No eccentricity of fortune surprises me now, though it brings vastly more discomfort for the time than in earlier days; and my recollections grow weaker proportionately. However strange one’s quarters, however distressed or frightened one may be, an abiding consciousness dwells in the soul that one has seen and done and gone through the same experience already. The power of observation is not dulled, nor the sense of fun, still less that of alarm; but the circumstances do not seem worth remembering particularly. If one reflects more, one feels less. After his first visit to the Antipodes, so to speak, a boy has stories inexhaustible of anecdote, remark, and adventure; but from each succeeding journey he brings back shorter and drier reports, until a trip to the moon would seem hardly worth telling at length: after stating the facts, he has done. Last week I entertained a confrère just returned from El Teb and Tamasi; we have served together in divers parts, and the public, I understand, has been interested in our stories; but all through the evening not fifty words were exchanged touching on matters personal in his late vicissitudes. It seems less and less worth while to dwell upon impressions and to carry them away, the more impressions one gathers. This is not the common belief. We read of men in novels, who having been everywhere and done everything, are always ready with a tale of adventure that thrills the heroine. I will venture to say that such a personage has not been far into terra incognita, nor has served in many wars, unless, of course, he is a professional talker.