I put to myself the question: _Were_ they worth striving for? Really, I
did not seem to be getting much satisfaction out of them. I began to be
worried. Was not this an attitude of age? Was I not an old man, perhaps,
regardless of my youthful face?

At any rate, it occurred to me sharply, as I had but a few more years of
effective life, did it not behoove me to pause and see, if I could, in
what direction I was going?--to "stop, look and listen"?--to take
account of stock?--to form an idea of just what I was worth physically,
mentally and morally?--to compute my assets and liabilities?--to find
out for myself by a calm and dispassionate examination whether or not I
was spiritually a bankrupt? That was the hideous thought which like a
deathmask suddenly leered at me from behind the arras of my mind--that I
counted for nothing--cared really for nothing! That when I died I should
have been but a hole in the water!

The previous evening I had taken my two distinctly blasé daughters to
see a popular melodrama. The great audience that packed the theater to
the roof went wild, and my young ladies, infected in spite of themselves
with the same enthusiasm, gave evidences of a quite ordinary variety of
excitement; but I felt no thrill. To me the heroine was but a painted
dummy mechanically repeating the lines that some Jew had written for her
as he puffed a reeking cigar in his rear office, and the villain but a
popinjay with a black whisker stuck on with a bit of pitch. Yet I
grinned and clapped to deceive them, and agreed that it was the most
inspiriting performance I had seen in years.

In the last act there was a horserace cleverly devised to produce a
convincing impression of reality. A rear section of the stage was made
to revolve from left to right at such a rate that the horses were