occasions did my early vanity consent to the fashion of the day) were
succeeded by curls, short and crisped; the hues, alternately pale and
hectic, that the dreams of romance had once spread over my cheek, had
settled into the unchanging bronze of manhood; the smooth lip and
unshaven chin were clothed with a thick hair; the once unfurrowed brow
was habitually knit in thought; and the ardent, restless expression that
boyhood wore had yielded to the quiet unmoved countenance of one in whom
long custom has subdued all outward sign of emotion, and many and
various events left no prevalent token of the mind save that of an
habitual but latent resolution. My frame, too, once scarcely less
slight than a woman's, was become knit and muscular; and nothing was
left by which, in the foreign air, the quiet brow, and the athletic
form, my very mother could have recognized the slender figure and
changeable face of the boy she had last beheld. The very sarcasm of the
eye was gone; and I had learned the world's easy lesson,--the
dissimulation of composure.

I have noted one thing in others, and it was particularly noticeable in
me; namely, that few who mix very largely with men, and with the
courtier's or the citizen's design, ever retain the key and tone of
their original voice. The voice of a young man is as yet modulated by
nature, and expresses the passion of the moment; that of the matured
pupil of art expresses rather the customary occupation of his life.
Whether he aims at persuading, convincing, or commanding others, his
voice irrevocably settles into the key he ordinarily employs; and, as
persuasion is the means men chiefly employ in their commerce with each
other, especially in the regions of a court, so a tone of artificial
blandness and subdued insinuation is chiefly that in which the accents
of worldly men are clothed; the artificial intonation, long continued,
grows into nature, and the very pith and basis of the original sound