misery growing too, out of the very source of her happiness. Yes; even so unmixed, so absorbing was my selfishness. _My_ selfishness! the selfishness of humanity; for even as the rest of my fellow men so was, and so am I. I thought of the many hours of delight I had enjoyed in her presence, of the thousand daily kindnesses I had experienced at her hand. She alone was wont to partake of my youthful joys, to sympathize with my boyish griefs; it was her praise that urged me to exertion, the fear of her censure that restrained me from mischief. And all this was to pass away, and to pass with her presence too. Never more was my heart to drink in the sweet light of her eyes; never more would her soft voice breathe its music in my ear. I felt that I dwelt no longer in her thoughts; I believed my very image would soon perish from her memory. Such were the bitter thoughts that weighed down my mind. I go on spinning out this portion of my tale, no doubt very tediously, and my readers will perhaps despair of my ever arriving at the end; but patience, I shall get there by and by. "Bear with me yet a little while." It is that I shrink from what I have undertaken to narrate, that I wander into digression; for whatever effect it may have on others, whose only interest in it will arise from momentary excitement, on me the fearful casualty I shall describe, has imposed "the grief of years." Many a pang has my heart experienced in my pilgrimage through this weary world, and some grievous enough to sustain; time and occupation, however, have afforded their accustomed remedy, and scars only are left to mark where the wounds have been. But this, though inflicted in boyhood's springy days, is festering now; aye now, when the very autumn of manhood is passed, and the winter of age is congealing the sources of feeling and of life.