tomes on Ancient Philosophy. At such a time, I read Appuleius and
Lucian, Petronius and the Greek Anthology, Diogenes Laertius and--heaven
knows what! My hunger was forgotten; the garret to which I must return
to pass the night never perturbed my thoughts. On the whole, it seems to
me something to be rather proud of; I smile approvingly at that thin,
white-faced youth. Me? My very self? No, no! He has been dead these
thirty years.

Scholarship in the high sense was denied me, and now it is too late. Yet
here am I gloating over Pausanias, and promising myself to read every
word of him. Who that has any tincture of old letters would not like to
read Pausanias, instead of mere quotations from him and references to
him? Here are the volumes of Dahn's _Die Konige der Germanen_: who would
not like to know all he can about the Teutonic conquerors of Rome? And
so on, and so on. To the end I shall be reading--and forgetting. Ah,
that's the worst of it! Had I at command all the knowledge I have at any
time possessed, I might call myself a learned man. Nothing surely is so
bad for the memory as long-enduring worry, agitation, fear. I cannot
preserve more than a few fragments of what I read, yet read I shall,
persistently, rejoicingly. Would I gather erudition for a future life?
Indeed, it no longer troubles me that I forget. I have the happiness of
the passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?



XVIII.


Is it I, Henry Ryecroft, who, after a night of untroubled rest, rise
unhurriedly, dress with the deliberation of an oldish man, and go