II. What is Left 249

III. Grief and Joy of Age 255

IV. The End of Dreams 261




_INTRODUCTORY._


I.

_With my Aunt Tabithy._

"Pshaw!" said my Aunt Tabithy, "have you not done with dreaming?"

My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves
occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I was
sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies and
half-experiences which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my
solitary life, she smiled as if in derision.

----"Ah, Isaac," said she, "all that is exhausted; you have rung so many
changes on your hopes and your dreams, that you have nothing left but to
make them real--if you can."

It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old lady. I did better