‘Nevertheless, there have been times――moments of dreadful egotism let me call them――when I have told myself, as you so flatteringly tell me, that had I been born the son of a poor man I might have done something in the world, though exactly what, I am as careful as you yourself are to leave undefined. No! I’m afraid all my gifts may be reduced to this single capacity for sitting in the sun――a capacity that is not of immense value to other people, whatever pleasure it may give to myself. I have an idea, however, that had I lived in the days of Plato, he would have employed me to sweep the walks of the Academe, or mow the grass, or do something of that kind. Possibly, even to make myself useful by illustrating the doctrine of reminiscence, like the boy in the _Meno_; or I might have taken care of the books. ‘This last, certainly; for I have a sneaking fondness for the very cobwebs that gather in the corners of a library. Last night I spent two or three delicious hours in looking over my own volumes, taking down one after another from the shelf, and slowly turning their leaves. Many of them, most of them in fact――for my tastes have not greatly changed――I had loved in my boyhood, and these were, I confess, the ones I lingered over longest. And, in a sense, turning their pages again in the light of this darker-risen day was like holding up a lamp to the past; and the soft, gentle dust of the dead years fell all about me, floated in the air I breathed, delicate, sweet, and sad. ‘O wondrous seed of poetry! Happy the child into whose tender soul you have dropped at his birth! May he keep until his death the innocence and the heart of a boy, and may the burden of years and the cares of the world fall lightly upon him!...’ He laid down his pen and turned toward the window, while a smile, a little sad, but singularly sweet and gentle, passed across his face. After all!... Well, he supposed the years _had_ fallen lightly upon him. If he took the trouble to look in the glass he must see that his hair was turning grey, that his shoulders were a little stooped, that there were lines about his mouth and eyes.... And his life?――that too, perhaps, had taken a greyish tinge.... Monotonous?... ah yes, monotonous in truth: but even now he had only to close his eyes to bring up the light――the light.... The view of the years that opened up behind him was in fact tranquil and pleasant enough; uneventful; like a broad, shady garden, an old-world, sleepy garden full of flowers still sweet and fresh. He had done little. As Allingham had pointed out (with something of the air of a man who has made a wonderful discovery), the years of his life had simply floated away from him――floated away just as in autumn dead leaves float down a river.