stranger would now have been apt to remark that Ganymede was unusually
plump for a distinguished writer, rather than unusually young. But how
was he to know this? Many long-standing prepossessions are as hard to be
corrected as a long-standing mispronunciation, against which the direct
experience of eye and ear is often powerless. And I could perceive that
Ganymede's inwrought sense of his surprising youthfulness had been
stronger than the superficial reckoning of his years and the merely
optical phenomena of the looking-glass. He now held a post under
Government, and not only saw, like most subordinate functionaries, how
ill everything was managed, but also what were the changes that a high
constructive ability would dictate; and in mentioning to me his own
speeches and other efforts towards propagating reformatory views in his
department, he concluded by changing his tone to a sentimental head
voice and saying--

"But I am so young; people object to any prominence on my part; I can
only get myself heard anonymously, and when some attention has been
drawn the name is sure to creep out. The writer is known to be young,
and things are none the forwarder."

"Well," said I, "youth seems the only drawback that is sure to diminish.
You and I have seven years less of it than when we last met."

"Ah?" returned Ganymede, as lightly as possible, at the same time
casting an observant glance over me, as if he were marking the effect of
seven years on a person who had probably begun life with an old look,
and even as an infant had given his countenance to that significant
doctrine, the transmigration of ancient souls into modern bodies.

I left him on that occasion without any melancholy forecast that his