Breakfast over, I left the Doctor to expend his skill and knowledge on a patient who had sent to claim his services, and strolled out over the rocks behind the town,--wondering all the while at the strangeness of the human fancy and its power on the will; and I reflected, too, and remembered that, in the explanation of the satisfying character of the life which my new-found friend was leading, there had been no clew given to the first great motive which had destined such a finely organized and altogether splendid man to such a career. Was he exempt from the lot of other mortals, or must he too own, like all the rest of us, when we own the truth, that every firm step we ever made in those days of our early lives when steps were critical, was made to please a woman, to win her slightest praise, to heal a wound or drown a sorrow of her making? I would have given much to have the question answered, for then a thing now mysterious would have become as plain as day; but there was no one there to heed the question, or to give the answer, and I could only wander on over the rough rocks, wondering more and more. A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. One morning last April, as I was passing through Boston Common, which lies pleasantly between my residence and my office, I met a gentleman lounging along The Mall. I am generally preoccupied when walking, and often thrid my way through crowded streets without distinctly observing a single soul. But this man's face forced itself upon me, and a very singular face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His hair and eyes, if I may say so, were seventy years old, the rest of him not thirty. The youthfulness of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and the venerable appearance of his head, were incongruities that drew more than one pair of curious eyes towards him. He was evidently an American,--the New England cut of countenance is unmistakable,--evidently a man who had seen something of the world; but strangely old and young. Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had taken up the thread of thought which he had unconsciously broken; yet throughout the day this old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and silvered locks, glided in like a phantom between me and my duties. The next morning I again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into his faded eyes, then died out, leaving them drearier than before. I wondered if he, too, in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and drifted and never came to port; and if these poor toys were to him types of his own losses.