"I accept your offer," was his reply, "and I feel grateful for your patronage, as I am yet unknown; but I feel confident I shall succeed at length in this my present aim at fame and fortune. The goddess has eluded me often, doubtless even when I was sure I held her in my grasp. But that is nothing. I was happy, as I am at present, in the pursuit; for all my life has been a series of anticipations supremely happy." We had stood during this discourse; my eye was on him; and I could see the glow that was upon his face. How strange to me it seemed: I, too, had lived in anticipation of being rich, yet never felt the thrill, the full joy, of hope which possession banishes. How justly may anticipation and fruition be compared to youth and age!--the one, joyous and buoyant, moves along the rough walks of life, with hope pointing the way and smoothing his path; fruition, like an aged traveller, feeble and spent, sees ever a length of way before him, rendered rougher by cares for what he has attained, while all behind him is nothing. One of my gloomy fits was coming over me--my mind was turning in upon itself, when he aroused me, by inquiring where he should have the pleasure of bringing his work to me. I gave him my address, and we began to return to the city. Long before we reached the last stile, he had so won upon my regard, that I invited him home with me to supper, under promise that he should give me an outline of his life. He redeemed his pledge thus:-- My father, Andrew Elder (said he), lived in one of the villages not far from town, where I was born. He was not rich, but well enough to do; by trade a joiner, tolerably well read, of a shrewd and argumentative turn of mind, and the oracle of the village, at a time when it was distracted by the politics of the period, which ran high between the aristocrats and democrats. The French Revolution had attained the climax of its horrors, and the best blood of France was poured forth as water. Once a democrat, he had changed his former opinions, and his antipathy was as intense against the bloody miscreants who, in the public commotion, had wriggled themselves into their bad pre-eminence, as his sympathy had been strong at the commencement in favour of an enslaved people. I was scarce seventeen--an anxious listener to all that passed in the shop between my father and his opponents. All he said was to me true as holy writ; and those hearers who doubted one word he said were deemed worthy only of my pity. Well do I recollect--it was the beginning of May, 1794, and our dinner hour; the newspaper had just arrived; a number of neighbours were seated on or standing around the bench on which the all-engrossing paper was spread. My father gave a shout of triumph, and looked contempt upon the democratic part of his audience, who were ranged on the opposite side. They again looked, their anxiety not unmixed with fear.