On winter evenings, when out of doors the fogs and dirt of London reign supreme, it is the wisest course to sit at home in one's arm-chair, warmed by the blaze of a comfortable fire, and with some favourite book for a companion, to watch the smoke curl upwards from one's pipe. But after a time the book falls on to one's knees, and all sorts and conditions of pictures float lazily through the tobacco mists. I have been told that effects are due to causes. Perhaps these undisciplined wanderings of my brain may be only the inevitable result of a good dinner; perhaps the quiet content that I feel may be caused only by a spirit of contradiction--a knowledge that the arm-chair and the desultory visions of my brain should be ruthlessly put aside, to give place to exact, well-regulated thoughts concentrated on necessary labour. Be it what it may, I will not work to-night. A nebulous peace of mind has claimed and absorbed me which it would be impious to dispel. I shall let my memory lift the curtain behind which lies the past. The thousand and one small duties of the present, mostly absurd trivialities, the insignificance of which is only equalled by their persistence, can be neglected for once, and shall be as dust in the balance, without weight to disturb the equipoise of my mind. Letters from people I do not know, requesting information on subjects that do not concern me--letters which, as far as I can see, merely stamp the writers as belonging to that class of human animal incapable of thinking for itself--these shall remain unanswered. Why should such shallow creatures be allowed to worry the more robust portion of the universe by their energetic yet irritating display of letter-writing? why have I to spend much ink and thought in answering them? Truly this is a weary world! Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. Worries and bothers are for ever at one's elbow. But here I am thus early inveighing against the petty annoyances of the present instead of enjoying those reminiscences of former years that, viewed through the mists of time, have their pleasures enhanced and their pains discounted; when I can allow my memory a free field from which it may pick the fairest flowers that have blossomed in those bygone years. Ah! a quotation comes wandering by: when it is at home it may be found in an 'Ode to the Terrestrial Globe,' by an unhappy wretch:-- 'It's true my prospects all look blue-- But don't let that unsettle you! Never you mind. Roll on!' (_It rolls on._) And as it rolls on down the distances of my mind, it leaves me, being in a very contrary frame of mind, somewhat comforted. Moreover, it opens up new channels for thought, and those exquisite lines on golf that occur somewhere in _Paradise Lost_ are of course at once suggested, but I am too lazy to find the context:--