A MEMORY. 



How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh 

 Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear 

 Were discord to the speaking quietude 

 That wraps this moveless scene. Shelley. 



The casual presence of two or three out-of-town veterans 

 of the craft gave a retrospective cast to the conversa- 

 tion at a recent re-union of the local brotherhood. With 

 one of our guests I had tabernacled for twenty years in the 

 wilderness. No man was ever more companionable or had 

 more of the characteristics of true nobility. In physique 

 he was robust as an athlete, but in thought and feeling he 

 was as impressive as a child and as gentle as a woman. He 

 was, withal, as moderate in his sports as he was temperate 

 in his habits. In seeking his own pleasure he never forgot 

 the pleasure of others, nor did he ever envy others the 

 "luck" he sometimes failed to enjoy himself. Indeed, I 

 have known him to slip away from a promising "spring 

 hole" which was his own by right of possession, that 

 expert angler might fish undisturbed and be happy. He is 

 some years my senior, and although still as buoyant in 

 spirit as wnen he would "set the table in a roar" by the un- 

 ceasing flow of his inimitable humor, he bears, on body and 

 brow, the ear-marks of weariness, if not of decay. When I 

 meet him he always reminds me of my fancy picture of 

 grand old "Kit Xorth'' that princely king of the inimit- 

 able "Noctes Ambrosianse." He is like him in his tastes, 

 in his enthusiasm and in his irrepressible love of the gentle 

 pastime which constituted the rarest pleasure of his youtn 

 and the chief joy of his green old age. He is like him also 

 in that he finds unalloyed delight in re-traversing, in imagi- 



