Another glass! Another period. That is a better glass than the last, I think--there's an aroma about it that the other lacked. And what a period that was! My college days! High, noble, savage, inharmonious, rough, fair; all opposites and contrasts that ever existed, blended then. No outsider can ever know the delights, and an outsider can hardly choose but laugh at the follies. Mixed with all the dross we bring up from thence there are generally some particles of fine gold. The music of our life would be strange indeed to one who had not sung and laughed with us. I know well what my granddad felt when he crossed the name of some fellow-collegian in his Book of Memory. God bless them all! Another glass, by the immortal gods, and another bottle this time! From Friendship to Love. The most wonderful thing of this period (period six, please observe, my soul) was that its grades fitted themselves into and took their colour from my reading. Especially my affections got coloured from Wilhelm Meister; that is to say, I hardly knew whether it was Emmeline or the gentle Camilla, or even Ottilie. Didn't all three peep out from behind jalousies in bewitching nightcaps to hear the mournful squeaks which my numbed fingers elicited from the guitar? And when all three proved but heartless coquettes, I swore I would never marry till I was forty. Yet the little god slides from the eyes of the loved one into the heart of the victim. For am I not a victim? Is not she the coldest listener of all when I sing? did she ever vouchsafe me a single glance of encouragement? As I am not a general officer, I can't get mentioned in a despatch as having eight bullets in my breast and 'lying in a precarious condition,' even if we were not at peace. If I was only a drummer I could go and make a disgusting noise under her window till she was obliged to look out to tell me to go away, and I would then descend from fortissimo to piano and adagio, for I suppose one could do adagio even upon a drum. But the only fame she is likely to hear of me is that some one will tell her to-morrow that I boozed in the Town Cellar from midnight to six a. m. Now is no one awake but the highest and the lowest in the town,--the watchman on the top of the cathedral tower, and I deep down in the bowels of the earth. If I were the watchman I would be singing to a certainty, so I don't see why I should not wake the echoes down here. _She_ won't hear either of us, so here goes. When at the lonely midnight hour I pace my rounds upon the tower, I muse upon my love afar, Whose troth is fixed as morning star. When to the flag at honour's call I flew, her kiss was worth it all; She decked my hat with ribbands blue, Then pressed me to her heart anew. And still her love's as warm as then, It gives my hand the strength of ten; It lends my heart a firmer beat, To think in absence on my Sweet.