One of the greatest enjoyments which are likely to fall to the lot of a man in middle life, is to spend a week or so with the old school-and-college companion whom he has not seen since the graver page of life has turned over for both parties. It is as unlike any ordinary visit-making as possible. It is one of the very few instances in which the complimentary dialogue between the guest and his entertainer comes to have a real force and meaning. One has to unlearn, for this special occasion, the art so necessary in ordinary society, of interpreting terms by their contraries. And in fact it is difficult, at first, for one who has been used for some years to a social atmosphere, whose warmth is mainly artificial, to breathe freely in the natural sunshine of an old friend's company; just as a native Londoner is said sometimes to pine away, when removed into the fresh air of the country. We are so used to consider the shake of the hand, and the "Very glad to see you," of the hundred and one people who ask us to dinner, as merely a polite and poetical form of expressing, "You certainly are a bore; but as you are here, I must make the best of you"--that it costs us an effort to comprehend that "How are you, old fellow?" does, in the present case, imply a _bonâ fide_ hope that we are as sound in health and heart, if not as young, as formerly. And especially when a man's pursuits have led him a good deal into the world, and many of his warmer feelings have been, insensibly perhaps, chilled by the contact, the heartiness of his reception by some old college friend who has led a simple life, the squire of his paternal acres, or the occupant of a country parsonage, and has gained and lost less by the polishing process of society, will come upon him with a strangeness almost reproachful. But once fairly fixed within the hospitable walls, the natural tone is recognised, and proves contagious; the formal incrustations of years melt in the first hour of after-dinner chat, and the heart is opened to feelings and language which it had persuaded itself were long forgotten. And when the end of your three weeks' holiday arrives at last, which you cannot persuade yourself has been more than three days, (though you seem to have lived over again the best half of your life in the time,) you have so far forgotten the conventional rules of good-breeding, that when your friend says to you on the last evening, "Must you really go? Can't you stay till Monday?" you actually take him at his word, and begin to cast about in your mind for some possible excuse for stealing another couple of days or so, though you have heard the same expression from the master of every house where you have happened to visit, and never dreamt of understanding it in any other than its civilised (_i. e._, _non-natural_) sense--as a hint to fix a day for going, and stick to it, that your entertainer may "know the worst."