forefinger of an alderman" shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will
have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets
Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More
durable than marble or bronze are the words, "I could not love thee,
deare, so much, loved I not honor more."

I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall
probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which
I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff
of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time
cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece
of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but
he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world
has listened, and will miss. I found him absorbed in a newly made
card-catalogue of his library. "It was absurd of me to have it done," he
remarked. "What I really require is a little bookcase holding only two
volumes; then I could go from one to the other in alternation and always
find each book as fresh as if I never had read it." This arraignment of
his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's mind was to the end like
an unclouded crystal. It was interesting to note how he studied himself,
taking his own pulse, as it were, and diagnosing his own case in a sort
of scientific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's case and he
were the consulting specialist. I intended to spend a quarter of an hour
with him, and he kept me three hours. I went there rather depressed,
but I returned home leavened with his good spirits, which, I think, will
never desert him, here or hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be
hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age.

THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The
thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is