poisoned my cup. Now it is beginning to be the other way; and I
find myself with a heightened sense of pleasure in the quiet and
peaceful days that have to intervene before the fateful morning
dawns. I used to awake in the morning on the days that were still
my own before the day which I dreaded, and begin, in that agitated
mood which used to accompany the return of consciousness after
sleep, when the mind is alert but unbalanced, to anticipate the
thing I feared, and feel that I could not face it. Now I tend to
awake and say to myself, "Well, at any rate I have still to-day in
my own hands;" and then the very day itself has an increased value
from the feeling that the uncomfortable experience lies ahead. I
suppose that is the secret of the placid enjoyment which the very
old so often display. They seem so near the dark gate, and yet so
entirely indifferent to the thought of it; so absorbed in little
leisurely trifles, happy with a childlike happiness.

And thus I went slowly back to College in that gathering gloom that
seldom fails to bring a certain peace to the mind. The porter sate,
with his feet on the fender, in his comfortable den, reading a
paper. The lights were beginning to appear in the court, and the
firelight flickered briskly upon walls hung with all the pleasant
signs of youthful life, the groups, the family photographs, the
suspended oar, the cap of glory. So when I entered my book-lined
rooms, and heard the kettle sing its comfortable song on the
hearth, and reflected that I had a few letters to write, an
interesting book to turn over, a pleasant Hall dinner to look
forward to, and that, after a space of talk, an undergraduate or
two were coming to talk over a leisurely piece of work, an essay or
a paper, I was more than ever inclined to acquiesce in my
disabilities, to purr like an elderly cat, and to feel that while I