NOTES ON GHOSTS AND GOBLINS. 415 



college friends are some who will be friends for life, 

 yet at the time the interchange of ideas even with 

 these special friends relates almost wholly to college 

 work or college interests. There is nothing homelike 

 in social arrangements at college. So soon as the 

 ' oak is sported ' for the evening a lonely feeling is 

 apt to come on, which affects even some of those who 

 have no recent sorrows to brood over. There is a 

 refuge in hard reading. But hard reading, in my case, 

 had come to an end on my mother's death. I had so 

 far accustomed myself to associate college successes 

 with the idea of pleasure given to her that I now 

 looked with aversion on my former studies. They 

 could no longer gain the prize I had alone cared for. 

 I ought, no doubt, to have had quite other feelings, 

 but I speak of the effects I actually experienced. 

 Now, whether the breaking up of my old plans for 

 work had upset me, or in whatever way it happened, I 

 certainly had never found college life so lonely and 

 unpleasant as during the first term of my second yea,r. 

 And it seems to me likely that the low spirits from 

 which I then suffered may have had something to do 

 with the singular instance of self-deception I have 

 now to relate : 



I had on one evening been particularly, I may say 

 unreasonably, low-spirited. I had sat brooding for 

 hours over dismal thoughts. These thoughts had 

 followed me to bed, and I went to sleep still under 

 their influence. I cannot remember my dreams 

 I did dream, and my dreams were melancholy but 



