Both Armstrong and Berkeley, on our Commencement night, had spoken from a sense of their own limitations, and in violent momentary rebellion against them. But, in talking with them fifteen years later, I could not discover that the lack of correspondence between their ideal future and their actual present troubled them much. It is matter of common note that it is impossible to make one man realize another's experience; but it is often quite as hard to make him recover a past stage of his own consciousness. These, then, had bent to the force of chance or temperament. But Clay had shaped his life according to his programme, and had the result been happier? He who gets his wish often suffers a sharper disappointment than he who loses it. "_So taeuscht uns also bald die Hoffnung, bald das Gehoffte_," says the great pessimist, and Fate is never more ironical than when she humors our whim. Doddridge alone, who had thrown himself confidingly into the arms of the Destinies, had obtained their capricious favors. I cannot say that I drew any counsel, civil or moral, from these comparisons. Life is deeper and wider than any particular lesson to be learned from it; and just when we think that we have at last guessed its best meanings, it laughs in our face with some paradox which turns our solution into a new riddle. ZERVIAH HOPE. BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. _Scribner's Monthly, November, 1880._ PRELUDE. In the month of August, in the year 1878, the steamer _Mercy_, of the New York and Savannah line, cast anchor down the channel, off a little town in South Carolina which bore the name of Calhoun. It was not a regular part of her "run" for the _Mercy_ to make a landing at this place. She had departed from her course by special permit to leave three passengers, two men and one woman, who had business of a grave nature in Calhoun. A man, himself a passenger for Savannah, came upon deck as the steamship hove to, to inquire the reason of the delay. He was a short man, thin, with a nervous hand and neck. His eyes were black, his hair was black, and closely cut. He had an inscrutable mouth, and a forehead well-plowed rather by experience than years. He was not an old man. He was cleanly dressed in new, cheap clothes. He had been commented upon as a reticent passenger. He had no friends on board the _Mercy_. This was the first time upon the voyage that he had been observed to speak. He came forward and stood among the others, and abruptly said: "What's this for?" He addressed the mate, who answered with a sidelong look, and none too cordially: "We land passengers by the Company's order." "Those three?" "Yes, the men and the lady." "Who are they?" "Physicians from New York." "Ah-h!" said the man, slowly, making a sighing noise between his teeth. "That means--that means--" "Volunteers to the fever district," said the mate, shortly, "as you might have known before now. You're not of a sociable cast, I see."