"Then I will talk of myself now; I have promised to entertain you, and you have told me how to do it. They are dancing in the parlor now, and the music and the laughing will screen us from them; you can listen at your ease, and be entertained without fear of interruption. I believe you when you say you like to hear me talk of myself, because it pleases me to believe it, and men, you know, will go great lengths to believe anything that suits their vanity. "But first, you will not mind anything that I may say--you will not shrink and blush? Remember, it is a man's life, and not a woman's, that you are to hear about--a dark life, and not a prosperous one--and to make it vivid to you, I must show you the blackness of the shadow and the depth of the gloom; you must know what the trial has been before you can know what grim strength was needed to endure it--what coldness and sternness, as you call them, to keep down the pain within. You are a child no longer; you know something of what suffering is, so I can tell you with some hope of pity, if you will listen and not be dainty--if you will forget all about yourself, and think only of what you hear. Can you be such a listener? Such only are worthy of confidence. I never found one before, but I will try you. Do you hear the rumbling of that distant thunder? How strangely it mixes with the music across the hall! There is a storm coming up; we cannot go home for two hours yet, and they will not tire of dancing even then"---- There was a keen, piercing flash of lightning. "Does it make you nervous? You used to be afraid in thunder-storms." "I don't mind the lightning any more than the flare of the candle to-night, Mr. Rutledge. Why don't you go on with what you promised to tell me?" "I will not begin by telling you about my childhood; a happy childhood is a thing to be enjoyed once in reality, and forever in memory, but not to be talked about; no one but the man himself can see the least pathos or deliciousness in the details and recollections of his nursery days; to others they are weariness and folly; to him they are the sweetest pages in his memory; but he must not hope to find there is any other than himself who can see any interest in them. Perhaps his mother, if God spares her to him--perhaps the woman whom he has taught to love him, and to whom he is all the world--perhaps his young children, before they have learned their perfect lesson of egotism and selfishness--may listen as if the story were their own; but I have found no one to whom I could be egotistical and not be wearisome; I have found that most people like to hear about themselves, and I have not thwarted them. "But you shall hear of what I have told no one else." CHAPTER XXXV. ----"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!" Whittier.