"Ah, old fellow," quoth I to my chum, "those good old days are gone by, now, and Israel worships strange gods. Old Nassau will never be what she was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,--swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. _'Fuit Ilium!'_ The old bell will never again ring out the gay 'larums of a 'Third Entry' barring-out. Homer's head no longer perches owl-like and wise over the central door-way. _'Ai, Adonai!'_ No more wilt proud fingers point to the spot whereat entered--not like 'Casca's envious dagger'--that well-aimed cannon-ball which pierced the picture-gallery, punched 'Georgius Res' on the head, and frightened away forever the Hessians that were stabled there, fouling the nest of stout old John Witherspoon. They call other rolls now in chapel and in class-room, and chant other songs at their revels and their feasts. '_Eheu, Posthume!_'" "Pshaw, Ned Blount! there's corn in Egypt still. Out of that bug-riddled old barn we used to know a new and comely Phoenix has been born unto Princeton; the fire hath purged, not destroyed; and we wiseacres who flourished in the old 'flush times' yet survive in tradition, patterns for our children, very Turveydrops of collegiate deportment. The belfry clangs with a louder peal; even Clarian's Picture, though it hath utterly perished to the eye of sense, lives vivid in a thousand memories, and, having found in the tenderness of tradition and legend an engraver whose burin is as faithful as Raphael Morghen's, has left the damp dark wall, like Leonardo's _Cenacolo_, to accompany all of us to our firesides." Clarian's Picture! what memories the mention of it stirred up! "Poor Clarian!" I murmured. "Poor, indeed I" repeated Mac, with a sneer. "He is only worth a lovely wife and six children, with half a million to back them. And he only weighs two hundred pounds, with I forget how many inches of fat over the brisket. Poor, indeed! 'Tis pity you and I have not experienced a slight attack of that same poverty, Ned Blount!" "Poor Clarian!" repeated I, sturdily. "To think that a man who could paint such a picture, a soul of imagination so compact, a so delicate ether-breathing spirit, should settle down at last into a mere mechanical, a plodding, every-day merchant, whose finest fancies are given to the condition of the money-market, who governs his actions by a decline of Erie, and narrows his ideas down to the requirements of filthy lucre, like a mere 'wintry clod of earth'! Ay, poor Clarian, poor anybody, when we wake from our bright youth-dream and tread the rough pathway of a reality like this!" "_Potz tausend_! the man is _fou_!" shouted Mac. "Come, drink your wine, Ned, and we'll have our coffee. It is quite time, I think,--and he used to be a three-bottle fellow," muttered my dear old friend, _sotto voce_. "'_Heu, heu! tempora mutantur, et nos_'--well, well, well!"