It was Mrs. Maylie, the minister's wife, going home from watching. After a little talk, she told me, in her pleasant way, that I had two things to do, of which, by the doing, I should make but one: I was to write a story, and to show good reason for keeping myself all to myself. "Mrs. Maylie," said I, "do I look like a person who has had a story? I am a lonely old man,--a hard old man. A story should have warmth. Don't you see I'm an icicle?" "Not quite," said she. "I know of two warm spots. I see you every day watching the children go past; and then, what have you there? Icicles never cling to flowers!" After she had gone, I began thinking what a beautiful story mine might have been, if things had been different,--if I had been different. And at last it occurred to me that a relation of some parts of it might be useful reading for young men; also, that it might cause our whole class to be more kindly looked upon. Suppose it is not a pleasant story. Life is not all brightness. See how the shadows chase each other across our path! To-day our friend weeps with us; to-morrow we weep with our friend. The hearse is a carriage which stops at every door. No picture is without its shading. We have before us the happy experiences of my two friends. By those smiling groups let there stand one dark, solitary figure, pointing out the moral of the whole. There is one thing, however, in the story of my neighbor Browne, pleasant as it is, which reminds me of a habit of my own. I mean, his liking to watch pretty faces. I do, when they belong to children. This practice of mine, which I find has been noticed by my valued friend, Mrs. Maylie, is partly owing to the memories of my own childhood. When the past was so suddenly recalled, on that stormy day,--as mentioned by my friend Allen,--I felt as I have often felt upon the sea, when, after hours of dull sailing, through mist and darkness, I have looked back upon the lights of the town we were leaving. My life began in brightness. And now, amid that brightness, appear fresh, happy little faces, which haunt me more and more, as I become isolated from the humanity about me, until at times it is those only which are real, while living forms seem but shadows. I see whole rows of these young faces in an old school-house, far from here, close by the sea,--can see the little girls running in, when the schoolma'am knocked, and settling down in their forms, panting for breath. One of these the boys called my girl. I liked her, because she had curls and two rows of cunning teeth, and because she never laughed when the boys called me "Spunky Joe." For I was wilful, and of a hasty temper. Her name was Margaret. My father took me a long voyage with him, and while I was gone she moved down East. I never saw her afterwards. If living, it must have been a score of years since she bought her first glasses.