unbroken, middle-aged eternity of ten years, and can yet assert, in
the words of the more fortunately-dying Webster, that 'I still live!'"

Extravagantly satirical as he was at times, John had always an
indefinable drollery about him that made him agreeable company to his
friends, at least; and such an admiring friend he had constantly at
hand in the person of Bert Haines. Both were Bohemians in natural
tendency, and, though John was far in Bert's advance in point of age,
he found the young man "just the kind of a fellow to have around;"
while Bert, in turn, held his senior in profound esteem--looked up to
him, in fact, and in even his eccentricities strove to pattern after
him. And so it was, when summer days were dull and tedious, these two
could muse and doze the hours away together; and when the nights were
long, and dark, and deep, and beautiful, they could drift out in the
noon-light of the stars, and with "the soft complaining flute" and
"warbling lute," "lay the pipes," as John would say, for their
enduring popularity with the girls! And it was immediately subsequent
to one of these romantic excursions, when the belated pair, at two
o'clock in the morning, had skulked up a side stairway of the old
hotel, and gained John's room, with nothing more serious happening
than Bert falling over a trunk and smashing his guitar,--just after
such a night of romance and adventure it was that, in the seclusion of
John's room, Bert had something of especial import to communicate.

"Mack," he said, as that worthy anathematized a spiteful match, and
then sucked his finger.

"Blast the all-fired old torch!" said John, wrestling with the
lamp-flue, and turning on a welcome flame at last. "Well, you said
'Mack!' Why don't you go on? And don't bawl at the top of your lungs,