"Boys," said I, "in fifteen years from to-night let's have a supper here and see how each man of us has worked out his theory of life, and how he likes it as far as he has got." "Oh, give us twenty," said Doddridge, laughing, as we all arose and prepared to break up. "No one accomplishes anything in this latitude before he is forty." * * * * * It was in effect just fifteen years from the summer of our graduation that I started out to look up systematically my quondam classmates and compare notes with them. The course of my own life had been quite other than I had planned. For one thing, I had lived in New Orleans and not in New York, and my occasions had led me seldom to the North. The first visit I paid was to Berkeley. I had heard that he was still unmarried, and that he had been for years settled, as minister, over a small Episcopal parish on the Hudson. The steamer landed me one summer afternoon at a little dock on the west bank; and after obtaining from the dock-keeper precise directions for finding the parsonage, I set out on foot. After a walk of a mile along a road skirted by handsome country seats, but contrasting strangely in its loneliness with the broad thoroughfare of the river constantly occupied by long tows of barges and rafts, I came to the rectory gate. The house was a stone cottage, covered with trailers, and standing well back from the road. In the same inclosure, surrounded by a grove of firs, was a little stone chapel with high pitched roof and rustic belfry. In front of the house I spied a figure which I recognized as Berkeley. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and was pecking away with a hoe at the gravel walk, whistling meanwhile his old favorite "Bonny Doon." He turned as I came up the driveway, and regarded me at first without recognition. He, for his part, was little changed by time. There was the same tall, narrow-shouldered, slightly stooping figure; the face, smooth-shaved, with a spot of wintry red in the cheek, and the old humorous cast in the small blue eyes. "You don't know me from Adam," I said, pausing in front of him. "Ah!" he exclaimed, directly. "Polisson, old man, upon my conscience I'm glad to see you, but I didn't know you till you spoke. You've been having the yellow fever, haven't you? Come in--come into the house." We passed in through the porch, which was covered with sweet-pea vines trained on strings, and entered the library, where Berkeley resumed his coat. The room was lined with book-shelves loaded to the ceiling, while piles of literature had overflowed the cases and stood about on the floor in bachelor freedom. After the first greetings and inquiries, Berkeley carried my valise upstairs, and then returning, said: