense of religious calm, and
for a moment I envied Berkeley. After his practicing was over the
organist locked the chapel door, and we paced up and down in the
fir-grove on the matting of dark red needles, and watched the river,
whose eastern half still shone in the evening light. After supper we
sat out on the piazza, which commanded a view of the Hudson. Berkeley
opened a bottle of Chablis and produced some very old and dry Manilla
cheroots, and, leaning back in our wicker chairs, we proceeded to
"talk Cosmos."

"You are very comfortably fixed here," I began; "but this is not
precisely what I expected to find you doing, after your declaration of
principles, fifteen years ago, you may remember, on our Commencement
night."

"Fifteen years! So it is--so it is," he answered, with a sigh. "Well,
_l'homme propose_, you know. I don't quite remember what it was that
I said on that occasion: dreadful nonsense, no doubt. As Thackeray
says, a boy _is_ an ass. Whatever it was, it proceeded, I suppose,
from some temporary mood rather than from any permanent conviction;
though, to be sure, I slipped into this way of life almost by accident
at first. But, being in, I have found it easy to continue. I am rather
too apt, perhaps, to stay where I am put. I am a quietist by
constitution." He paused, and I waited for him to enter upon a fuller
and more formal apology. Finally, he went on much as follows:

"Just after I left college I made application through some parties at
Washington for a foreign consulate. While I was waiting for the
application to be passed on (it was finally unsuccessful), I came up
here to visit my uncle, who was the rector of this parish. He was a
widower, without any children, and the church was his hobby. It is a
queer little affair, something like the old field-kirks or chapels of
ease in some parts of England. It was built partly by my uncle and
partly by a few New York families who have country places here,
and who use it in the summer. This is all glebe land," he said,
indicating, with a sweep of his hand, the twilight fields below the
house sloping down toward the faintly glimmering river. "My uncle had
a sort of prescription or lien by courtesy on the place. There's not
much salary to speak of, but he had a nice plum of his own, and lived
inexpensively. Well, that first summer I moped about here, got
ac