of Plato's time, pleasure and pain, profit and loss, were about the only criteria of right and wrong; and gold and brass were the only criteria of respectability. That unblushing energy which pushes men in where angels fear to tread, which so obscures the senses that one can scarcely see one's own failures, seemed at once, and almost unconsciously, to bear a man onward upon the topmost wave. If he fell he had no thought of anything but to get on his feet again, surely he would not lie and cry about it like a child.
"Many of my friends have left me," says the waiting, working one, "have left me for the states. Of late, Sam Punches and others. And as they left they pictured me of what they should see at home; of their coming friendly meetings, joys, and wet-eyed greetings, such as my heart had often told me should be mine the day I might again behold the lustrous scenes of youth. And I wonder if the grass will look as green, and the sun as brightly shine as fancy now pictures. Shall I see the faces that rise before me now, the forms and features photographed in my memory years ago, or will they seem strange to me, wry and wrinkled? Will I have merry meetings and heart-felt greetings, I wonder? Days are dead and many dark nights have sunk into the tomb since I bade my native hills good-bye. I see them as I left them, and they are waving me adieus: I wonder if they all have changed, if I have changed. My beard has grown stubble, I grant, silver-gray mingles with the brown of my hair, yet my heart has not lost its buoyancy, nor my eye its brightness; I can still laugh and love though I have felt what sorrow is.
"Home shall see me one day, so the inward whisper strikes my ear, and a mother's kiss shall call back childhood. Old of head but young of heart, a mothers's kiss shall scatter the silver gray hair and smooth and soften the fixed features; in a sister's embrace years of wanderings are lost. Then how soon my ab-
