“'It is as I thought,' said he, at last. 'It is the weak, sickly tone of the day has brought all this corruption upon us! Once upon a time the vices and follies of young men took their rise in their several natures,--this one gambled, the other drank, and so on,--the mass, however, was wonderfully sound and healthy; the present school, however, is to ape a uniformity, so that each may show himself in the livery of his fellows, thus imbibing wickedness he has no taste for, and none be less depraved and heartless than those around him. Let the women but follow the fashion, and there 's an end of us, as the great people we boasted to be!' “I give you, so well as I can trust my memory, his words, Harry, but I cannot give you a certain sardonic bitterness,--a tone of mingled scorn and sorrow, such as I never before witnessed. He gave me the impression of being one who, originally frank, generous, and trustful, had, by intercourse with the world and commerce with mankind, grown to suspect every one and disbelieve in honesty, and yet could not bring his heart to acknowledge what his head had determined. In this wise, at least, I read his character from the opportunities I had of conversing with him on our journey. It was easy to see that he was a gentleman,--taking the word in the widest of its acceptations,--but from things that dropped from him, I could gather that his life had been that of an adventurer. He had been in the sea and land services of many of those new states of Southern America, had even risen to political importance in some of them; had possessed mines and vast tracts of territory one day, and the next saw himself 'without a piastre.' He had conducted operations against the Indians, and made treaties with them, and latterly had lived as the elected chief of a tribe in the west of the Rocky Mountains. But he knew civilized as well as savage life, had visited Spain in the rank of an envoy, and was familiar with all the great society of Rome, and the intrigues of its prince-bishops. The only theme, however, on which he really warmed was sport. The prairies brought out all his enthusiasm, and then he spoke like one carried away by glorious recollections of a time when, as he said himself, 'heart and hand and eye never failed him.' “When he spoke of family ties or home affections, it was in a spirit of almost mockery, which puzzled me. His reasoning was that the attachments we form are only emanations of our own selfishness. We love, simply to be loved again. Whereas, were we single-hearted, we should be satisfied to know that those dear to us were well and happy, and only seek to serve them without demonstration or display.