tied up their boats; the last omnibus has crossed the bridge; the young
moon is getting to her bed and I turn my face toward the long street
and the bright hotel. A man of high-toned and poetic mind would here
insert something about his thoughts turning to his mountain home. Alas!
mine are turned with eager curiosity to what my breakfast tomorrow
would be, reflecting as I do that I am now in the land, or rather
water, of oysters, soft crabs and fish. After all, of what common clay
we are made!

* * * * *

The redeeming feature of ill-health, to me, has been that for the last
few months I have been thrown with many invalids and enjoyed their
confidence to the fullest, (and sometimes the most, to some extent).
There seems to be a sort of free-masonry among sick people by which
they at once become friendly and familiar. There is, also, if you only
knew it, an aristocracy of ill-health; that is, a man with two
complaints stands much higher with his fellow invalids than a man with
one; and a man who has been sick for five years stands immeasurably
higher than a mere cadet who has not been sick six months. Having only
a two years' standing, I was forced to bear the contempt which I
received from chronic cases, but I repaid it with interest on some
evidently shoddy invalids, who were trying to work their way into
society on an attack of only a few weeks duration. I remember one case,
however, in which our whole aristocratic circle was swept into
insignificance by a little lady, whom I saw after I left Hampton, and
who didn't weigh ninety pounds. She had been an invalid, she said, for
fifteen years, and while I do not recollect precisely her afflictions,
it appears to me that she had had chronic trichnia spiralis for that
length of time, with intermittent cerebro spinal meningitis tending