"The river is a deal of company," resumed my host. "Thirty-six steamers pass here every twenty-four hours. That now is the _Mary Powell_." "Well," I said, answering not so much to his last remark as to the whole trend of his autobiography, "I suppose you are happy in this way of life, since you seem to prefer it. But it would be terribly monotonous to me." "Happy?" replied Berkeley, doubtfully. "I don't know. Happiness is a subjective matter. You _are_ happy if you think yourself so. As for me, I cultivate an obsolete mood--the old-fashioned humor of melancholy. I don't suppose now that a light-hearted, French kind of chap like you can understand, in the least, what those fine, crusty old Elizabethans meant when they wrote, 'There's naught in this life sweet, If man were wise to see't, But only melancholy.' This noisy generation has lost their secret. As for me, I am content with the grays and drabs. I think the brighter colors would disturb my mood. I know it's not a large life, but it is a safe one." I did not at the moment remember that this had been Armstrong's very saying fifteen years ago, but some unconscious association led me to mention him. "Armstrong and you have changed places in one respect, I should think," said I. "He is keeping a boarding-school somewhere in Connecticut. And instead of leading a Tulkinghorny existence in the New York University building, as he firmly intended, he has married and produced a numerous offspring, I hear." "Yes, poor fellow!" said Berkeley; "I fancy that he is dreadfully overrun and hard up. There always was something absurdly domestic about Armstrong. They say he has grown red, fat, and bald. Think of a man with Armstrong's education--and he had some talent, too--keeping a sort of Dotheboys Hall! I haven't seen him for eight or nine years. The last time was at Jersey City, and I had just time to shake hands with him. He was with a lot of other pedagogues, all going up to a teachers' convention, or some such dreary thing, at Albany."