upon your drooping figure, and we mark your tottering
step and trembling hand, yet a reliant something
in your face forbids compassion, and a something
in your eye will not permit us to look sorrowfully
on you. And, however we may smile at your
quaint ways and old-school oddities of manner and
of speech, our merriment is ever tempered with the
gentlest reverence.



THE GILDED ROLL

Nosing around in an old box--packed away,
and lost to memory for years--an hour ago
I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather,
a roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the
old sheet for the outer wrapper. I picked it up
mechanically to toss it into some obscure corner,
when, carelessly lifting it by one end, a child's tin
whistle dropped therefrom and fell tinkling on the
attic floor. It lies before me on my writing table
now--and so, too, does the roll entire, though now
a roll no longer,--for my eager fingers have unrolled
the gilded covering, and all its precious contents
are spread out beneath my hungry eyes.

Here is a scroll of ink-written music. I don't
read music, but I know the dash and swing of the
pen that rained it on the page. Here is a letter,