deserted his comrades. It
seems natural enough to outlive any one contemporary, but unnatural
to survive them as a mass,--a sort of risky thing, fraught with the
various vague embarrassments and undefined perils threatening one who
is out of his proper place. And yet one does n't want to die, though
convinced he ought to, and that's the cowardly misery of it."

"Yes," said Henry, "I had that feeling pretty strongly when I attended
the last reunion of our alumni, and found not one survivor within five
classes of me. I was isolated. Death had got into my rear and cut me
off. I felt ashamed and thoroughly miserable."

Soon after, tea was served. Frank vindicated his character as an old
beau by a tottering alacrity in serving the ladies, while George and
Henry, by virtue of their more evident infirmity, sat still and allowed
themselves to be served. One or two declined tea as not agreeing with
them at that hour.

The loquacious herb gave a fresh impulse to the conversation, and the
party fell to talking in a broken, interjectory way of youthful scenes
and experiences, each contributing some reminiscence, and the others
chiming in and adding scraps, or perhaps confessing their inability to
recall the occurrences.

"What a refinement of cruelty it is," said Henry at last, "that makes
even those experiences which were unpleasant or indifferent when passing
look so mockingly beautiful when hopelessly past."

"Oh, that's not the right way to look at it, Judge," broke in Grandma
Fellows, with mild reproof. "Just think rather how dull life would be,
looking forward or backward, if past or coming experiences seemed as
uninteresting as they mostly are when right at hand."

"Sweet memories are like moonlight," said Jessie musingly. "They make
one melancholy, however pleasing they may be. I don't see why, any more
than why moonlight is so sad, spite of its beauty; but so it is."

The fragile tenure of the sense of personal identity is illustrated by
the ease and completeness with which actors can put themselves in the
place of the characters they assume, so that even their instinctive
demeanor corresponds to the ideal, and their acting becomes nature. Such
was the experience of the members of the club. The occupation of their
mind during the week with the study of their assumed characters had
produced an impression that had been deepened to an astonishing degree
by the striking effect of the accessories of costume and manner. T